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 OConnor, 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: OBrien 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 OConnor, Syndicalism in Ireland, 1917-1923 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1988) Emmet OConnor, James Larkin (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002)

2. 1. Life: Jim Larkin, 1876-1947 3. Des Brannigan. Born 1918. Interviewed 22 January 2010 4. 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 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 1885 Leaves school at age 11 and begins work full-time various jobs butchers assistant, paper-hanger, engineering apprentice, 1890 starts work on Liverpool docks, age 16. 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 butchers 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) 7. 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. 8. January 1907 Sent to Belfast April-May 1907 calls selective strikes on the Belfast docks June 1907 Calls a general strike on the docks 9. 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. 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 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) 11. 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. 12. 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. 13. 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 attachs 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. 14. 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.. 17. September 1927 elected to the Dil 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. 18. 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 OBrien breaks with the Irish Labour Party and forms the Independent Labour Party 30 January 1947 dies. Buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. 19. Joe Deasy. Born 1922. Recorded 24 September 2009. 20. 2. Belfast 1907 21. - 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 22. 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 - Sextons 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 - Larkins way or no way at all 28. 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 dont know how to deal with it. (Irish Worker, 26 August 1911) 29. 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)