It was no harm to remind people of industrial conflicts such as the 1913 lock-out and how the old adversarial system for solving disputes worked at a time when social partnership was under pressure, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said last night.
He was speaking at the publication in Dublin of the first detailed account of Ireland's greatest industrial conflict, the 1913 lockout, by Irish Times journalist Padraig Yeates.
"The 1913 lock-out was an early demonstration of mutually destructive employer and trade union power," Mr Ahern said. "We have moved an immense distance since those days. While we still experience industrial disputes, employers and trade unions today work in close and productive partnership, though not always as much as one might wish at local level."
He said Mr Yeates' book, Lock- out Dublin 1913, offered a huge amount of fascinating detail on the conflict and was "a monumental contribution" to the history of Ireland in the early 20th century.
The book presents new details of the lock-out. It began when the conductors and drivers of trams in the capital pinned the badge of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union on their lapels and abandoned their vehicles in favour of strike action.
The dispute was to shape the course of the labour movement in Ireland throughout the 20th century.
Mr Yeates assesses the strategies of the main combatants and concludes that the lock-out was unnecessary but inevitable, given the personalities of the employers' leader, William Martin Murphy, and the workers' leader, Jim Larkin.
Speaking at the function, Mr Yeates, who is Industry and Employment Correspondent of The Irish Times, said it was time trade unions reinvented themselves ideologically. He said they should not just be striving for better wages and conditions but should also be concerned about the type of society we live in.
Mr Yeates is the author of a number of books, including Michael Collins: An Illustrated Life (1989) and Smack: The Criminal Drugs Racket in Ireland (1985), which he co-wrote with Sean Flynn, Education Editor of The Irish Times.
Lockout Dublin 1913 is reviewed on page 12 of Weekend by Prof Dermot Keogh.