Upload
conor-mccabe
View
2.485
Download
1
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Jim Larkin and Larkinism
Citation preview
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