During the 1913 Lockout of workers, in which Murphy was the leading figure among the employers, the "Irish Independent" vigorously sided with its owner's interests, publishing news reports and opinion pieces hostile to the strikers, expressing confidence in the unions' defeat and launching personal attacks on the leader of the strikers, James Larkin. "The Irish Independent" described the 1916 Easter Rising as ""insane and criminal"" and famously called for the shooting of its leaders. In December 1919, during the Irish War of Independence, a group of twenty IRA men destroyed the printing works of the paper, angered at its criticism of the Irish Republican Army's attacks on members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and British government officials. In 1924, the traditional nationalist newspaper, the "Freeman's Journal", merged with the "Irish Independent". Until October 1986 the paper's masthead over the editorial contained the words "incorporating the Freeman's Journal".