[citation needed] The dispute began on 8 March 1913, when seamen on the SS Sligo demanded more help or higher wages for handling cattle.
In one incident, a local union man named Patrick Dunbar was attacked, hit on the head with a shovel and killed, by members of the Garvey family.
The Sligo Champion reported that ‘things have now assumed an aspect which grossly threatens the commercial prosperity of the port and the town generally’.
Dozens of strikers were fined and/or imprisoned and in retaliation the property of local firms, including Pollexfen and Company, Harper Campbell Ltd., Suttons, Newsome and Sons, and Messrs Thomas Flanagan were attacked.
The union organising a mass meeting in Sligo Town Hall and a boycott of shops that sold goods brought in on company ships, forcing the closure of some businesses.
The high cost to the ratepayers of maintaining soldiers and police, along with the collapse of trade, eventually led to negotiations under Sir Josslyn Gore Booths agent, JA Cooper, and Alderman John Jinks.
The victory boosted the morale of dockers and carters fighting their own battle in Dublin at the time and encouraged the ITGWU in its struggle for workers rights and conditions in Ireland.
The struggle and resulting victory implanted a solid tradition of union organization and socialist principles within the working communities of the town.
The events of the Dock strike in 1913 are regarded as the foundation stone of the modern socialist and trade union movement in Sligo[4] and the North West.