HHIS403 - Political & Social Movements in Twentieth-Century IrelandThe Irish Labour Movement, 1889 – 1924

 

Lecture Two:Jim Larkin and ‘Larkinism

1.Life

2.Belfast 1907

3.ITGWU

4.Larkinism

Des Brannigan. Born 1918. Interviewed 22 January 2010

1. Life: Jim Larkin, 1876-1947

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

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.

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)

1903 – becomes a foreman docker, marries Elizabeth Brown, daughter of a Baptist lay-preacher.

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)

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.

January 1907 – Sent to Belfast

January 1907 – Sent to Belfast

April-May 1907 – calls selective strikes on the Belfast docks

June 1907 – Calls a general strike on the docks

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.

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)

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.’

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.

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.

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.’

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

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.

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.

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’Briaen breaks with the Irish Labour Party and forms the Independent Labour Party

30 January 1947 – dies. Buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.

Joe Deasy. Born 1922. Recorded 24 September 2009.

2. Belfast 1907

- 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

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

3. ITGWU

4. Larkinism

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

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

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