In many parts Loyalists were forced under the jurisdiction of Sinn Fein Land, Arbitration, and Civil Courts. Solicitors had their choice of practising in these Courts or not practising at all, and a solicitor must live as well as another man. The police had no power outside their barracks, and in many districts a policeman was never seen for weeks on end, whole districts being policed by civilian Volunteers. A large national loan was raised openly in defiance of the British Government, its avowed purpose being to carry on war against England and to break up the British Army. Sinn Fein banks and insurance societies were floated, the money obtained being used for the same purposes. Sinn Fein laws were passed and enforced, and a large army organised and built up, drilled and armed. At this time the British Prime Minister repeatedly assured the country that there never could and never would be an Irish Republic; while Lloyd George talked De Valera acted, and the Republic came into being while Lloyd George was still talking. During the summer of 1919 a very ordinary and at first uninteresting strike of shop assistants took place in Ballybor for higher wages and shorter hours, and the shopkeepers managed to carry on with the aid of their families, and few of the public suffered any inconvenience from the strike. Good relations still existed between master and employee in nearly every shop in the town, and the shopkeepers were just on the point of an amicable settlement with their assistants when a Transport Union agitator, or, as he called himself, a Gaelic organiser, appeared on the scene, and in a few hours the whole situation was changed. The local secretary of the Transport Union, to which the shop assistants belonged, at once broke off all negotiations with the shopkeepers, and before night several acts of sabotage had been committed in the town. The next morning saw the strike begin afresh in deadly earnest. Every street was picketed by strikers, who refused to allow any one, townspeople or country people, to purchase any foodstuffs until the shopkeepers had given in to their impossible demands. Doubtless the idea was that the starving people would bring such pressure to bear on the shopkeepers that they would be forced to give in and grant practically any terms to the shop assistants. In a word, the old game of blackmail. Several unfortunate old country-women, who had managed to evade the pickets and to purchase provisions, were caught on their way home by the strikers and their purchases trodden into the mud of the streets. One old clergyman, who lived several miles from Ballybor in an isolated district, managed not only to dodge the pickets and buy much-needed food, but to get two miles on his way home. However, a picket of shop-boys, mounted on bicycles, overtook him, threw all his provisions into a bog-hole, beat him severely, turned his pony loose in the bog, and left him by the roadside.