Caoimhin O’MuraileJim Larkin, A Lion Among Early Socialists.

Jim Larkin will be remembered for his leadership, - with his first lieutenant James Connolly - of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union during the turbulent months of the 1913/14 Dublin Lockout. 

He will go down internationally with the great names within the working-class movement with the likes of Ben Tillet, Tom Mann, Big Bill Haywood, Joe Hill, Elizabeth Gurly Flynn and many others around the globe, including in more recent times Arthur Scargill, former President of the British National Union of Mineworkers during the year long strike of 1984/85. 

Like James Connolly, Larkin spent time in the USA and was involved with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) also known as the Wobblies. I shall attempt to sketch an outline of Larkins activities in the trade union and labour movement.

There appears to be differences of opinion as to the whereabouts of Jim Larkin's birthplace. The popular conception, though not necessarily the correct one, is that he was born in Liverpool, England at 41 Cobermere Street, Toxteth on the 4th February 1874. This opinion is supported by the fact that his baptismal papers were found there, but whether these papers contain the date of his birth is not clear. The late, usually reliable, C. Desmond Greaves claimed Liverpool as the place of Larkin's birth and given the information available at the time it was not an unreasonable assumption. The Liverpool venue as his place of birth is supported by Eric Taplin on page 17 of James Larkin, Lion of the Fold.

However, since Greaves made his assumption, using it in several of his works, more information about the future union chiefs place of birth have come to light, even though Liverpool remains the popular belief of Larkin's origin. There is, however another train of thought supported and quoted by Larkin’s grandson, also called Jim Larkin in his book, In The Footsteps Of Big Jim: A Family Biography. In this book, it is claimed, big Jim, as he was affectionately known, was born in Tamnaharry near Burren, County Down, Ireland in 1876. A copy of the family tree at the beginning of the book supports this version and the author quotes much evidence to support the claim including how the birth came about. Young Jim Larkin, the author, claims that when big Jim’s mother, Mary, was heavily pregnant she received a message from Ireland informing her that her father was dying. She set sail from Liverpool to Warrenpoint in a terrible storm. Young Jim Larkin then explains:

my relatives in South County Down have informed me that on her arrival there she was seriously ill and subsequently gave birth to Jim in a townland beside Burren called Tamnaharry, probably in a relative’s house or possibly in a convent there. (In The Footsteps Of Big Jim, Jim Larkin Jnr P6).

To further support this case Big Jim himself at his trial in the USA in 1920 gave his place of birth as Tamnaharry and, according to the Newry and Mourne Museum, stated County Down as his place of birth on the census return for 1911. To complement this theory of Irish birth further Big Jim’s son, also called Jim Larkin, at his presidential address to the 55th annual meeting of the Irish Trades Union Congress held in Belfast, 27-29th July 1949 stated in his first paragraph: 

Today, however, tradition is broken insofar that I, unlike the Presidents of previous congresses held in Belfast, am not a native of the city, but at least I am the son of an Ulsterman who had a strong association with the working people of Belfast. (Striking Similarities Kevin Morley 2017 P. 6).

 County Down is one of Ulster’s nine counties and Larkin’s son stated his father to be an “Ulsterman”.

Wherever Larkin was born he was raised in Liverpool, with a scouse accent, among some of the worst poverty imaginable. The conditions of working-class people in the city ranked among the worst along with Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast, Calcutta and Dublin to name a few in the British Empire. This was the world Jim Larkin was reared in, receiving very little in the way of formal education. He watched his father die slowly of tuberculosis and at an early age was thrown onto the brutal labour market, struggled to keep his family from sinking into more abject poverty before stowing away on a ship in search of employment and find adventure. He returned to Liverpool at the age of twenty to take his place among that huge army of the unemployed who prowled the docks in search of a day’s work. 

In 1903 Jim Larkin married Elizabeth Brown, the daughter of a lay preacher, Robert Brown, and the marriage yielded four children. He eventually found regular work, relative to the times, and was rapidly promoted to Dock Foreman. Despite his elevation in position Big Jim remained one of the men and in 1905 when they went out on strike, he went out with them. From here he was asked to become a fulltime organiser for the National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL), a position which caused him to travel to places like Scotland and Ireland where union organisation was relatively weak. His role was to change that situation in both locations.

In January 1907 Big Jim arrived in Belfast and shortly after his arrival in Ireland he was involved in a series of strikes in Belfast, Cork and Dublin. The NUDL Executive appeared reluctant to support these strikes, a bit like today in the case of some union executives, causing Larkin much annoyance and distress. His antagonisms towards the union leadership and in particular James Sexton, the union's General Secretary, were so great that they became unbridgeable. In 1909 he founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), having been suspended from the NUDL in 1908. The ITGWU was to be the spearhead of working-class resistance during the 1913/14 Dublin Lockout.

Belfast in 1907 was then, as now, a divided city on the grounds of religious denomination of so-called Christianity. Of these divisions Larkin was to write in The Irish Worker: 

workers of Belfast, stop your damned nonsense…. Let not what masquerades as religion in this country divide you…. Not as Catholics and Protestants, as nationalists or unionists, but as Belfast men and workers. Stand together and don’t be misled by the employer’s game of dividing the Catholic and Protestant.  (Striking Similarities, Kevin Morley, 2017 P. 8). 

These religious divisions were cherished by the employers as a means of divide and rule and were maintained by the churches of both denominations on behalf of the employers. Larkin tried and tried to rid the workers of the religious yolk which divided them, and was pilloried from the pulpits of both so-called houses of God, as was later his Lieutenant, James Connolly. It would be the ITGWU which would bring Larkin the reputation as a union firebrand during the lockout of 1913/14. Jim Larkin and James Connolly were to introduce revolutionary syndicalism into Irish trade unionism, a form of union organisation based on the theory of One Big Union (OBU) for all workers, which was to cause the employers, led by William Martin Murphy, so much grief in 1913 and almost led the proletariat to victory in the lockout.

We know Larkin arrived in Belfast on 20th January 1907 thanks to a police report, as an obscure delegate to the British Labour Party conference. He was representing his trade union, the NUDL, and as part of this trip he intended to organise dockers and other unskilled workers in the city. At the time Belfast boasted around 3,100 unskilled workers all of whom were divorced from the unionised skilled artisans of the same city and often the same place of work. Most dockers were casual workers, something Jim Larkin was familiar with from his days in Liverpool, often earning as little as ten shillings per week. This was a situation Jim Larkin wished to rectify, a difficult task to say the least, and in the process managed to alienate himself from the NUDL leadership, including Sexton (later Sir James Sexton). 

On 26th April 1907 a coal importer, Samuel Kelly, dismissed union members among his coal heavers stating such a class of worker should not be members of a union, an opinion William Martin Murphy who caused the Dublin Lockout a few years later also held. Other employers proved equally inflexible on the issue of union membership and a certain Thomas Gallagher, owner of the Belfast Steamship Company, echoed Kelly’s sentiments. On 7th May 1907 union men stormed out of Kelly’s and Gallagher’s chasing blacklegs [scabs] away. These actions forced Kelly to reconsider but Gallagher was a tougher prospect. Kelly granted union recognition and a pay increase thanks to the Larkin orchestrated action. Gallagher held firm so Big Jim encouraged the women workers in Gallagher’s tobacco factory to join the union in solidarity with the men. Though Larkin scored some early victories, like the one at Kelly’s, he was sold out by the NUDL leadership, particularly James Sexton who denounced Larkin thus helping some of the employers who held firm to win through. Larkin was feared almost as much by the leadership of the NUDL as he was by the employers. As Sexton was to point out, regarding the tactics adopted by Larkin in 1907; ‘these were also the same tactics that had marked the original formative struggle of the NUDL in Liverpool in 1889’ (Morley 2017. P 10). Why then, it must be asked, were these tactics acceptable to Sexton in 1889 but not when used by Larkin in 1907?

Larkin suffered many character assassinations not least and certainly not unexpectedly from the right-wing media. However, the bosses and their media were not the only assailants of Jim’s character. A man who considered himself a socialist – which he certainly was not – P.J McIntyre editor of a small publication titled The Toiler also had a grudge against Jim Larkin. McIntyre was a former Dublin Branch Secretary of the British trade union, The Workers Union. He had hopes of bringing the membership of this union into the newly formed ITGWU. Once it became clear, this merger which McIntyre had in mind, was out of self-interest - both economic and political - Larkin gave McIntyre the short hard shift, and the merger never happened. McIntyre then set about his character assassination of the ITGWU chief and was supported, to a large extent, by the nationalist head of Sinn Fein, Arthur Griffith. Griffith supported and published many of McIntyre’s anti-strike [it was the time of the lockout] rantings in his journal, The United Irishman, which was not particularly a working-class publication (the policies of Sinn Fein at the time should not be confused with the policies of either of the modern Sinn Fein parties). One of McIntyre’s more outlandish fantasies was that Larkin was the son of an informer named James Carney. Carney was the man credited with the betrayal of the Invincibles, a Fenian breakaway group responsible for the killing of the Viceroy, Lord Edward Cavendish and his permanent Under Secretary Thomas Henry Burke in the Phoenix Park on 6th May 1882. McIntyre’s evidence, if that is what it was, to support this lie was Jim Larkin bore a strong resemblance to Carney. He challenged the union leader to produce his birth certificate, which McIntyre knew Larkin could not do - very few could in those days - boasting Larkin’s failure to produce the document as proof of his claim. This was, of course utter rubbish and even the right-wing media did not take the claims serious, though some of them pretended to.

Jim Larkin was also, along with James Connolly, Richard O’Carroll and William O’Brien instrumental in the formation of the Irish Labour Party in 1912. The party was separate from its sister organisation in Britain but its aims were very similar - to give the working-class a political voice. Despite all his progressive political positions Jim Larkin, similar to Keir Hardie in Britain had a serious flaw. Whereas Keir Hardie held what today would be considered racist views towards Lithuanian workers, Jim Larkin could reasonably be accused of anti-Semitism. He claimed the locked out and striking workers had been betrayed by a priest and a Jew:

who were in collusion with Freemasons. The priest was Father Monaghan; the Jew was probably a builder called Ellion, who had been involved in negotiations between the master builders and the construction unions’ (Lockout: Dublin 1913 Padraig Yeates P. 547). 

Larkin was attacking Ellion not as an employer but as a Jewish person, attacks echoed by another founding member of the Irish Labour Party, Richard O’Carroll, Secretary of the Ancient Guild of Incorporated Brick and Stonelayers Trade Union. Anti-Semitism was not restricted to ultra-nationalists like Arthur Griffith, cartoons depicting capitalists with large hooked noses – often seen as being representative of Jewish people – appeared in the Irish Worker edited by Jim Larkin! Comments like these were not dissimilar to Keir Hardie in Britain and his racist comments about Lithuanian people carrying the Black Death, peoples prejudice always just below the surface are ignited by such comments. 

Both these titans of labour and socialist policies were tainted by these racist and anti-Semitic remarks. Larkin and O’Carroll could argue, albeit tenuously, that they were lapsing into the idiom of the day in working-class Dublin in 1914; ‘and for many decades afterwards, the terms Jew-man and moneylender were synonymous’ (ibid). This may make such statements understandable but certainly not condonable in any way shape or form.

Jim Larkin was also a leading light in the formation of the Irish Citizen Army in 1913. The idea of a worker’s defence force was first discussed by the Industrial Peace Committee in the rooms of the Reverend R.M Gwynn at Trinity College, Dublin. The locked out and striking workers had come in for some brutal treatment from the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) and the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) which had resulted in the deaths of two men, James Nolan and James Byrne after police baton charges. The ICA was formed initially to counter these brutal actions by the forces of so-called law and order. In essence Jim Larkin was the Citizen Army’s first Commandant with Captain Jack White its Drill Instructor. Larkin wanted every man to be able to trust the man in his front and to his rear. A military discipline would go a long way to establishing this, and no more would the workers face an organised enemy, the police, in a disorganised fashion. The ICA went on to take part, alongside the Irish Volunteers, in the Easter Rising 1916 under the command then of James Connolly.

On 8th November 1914 Jim Larkin arrived in the USA and in true Larkin character immediately involved himself with socialist politics. As a syndicalist he soon became involved with the revolutionary syndicalist trade union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) often known as the Wobblies. He was unashamedly opposed to the imperialist slaughter which was taking place in Europe in the form of the First World War, then in its fourth month. He made many anti-war speeches condemning the murderous events happening on the European battlefields, workers killing workers on behalf of their national ruling classes.

He rapidly became involved in the wider struggles of United States labour. He soon made the acquaintance, through the IWW, of Irish American Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood and Joseph Hillstrom (Joe Hill) all of whom were activists in the Wobblies. Joe Hill was popularised in the working-class resistance ballad titled The Ballad of Joe Hill which tells the story of the bosses trumped-up charges against him in 1915 and his execution. Larkin was the union's choice to replace Hill as the main English-speaking orator. It was Jim Larkin who gave the oration at Joe Hill’s funeral after he was murdered by firing squad on a charge of murder, having been stitched up by the Copper Bosses.

Larkin’s own activities did not go unnoticed by the authorities and he was eventually charged with Criminal Anarchy in April 1920. It was at his trial he gave his place of birth as Tamnaharry County Down Ireland. He was found guilty and sentenced to between five and ten years in Sing Sing Prison where he began to show signs of his old confident self and the fighting spirit which had earned him his reputation wherever he put his feet. On Saint-Patrick’s day, 1921, he related the story of St. Patrick to his fellow prisoners and the warders who had temporarily softened their stance against him. His oration was conventional enough until he reached the part where, as legend has it, St Patrick chased all the snakes into the bog. He rhetorically asked, where did they go? Answering his own question, he informed his audience; ‘they came to the USA to become Politicians, Policemen and Prison Guards.’ His fellow inmates found this version highly amusing but not so among the warders who had, after all, invited him to conduct this oration in the first place. 

On the outside the hostility of the right-wing media towards Jim Larkin, which was partially responsible for sending him to prison in the first place, did not recede until the election of Al Smith to the post of Governor of New York. Smith was inaugurated on 17th February 1923 and almost immediately issued a free pardon for Jim Larkin. Despite his pardon Big Jim was still deported, Smith’s benevolence apparently did not run as far as allowing the rabble rouser to remain in the US. Prior to boarding The Majestic Larkin shouted; ‘you’ll find me at Liberty Hall, Dublin’ (Morley 2017 P.13).

On his return to Dublin in 1923 Jim Larkin found many changes had occurred. The Irish Free State was in its infancy and Thomas Johnson, who would later be great friends with Jim Larkin’s son, also called Jim, was now leading the Irish Labour Party. The later friendship between Johnson and Jim Junior was not always the case. On 24th May 1924 Big Jim made an attack on Johnson in the Irish Worker:

The language used was outrageous even when allowance is made for the extremely slanderous language that at the time was the stock in the trade of post-civil war political rhetoric (James Larkin, Lion of the Fold P.79). 

Larkin accepted responsibility for the article, which Johnson was encouraged to sue for libel resulting in £500 damages against Larkin, claiming it had been written by his son, Jim junior. Big Jim claimed if he had written it the language would have been far more aggressive. On 14th March 1924 Jim Larkin was expelled from the ITGWU, the union he had founded, and his supporters led by Barney Conway occupied Liberty Hall for several days, eventually being ejected by the military and jailed. Big Jim was now in Moscow attending the Communist International (Comintern) leaving his brother, Peter, in charge. 

In mid-June 1924 Peter Larkin launched a new union, the Workers Union of Ireland stating ‘the union existed to organise the workers of Ireland for the attainment of full economic freedom’ (Lion of the Fold P.80). There were many inter-union conflicts between the ITGWU and the new WUI, both attacking each other. ‘The WUI struck against the employment of ITGWU members; and the transport union sought to oust WUI members from their jobs’ (ibid). Needless to say, such inter-union wrangling does the cause of labour and working-class emancipation no good whatsoever.

Jim Larkin was a colossus within the working-class labour and socialist movement. He left indelible prints on the movement so much so that the future leader of the Transport and General Workers Union and Spanish Civil War veteran, Jack Jones, was christened James Larkin Jones. So much high regard did the parents of Jones hold Jim Larkin.

Jim Larkin died in Meath Hospital on 30th January 1947 and his funeral left Haddington Road Dublin for Glasnevin Cemetery, which to anybody who knows Dublin is quite a distance. The roads along the way were heaving with people, veterans of the trade union movement from Ireland and Britain such was the popularity of Big Jim. Many veterans of the Irish Citizen Army were present marching as he had told them to march during those terrible days of the lockout.

Where the Dublin Metropolitan Police and Royal Irish Constabulary had once battered workers in extremely violent fashion during the Dublin lockout, An Garda Siochana [the Irish Police Force] were lining the way for Big Jim’s funeral. Wreaths on the coffin from trade unionists and socialist organisations, including those from Britain and the US, were conspicuous by their presence. Big Jim Larkin was crossing the city for the last time; this emotional scene, for those who were not there, can only be imagined’ (Striking Similarities, Kevin Morley 2017 P.13).

Caoimhin O’Muraile is a Dublin 
based Marxist and author. 

Early 20th Century Socialists ➖ Jim Larkin

Caoimhin O’MuraileJim Larkin, A Lion Among Early Socialists.

Jim Larkin will be remembered for his leadership, - with his first lieutenant James Connolly - of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union during the turbulent months of the 1913/14 Dublin Lockout. 

He will go down internationally with the great names within the working-class movement with the likes of Ben Tillet, Tom Mann, Big Bill Haywood, Joe Hill, Elizabeth Gurly Flynn and many others around the globe, including in more recent times Arthur Scargill, former President of the British National Union of Mineworkers during the year long strike of 1984/85. 

Like James Connolly, Larkin spent time in the USA and was involved with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) also known as the Wobblies. I shall attempt to sketch an outline of Larkins activities in the trade union and labour movement.

There appears to be differences of opinion as to the whereabouts of Jim Larkin's birthplace. The popular conception, though not necessarily the correct one, is that he was born in Liverpool, England at 41 Cobermere Street, Toxteth on the 4th February 1874. This opinion is supported by the fact that his baptismal papers were found there, but whether these papers contain the date of his birth is not clear. The late, usually reliable, C. Desmond Greaves claimed Liverpool as the place of Larkin's birth and given the information available at the time it was not an unreasonable assumption. The Liverpool venue as his place of birth is supported by Eric Taplin on page 17 of James Larkin, Lion of the Fold.

However, since Greaves made his assumption, using it in several of his works, more information about the future union chiefs place of birth have come to light, even though Liverpool remains the popular belief of Larkin's origin. There is, however another train of thought supported and quoted by Larkin’s grandson, also called Jim Larkin in his book, In The Footsteps Of Big Jim: A Family Biography. In this book, it is claimed, big Jim, as he was affectionately known, was born in Tamnaharry near Burren, County Down, Ireland in 1876. A copy of the family tree at the beginning of the book supports this version and the author quotes much evidence to support the claim including how the birth came about. Young Jim Larkin, the author, claims that when big Jim’s mother, Mary, was heavily pregnant she received a message from Ireland informing her that her father was dying. She set sail from Liverpool to Warrenpoint in a terrible storm. Young Jim Larkin then explains:

my relatives in South County Down have informed me that on her arrival there she was seriously ill and subsequently gave birth to Jim in a townland beside Burren called Tamnaharry, probably in a relative’s house or possibly in a convent there. (In The Footsteps Of Big Jim, Jim Larkin Jnr P6).

To further support this case Big Jim himself at his trial in the USA in 1920 gave his place of birth as Tamnaharry and, according to the Newry and Mourne Museum, stated County Down as his place of birth on the census return for 1911. To complement this theory of Irish birth further Big Jim’s son, also called Jim Larkin, at his presidential address to the 55th annual meeting of the Irish Trades Union Congress held in Belfast, 27-29th July 1949 stated in his first paragraph: 

Today, however, tradition is broken insofar that I, unlike the Presidents of previous congresses held in Belfast, am not a native of the city, but at least I am the son of an Ulsterman who had a strong association with the working people of Belfast. (Striking Similarities Kevin Morley 2017 P. 6).

 County Down is one of Ulster’s nine counties and Larkin’s son stated his father to be an “Ulsterman”.

Wherever Larkin was born he was raised in Liverpool, with a scouse accent, among some of the worst poverty imaginable. The conditions of working-class people in the city ranked among the worst along with Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast, Calcutta and Dublin to name a few in the British Empire. This was the world Jim Larkin was reared in, receiving very little in the way of formal education. He watched his father die slowly of tuberculosis and at an early age was thrown onto the brutal labour market, struggled to keep his family from sinking into more abject poverty before stowing away on a ship in search of employment and find adventure. He returned to Liverpool at the age of twenty to take his place among that huge army of the unemployed who prowled the docks in search of a day’s work. 

In 1903 Jim Larkin married Elizabeth Brown, the daughter of a lay preacher, Robert Brown, and the marriage yielded four children. He eventually found regular work, relative to the times, and was rapidly promoted to Dock Foreman. Despite his elevation in position Big Jim remained one of the men and in 1905 when they went out on strike, he went out with them. From here he was asked to become a fulltime organiser for the National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL), a position which caused him to travel to places like Scotland and Ireland where union organisation was relatively weak. His role was to change that situation in both locations.

In January 1907 Big Jim arrived in Belfast and shortly after his arrival in Ireland he was involved in a series of strikes in Belfast, Cork and Dublin. The NUDL Executive appeared reluctant to support these strikes, a bit like today in the case of some union executives, causing Larkin much annoyance and distress. His antagonisms towards the union leadership and in particular James Sexton, the union's General Secretary, were so great that they became unbridgeable. In 1909 he founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), having been suspended from the NUDL in 1908. The ITGWU was to be the spearhead of working-class resistance during the 1913/14 Dublin Lockout.

Belfast in 1907 was then, as now, a divided city on the grounds of religious denomination of so-called Christianity. Of these divisions Larkin was to write in The Irish Worker: 

workers of Belfast, stop your damned nonsense…. Let not what masquerades as religion in this country divide you…. Not as Catholics and Protestants, as nationalists or unionists, but as Belfast men and workers. Stand together and don’t be misled by the employer’s game of dividing the Catholic and Protestant.  (Striking Similarities, Kevin Morley, 2017 P. 8). 

These religious divisions were cherished by the employers as a means of divide and rule and were maintained by the churches of both denominations on behalf of the employers. Larkin tried and tried to rid the workers of the religious yolk which divided them, and was pilloried from the pulpits of both so-called houses of God, as was later his Lieutenant, James Connolly. It would be the ITGWU which would bring Larkin the reputation as a union firebrand during the lockout of 1913/14. Jim Larkin and James Connolly were to introduce revolutionary syndicalism into Irish trade unionism, a form of union organisation based on the theory of One Big Union (OBU) for all workers, which was to cause the employers, led by William Martin Murphy, so much grief in 1913 and almost led the proletariat to victory in the lockout.

We know Larkin arrived in Belfast on 20th January 1907 thanks to a police report, as an obscure delegate to the British Labour Party conference. He was representing his trade union, the NUDL, and as part of this trip he intended to organise dockers and other unskilled workers in the city. At the time Belfast boasted around 3,100 unskilled workers all of whom were divorced from the unionised skilled artisans of the same city and often the same place of work. Most dockers were casual workers, something Jim Larkin was familiar with from his days in Liverpool, often earning as little as ten shillings per week. This was a situation Jim Larkin wished to rectify, a difficult task to say the least, and in the process managed to alienate himself from the NUDL leadership, including Sexton (later Sir James Sexton). 

On 26th April 1907 a coal importer, Samuel Kelly, dismissed union members among his coal heavers stating such a class of worker should not be members of a union, an opinion William Martin Murphy who caused the Dublin Lockout a few years later also held. Other employers proved equally inflexible on the issue of union membership and a certain Thomas Gallagher, owner of the Belfast Steamship Company, echoed Kelly’s sentiments. On 7th May 1907 union men stormed out of Kelly’s and Gallagher’s chasing blacklegs [scabs] away. These actions forced Kelly to reconsider but Gallagher was a tougher prospect. Kelly granted union recognition and a pay increase thanks to the Larkin orchestrated action. Gallagher held firm so Big Jim encouraged the women workers in Gallagher’s tobacco factory to join the union in solidarity with the men. Though Larkin scored some early victories, like the one at Kelly’s, he was sold out by the NUDL leadership, particularly James Sexton who denounced Larkin thus helping some of the employers who held firm to win through. Larkin was feared almost as much by the leadership of the NUDL as he was by the employers. As Sexton was to point out, regarding the tactics adopted by Larkin in 1907; ‘these were also the same tactics that had marked the original formative struggle of the NUDL in Liverpool in 1889’ (Morley 2017. P 10). Why then, it must be asked, were these tactics acceptable to Sexton in 1889 but not when used by Larkin in 1907?

Larkin suffered many character assassinations not least and certainly not unexpectedly from the right-wing media. However, the bosses and their media were not the only assailants of Jim’s character. A man who considered himself a socialist – which he certainly was not – P.J McIntyre editor of a small publication titled The Toiler also had a grudge against Jim Larkin. McIntyre was a former Dublin Branch Secretary of the British trade union, The Workers Union. He had hopes of bringing the membership of this union into the newly formed ITGWU. Once it became clear, this merger which McIntyre had in mind, was out of self-interest - both economic and political - Larkin gave McIntyre the short hard shift, and the merger never happened. McIntyre then set about his character assassination of the ITGWU chief and was supported, to a large extent, by the nationalist head of Sinn Fein, Arthur Griffith. Griffith supported and published many of McIntyre’s anti-strike [it was the time of the lockout] rantings in his journal, The United Irishman, which was not particularly a working-class publication (the policies of Sinn Fein at the time should not be confused with the policies of either of the modern Sinn Fein parties). One of McIntyre’s more outlandish fantasies was that Larkin was the son of an informer named James Carney. Carney was the man credited with the betrayal of the Invincibles, a Fenian breakaway group responsible for the killing of the Viceroy, Lord Edward Cavendish and his permanent Under Secretary Thomas Henry Burke in the Phoenix Park on 6th May 1882. McIntyre’s evidence, if that is what it was, to support this lie was Jim Larkin bore a strong resemblance to Carney. He challenged the union leader to produce his birth certificate, which McIntyre knew Larkin could not do - very few could in those days - boasting Larkin’s failure to produce the document as proof of his claim. This was, of course utter rubbish and even the right-wing media did not take the claims serious, though some of them pretended to.

Jim Larkin was also, along with James Connolly, Richard O’Carroll and William O’Brien instrumental in the formation of the Irish Labour Party in 1912. The party was separate from its sister organisation in Britain but its aims were very similar - to give the working-class a political voice. Despite all his progressive political positions Jim Larkin, similar to Keir Hardie in Britain had a serious flaw. Whereas Keir Hardie held what today would be considered racist views towards Lithuanian workers, Jim Larkin could reasonably be accused of anti-Semitism. He claimed the locked out and striking workers had been betrayed by a priest and a Jew:

who were in collusion with Freemasons. The priest was Father Monaghan; the Jew was probably a builder called Ellion, who had been involved in negotiations between the master builders and the construction unions’ (Lockout: Dublin 1913 Padraig Yeates P. 547). 

Larkin was attacking Ellion not as an employer but as a Jewish person, attacks echoed by another founding member of the Irish Labour Party, Richard O’Carroll, Secretary of the Ancient Guild of Incorporated Brick and Stonelayers Trade Union. Anti-Semitism was not restricted to ultra-nationalists like Arthur Griffith, cartoons depicting capitalists with large hooked noses – often seen as being representative of Jewish people – appeared in the Irish Worker edited by Jim Larkin! Comments like these were not dissimilar to Keir Hardie in Britain and his racist comments about Lithuanian people carrying the Black Death, peoples prejudice always just below the surface are ignited by such comments. 

Both these titans of labour and socialist policies were tainted by these racist and anti-Semitic remarks. Larkin and O’Carroll could argue, albeit tenuously, that they were lapsing into the idiom of the day in working-class Dublin in 1914; ‘and for many decades afterwards, the terms Jew-man and moneylender were synonymous’ (ibid). This may make such statements understandable but certainly not condonable in any way shape or form.

Jim Larkin was also a leading light in the formation of the Irish Citizen Army in 1913. The idea of a worker’s defence force was first discussed by the Industrial Peace Committee in the rooms of the Reverend R.M Gwynn at Trinity College, Dublin. The locked out and striking workers had come in for some brutal treatment from the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) and the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) which had resulted in the deaths of two men, James Nolan and James Byrne after police baton charges. The ICA was formed initially to counter these brutal actions by the forces of so-called law and order. In essence Jim Larkin was the Citizen Army’s first Commandant with Captain Jack White its Drill Instructor. Larkin wanted every man to be able to trust the man in his front and to his rear. A military discipline would go a long way to establishing this, and no more would the workers face an organised enemy, the police, in a disorganised fashion. The ICA went on to take part, alongside the Irish Volunteers, in the Easter Rising 1916 under the command then of James Connolly.

On 8th November 1914 Jim Larkin arrived in the USA and in true Larkin character immediately involved himself with socialist politics. As a syndicalist he soon became involved with the revolutionary syndicalist trade union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) often known as the Wobblies. He was unashamedly opposed to the imperialist slaughter which was taking place in Europe in the form of the First World War, then in its fourth month. He made many anti-war speeches condemning the murderous events happening on the European battlefields, workers killing workers on behalf of their national ruling classes.

He rapidly became involved in the wider struggles of United States labour. He soon made the acquaintance, through the IWW, of Irish American Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood and Joseph Hillstrom (Joe Hill) all of whom were activists in the Wobblies. Joe Hill was popularised in the working-class resistance ballad titled The Ballad of Joe Hill which tells the story of the bosses trumped-up charges against him in 1915 and his execution. Larkin was the union's choice to replace Hill as the main English-speaking orator. It was Jim Larkin who gave the oration at Joe Hill’s funeral after he was murdered by firing squad on a charge of murder, having been stitched up by the Copper Bosses.

Larkin’s own activities did not go unnoticed by the authorities and he was eventually charged with Criminal Anarchy in April 1920. It was at his trial he gave his place of birth as Tamnaharry County Down Ireland. He was found guilty and sentenced to between five and ten years in Sing Sing Prison where he began to show signs of his old confident self and the fighting spirit which had earned him his reputation wherever he put his feet. On Saint-Patrick’s day, 1921, he related the story of St. Patrick to his fellow prisoners and the warders who had temporarily softened their stance against him. His oration was conventional enough until he reached the part where, as legend has it, St Patrick chased all the snakes into the bog. He rhetorically asked, where did they go? Answering his own question, he informed his audience; ‘they came to the USA to become Politicians, Policemen and Prison Guards.’ His fellow inmates found this version highly amusing but not so among the warders who had, after all, invited him to conduct this oration in the first place. 

On the outside the hostility of the right-wing media towards Jim Larkin, which was partially responsible for sending him to prison in the first place, did not recede until the election of Al Smith to the post of Governor of New York. Smith was inaugurated on 17th February 1923 and almost immediately issued a free pardon for Jim Larkin. Despite his pardon Big Jim was still deported, Smith’s benevolence apparently did not run as far as allowing the rabble rouser to remain in the US. Prior to boarding The Majestic Larkin shouted; ‘you’ll find me at Liberty Hall, Dublin’ (Morley 2017 P.13).

On his return to Dublin in 1923 Jim Larkin found many changes had occurred. The Irish Free State was in its infancy and Thomas Johnson, who would later be great friends with Jim Larkin’s son, also called Jim, was now leading the Irish Labour Party. The later friendship between Johnson and Jim Junior was not always the case. On 24th May 1924 Big Jim made an attack on Johnson in the Irish Worker:

The language used was outrageous even when allowance is made for the extremely slanderous language that at the time was the stock in the trade of post-civil war political rhetoric (James Larkin, Lion of the Fold P.79). 

Larkin accepted responsibility for the article, which Johnson was encouraged to sue for libel resulting in £500 damages against Larkin, claiming it had been written by his son, Jim junior. Big Jim claimed if he had written it the language would have been far more aggressive. On 14th March 1924 Jim Larkin was expelled from the ITGWU, the union he had founded, and his supporters led by Barney Conway occupied Liberty Hall for several days, eventually being ejected by the military and jailed. Big Jim was now in Moscow attending the Communist International (Comintern) leaving his brother, Peter, in charge. 

In mid-June 1924 Peter Larkin launched a new union, the Workers Union of Ireland stating ‘the union existed to organise the workers of Ireland for the attainment of full economic freedom’ (Lion of the Fold P.80). There were many inter-union conflicts between the ITGWU and the new WUI, both attacking each other. ‘The WUI struck against the employment of ITGWU members; and the transport union sought to oust WUI members from their jobs’ (ibid). Needless to say, such inter-union wrangling does the cause of labour and working-class emancipation no good whatsoever.

Jim Larkin was a colossus within the working-class labour and socialist movement. He left indelible prints on the movement so much so that the future leader of the Transport and General Workers Union and Spanish Civil War veteran, Jack Jones, was christened James Larkin Jones. So much high regard did the parents of Jones hold Jim Larkin.

Jim Larkin died in Meath Hospital on 30th January 1947 and his funeral left Haddington Road Dublin for Glasnevin Cemetery, which to anybody who knows Dublin is quite a distance. The roads along the way were heaving with people, veterans of the trade union movement from Ireland and Britain such was the popularity of Big Jim. Many veterans of the Irish Citizen Army were present marching as he had told them to march during those terrible days of the lockout.

Where the Dublin Metropolitan Police and Royal Irish Constabulary had once battered workers in extremely violent fashion during the Dublin lockout, An Garda Siochana [the Irish Police Force] were lining the way for Big Jim’s funeral. Wreaths on the coffin from trade unionists and socialist organisations, including those from Britain and the US, were conspicuous by their presence. Big Jim Larkin was crossing the city for the last time; this emotional scene, for those who were not there, can only be imagined’ (Striking Similarities, Kevin Morley 2017 P.13).

Caoimhin O’Muraile is a Dublin 
based Marxist and author. 

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