Irish Labour movement 1889-1924: Lecture Four - Jim Larkin and Larkinism

1. HHIS403 - Political & Social Movements in Twentieth-Century Ireland
The Irish Labour Movement, 1889 – 1924
Friday @ 10am
Introduction: Irish Labour movement, 1889-1924
The Rise of New Unionism, 1889-1906
James Connolly and the Irish Socialist Republican Party, 1896-1904
Jim Larkin and ‘Larkinism’, 1907-1914
The 1913 Lockout and the Irish Citizen Army
Syndicalism, 1917-1921
Civil War and Retreat, 1921-1924
Conclusion
Required Reading:
Emmet O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000 (Dublin: UCD Press, 2011): 51-127.
Supplementary Reading:
Conor McCabe, ‘Your only God is profit’: Irish class relations and the 1913 Lockout ’ in David Convery (ed)
Locked Out: A Century of Irish Working-Class Life (Dublin: Irish Academic Press 2013)
Lorcan Collins, James Connolly: 16 Lives (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2012)
Fintan Lane, The Origins of Modern Irish Socialism, 1881-1896 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1997)
David Lynch, Radical Politics in Modern Ireland: The Irish Socialist Republican Party, 1896-1904
(Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2005)
Emmet O’Connor, Syndicalism in Ireland, 1917-1923 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1988)
Emmet O’Connor, James Larkin (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002)

14. 1. Life: Jim Larkin, 1876-1947

15. Des Brannigan. Born 1918. Interviewed 22 January 2010

16. 1874 – Born in Liverpool of Irish parents
1881 – Starts work at age 7, a ‘half-timer’ –
a pupil permitted to divide time between
school and work

17. 1874 – Born in Liverpool of Irish parents
1881 – Starts work at age 7, a ‘half-timer’ –
a pupil permitted to divide time between
school and work
1885 – Leaves school at age 11 and begins
work full-time – various jobs – butcher’s
assistant, paper-hanger, engineering
apprentice,
1890 – starts work on Liverpool docks, age
16.

18. 1874 – Born in Liverpool of Irish parents
1881 – Starts work at age 7, a ‘half-timer’ –
a pupil permitted to divide time between
school and work
1885 – Leaves school at age 11 and begins
work full-time – various jobs – butcher’s
assistant, paper-hanger, engineering
apprentice,
1890 – starts work on Liverpool docks, age
16.
1893 – joins the Independent Labour Party –
adopted a socialism ‘driven by moral
outrage and underpinned by a personal code
of ethics’ rather than a scientific or
materialist reading of socialism
1901 – joins the National Union of Dock
Labourers (NUDL)

19. 1903 – becomes a foreman docker, marries
Elizabeth Brown, daughter of a Baptist lay-
preacher.
1905 – Liverpool dock strike. Larkin
emerges as a powerful leader. Sacked from
the docks.
1906 - Employed full-time by NUDL as a
trade unionist organiser.

20. January 1907 – Sent to Belfast
April-May 1907 – calls selective strikes on
the Belfast docks
June 1907 – Calls a general strike on the
docks

21. January 1907 – Sent to Belfast
April-May 1907 – calls selective strikes on
the Belfast docks
June 1907 – Calls a general strike on the
docks
24 July 1907 – Belfast police mutiny and
give support to the dockers. Government
responds with deployment of troops.
August 1907 – James Sexton, NUDL
general secretary, takes away control of the
strike from Larkin and negotiates a weak
settlement. Larkin goes to Dublin
November/December 1908 – strikes on
Dublin and Cork docks leads to further
tension between Sexton and Larkin.

22. January 1907 – Sent to Belfast
April-May 1907 – calls selective strikes on the Belfast
docks
June 1907 – Calls a general strike on the docks
24 July 1907 – Belfast police mutiny and give support to
the dockers. Government responds with deployment of
troops.
August 1907 – James Sexton, NUDL general secretary,
takes away control of the strike from Larkin and
negotiates a weak settlement. Larkin goes to Dublin
November/December 1908 – strikes on Dublin and Cork
docks leads to further tension between Sexton and
Larkin.
7 December 1908 – Larkin suspended as NUDL official
28 December 1908 – Larkin forms the Irish Transport
and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU)

23. 17 June 1910 – sentenced to 12-months hard
labour in Cork arising out of a dispute with
Sexton over NUDL union funds.
1 October 1910 – released after public
protest at the severity of the sentence
May 1911 – Larkin and ITGWU launch
Irish Worker
Summer 1911 – wave of militant grassroots
strike action across UK. Significant
syndicalist influence.
1912 – Larkin elected as a labour councillor,
Dublin Corporation
1913 – ITGWU approx. 20,000 members
August 1913 – ITGWU rents Croydon Park
Estate, Marino. ‘Bread and Roses.’

24. 26 August 1913 – In response to sackings of
ITGWU members by William Martin
Murphy, owner of Irish Independent and
Dublin tram service, Larkin calls a strike on
the trams.
September 1913 – around 400 employers
dismiss over 20,000 workers across Dublin
city for membership/support of ITGWU.
The Great Lockout.

25. 18 January 1914 – Larkin concedes defeat
and advises ITGWU members to return to
work as best they could.
25 October 1914 – departs for US as first
leg in a planned world speaking tour.
November 1914 – Arrives in New York.
Makes contact with Socialist Party of
America as well as Clan na Gael and John
Devoy.
October 1915 – makes contact with German
embassy attachés through John Devoy.
Arranges payments in return for anti-war
agitation.
November 1915 – moves to Chicago.
1917 – US enters the war. Larkin loses
German funding after he refuses to engage
in sabotage.

26. December 1917 – returns to New York.
Joins the Socialist Party of America.
September 1919 – supports the foundation
of the Communist Labour Party.
December 1919 – arrested as part of the
‘Red Scare’
3 May 1920 – sentenced to five to ten years
for ‘criminal anarchy.’

27. 17 January 1923 – given a
free pardon by Governor of
New York.
21 April 1923 – deported
from the US to Southampton,
UK.
30 April 1923 – arrives back
in Dublin

28. May 1923 – undertakes a speaking tour of
Free State urging anti-treatites to disarm –
although personally opposed to the Treaty.
June 1923 – Denounces the ITGWU
leadership and is suspended as general
secretary. Relaunches Irish Worker
September 1923 – launches new political
movement, Irish Worker League (IWL)
14 March 1924 – expelled from ITWGU
after legal battle for control of the union
15 June 1924 – forms a new union, Workers’
Union of Ireland. Almost 16,000 ITGWU
members, two-thirds of the Dublin
membership, defect to the new union.
Summer 1924 – visits Moscow to attend
congresses of the Comitern and Profintern.
Elected to the executive committee of the
Communist International..

29. September 1927 – elected to the Dáil as a
communist candidate. Prevented from
taking his seat as an undischarged bankrupt.
1929 – Larkin breaks with the Comitern and
the Soviets.
1932 – abandons revolutionism,
discontinues the Irish Worker and retires
from the Irish Workers League.

30. 1933-41 – Larkin an ‘Independent Labour’
voice.
July 1936 – elected as Dublin councillor.
- Workers Union of Ireland admitted to
Dublin Trades Council
1941 – admitted into the Irish Labour Party.
- ITGWU under O’Brien breaks with the
Irish Labour Party and forms the
Independent Labour Party
30 January 1947 – dies. Buried in Glasnevin
Cemetery.

31. Joe Deasy. Born 1922. Recorded 24 September 2009.

32. 2. Belfast 1907

33. - 1906 Trades dispute Act
- Restored trade union immunities in lawful strikes
- Guaranteed the right of peaceful picketing
20 January 1907 – Larkin arrives in Belfast
- 4, 600 dockers and carters in Belfast
- By April 1907 Larkin has organised 2,900 of them
- Campaigns for William Walker
- 6 May Belfast Steamship Company workers strike over union
recognition – locked out
15 July – some 2,340 men locked out on the docks

34. 24 July - c.300 members of the RIC demand better pay and
conditions
26 July -grand trades’ council procession – 100,000 on the streets of
Belfast
August - extra 6,000 troops drafted into Belfast
10-11 August – heavy rioting in the city
12 August – troops kill two rioters
15 August – Sexton persuades the carters to accept terms offered by
employers
- Sexton’s intervention a move against Larkin

36. 3. ITGWU

37. 4. Larkinism

38. Syndicalism
– electoral politics led to elitism and betrayal
- Socialism should be a celebration of working-class values
- the most direct means of struggle was through worker
organisations
- Ultimate aim a state run by the workers themselves
- industry-based, but no bosses

39. French Syndicalism
- urged the promotion of class consciousness through
sabotage and strikes
- this would culminate in a general strike
- Workers then able to seize control of industry
- opposed Marxist rationalism, embraced irrational forces
such as faith, intuition, morality and myth
American Syndicalism
- unite all grades of worker in each industry into one union,
the OBU [One Big Union]
- Industry then controlled from the shop floor

40. Syndicalist / Larkisn:
- class war
- ‘workerism’ [centrality of working class to society]
- working-class counter-culture that would challenge capitalist
individualism; create bonds between workers and their union;
would foster self-reliance, solidarity, fraternity and caring
- small, ordinary things throw a light on what life would look like
under socialism
- social as well as industrial revolution
- Republican underpinnings
- Larkin’s way or no way at all

45. “In the future we are not going to have the rank and file crawling into the office to any
body of railway directors. We are going to maintain a bold front. Men of skill who have
training that qualifies them to speak on behalf of their fellows would GO TO THE
DIRECTORS AND ARGUE THE CASE OF THE MEN, and if we cannot then succeed
in getting what we want, we can have recourse to the method that has been successful on
this occasion. What is now annoying the directors is the growing spirit of solidarity
amongst the working classes, and they don’t know how to deal with it.”
(Irish Worker, 26 August 1911)

47. ‘it looked as if Ireland was turned into a military camp,
minus the tents… most of the waiting apartments usually
set aside for passengers were converted into barrack
rooms… all the signal boxes, pumping stations, and
railway bridges were guarded by troops with loaded
firearms, sentries being located on the public roads
leading over the bridges outside large towns, while the
bridges crossing the railway in rural districts were
watched by policemen.’
(Nenagh Guardian, 30 September 1911)