This document provides biographical details and context about Irish labor leader Jim Larkin. It outlines key events in Larkin's life including his upbringing and early work, involvement in labor organizing in Liverpool and Belfast, formation of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union in 1908, and the 1913 Dublin Lockout strike. It also describes Larkin's syndicalist ideology which emphasized workers' control through industry-based unions and general strikes to transfer control to workers.

1. HHIS403 - Political & Social Movements in Twentieth-Century Ireland
The Irish Labour Movement, 1889 – 1924
Lecture Two:
Jim Larkin and ‘Larkinism

2. 1.Life
2.Belfast 1907
3.ITGWU
4.Larkinism

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

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

5. 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

6. 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, paperhanger, engineering apprentice,
1890 – starts work on Liverpool docks, age 16.

7. 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, paperhanger, 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 laypreacher.

8. 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, paperhanger, 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 laypreacher.
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.

9. January 1907 – Sent to Belfast

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

11. 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.

12. 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)

13. 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.

14. 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.’

15. 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

16. 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.

17. 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.

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

19. 2. Belfast 1907

20. - 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

21. 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

23. 3. ITGWU

24. 4. Larkinism

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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