The great appear great because we are on
our knees: Let us rise! - Jim Larkin
THE AUTHOR AND former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan once said: “A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.”
One can not underestimate the power of a good speech or the effectiveness of a speech’s key line.
With that in mind, over the course of the summer TheJournal.ie is asking some of the most prominent figures in Irish society from politicians to sports stars to nominate their favourite speech of all time and tell us why they like it so much.
journal.ie: Socialist Party TD for Dublin North Clare Daly. She writes:
Larkin’s speech outside the gates of Mountjoy before beginning a sentence during the lock-out in 1913 stands out for me because of its total contrast with the approach of modern trade union leaders.
The call to continued action and defence of the class struggle, the goal of a better future for all, the spirit of self-sacrifice and the absolute resolve to ensure that workers only trust their own and don’t allow themselves to be sold out.
After seven years of struggle, his aspirations and concerns are for the movement generally and workers individually, a call of encouragement and hope.
James Larkin (Big Jim) was a major figure in the Irish labour movement. Born in England to Irish parents, he is best known for his role in the 1913 Dublin Lockout and for being a profound orator that captured the crowds. On 28 October 1913, Larkin was tried and sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment for using seditious language. From the gates of Mountjoy Prison Larkin made this speech:
At the entrance to Mountjoy Gaol I desire to address a few words of encouragement and hope to you. We have now been associated together for the past seven years. Throughout that period of time we were in a chronic state of sturm-und-drang, always and ever advancing from position to position. Attacks on us have been made in front and flank and we have always proved unconquerable. The fort is as impregnable to-day as in the past days when we hoisted the flag.
This great fight of ours is not simply a question of shorter hours or better wages. It is a great fight for human liberty of action, liberty to live as human beings should live, exercising their God-given faculties and powers over nature; always aiming to reach out for a higher betterment and development, trying to achieve in our own time the dreams of great thinkers and poets of this nation – not as some do, working for their own individual betterment and aggrandisement.
It has always been in our mind the building up of this nation not that we ourselves might enjoy the fulfilment of our own work, but that those who come after us may enter into the promised land. This work requires the right not only to combine, but to use that combination for our own economic and industrial emancipation.
Now, I will be away from you in the body, but I will be with you in spirit. I have faith that those men who are honoured by being left to bear the standard will get your heartiest, honest and sustained support, that there will be no compromise. Trust no one but yourselves; have faith in the men you have elected and will elect; they must be the men who will decide what settlement shall be arrived at in our present conflict.
Without wishing to cast any reflection upon our friends across the Channel, this fight must be settled by the men here at home in our own Union. Without in any way disparaging any order or section of the organised working-class, we of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union cannot only claim but can make good our claim of being the pioneers in this grand class war.
History speaks in no uncertain way; it tells us that thew pioneers must suffer, but suffering brings satisfaction and to us who have been pioneers, we must during the period of this class struggle which we have entered into depend upon loyalty, the faithfulness and the determination of what is known industrially as the unskilled workers. Sometimes compelled to retreat, we have come back again into battle with renewed strength and courage.
Men such as Daly Partridge, McKeown and Connolly – any of these may be liberty. These and these only must allow and authorise to act for you. There will be an attempt to seduce you from your allegiance, but no one can mislead truth. Everyone hopes such deeps and just cause as that in which you and I are engaged must win out. Don’t forget the RED HAND that struck terror in the hearts of the sweaters and slum property owners, the publicans and all who may be out to destroy life.
We live to give life, hope and joy. And now for the sake of your children and children’s children, be true to yourselves; and, moreover, may you by the stress of the attack of this struggle learn anew; stand by the Union and live out the motto of your Union – ‘Each for All, and All for Each.’ I enjoin, even to the humblest and I so convey to all good luck till the prison gates are open.
(disambiguation).
James Larkin
Teachta Dála
In office
June 1943 – May 1944
In office
July 1937 – June 1938
Constituency
Dublin North–East
In office
September 1927 – September 1927
Constituency
Dublin North
Personal details
Born 21 January 1876
Liverpool, England
Died 30 January 1947(aged 72)
Dublin, Ireland
Resting place
Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin
Nationality Irish
Political party
Independent Labour Party (from 1893)
Labour Party (1912–23; 1941–47)
Socialist Party of America (1914–19)
Irish Worker League(1923–27)
Spouse(s) Elizabeth Brown
Children
James Larkin, Jnr
Denis Larkin
Occupation Docker, trade union leader
Religion
Roman Catholicism[1][2]
James (Jim) Larkin (21 January 1876 – 30 January 1947) was a British and Irish trade union leader and socialist activist, born to Irish parents in
Liverpool, England. He and his family later moved to a small cottage in
Burren, southern
County Down. Growing up in poverty, he received little formal education and began working in a variety of jobs while still a child. He became a full-time trade union organiser in 1905.
Larkin moved to
Belfast in 1907 and founded the
Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, the
Irish Labour Party, and later the
Workers' Union of Ireland. Perhaps best known for his role in the 1913
Dublin Lockout, "Big Jim" continues to occupy a significant place in
Dublin's collective memory.
Contents [
hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early years
1.2 Organising the Irish labour movement (1907–14)
1.3 Dublin Lockout 1913
1.4 Larkin in the US (1914–23)
1.5 Return to Ireland and communist activism
1.6 Return to the Labour Party
2 Commemoration
2.1 Literature
2.2 Songs
2.3 Monument
2.4 James Larkin Way
2.5 Liverpool Irish Festival 2008
2.6 People
3 See also
4 References
5 Other sources consulted
6 Further reading
Biography[
edit]
Early years[
edit]
Larkin was born on 21 January 1876 the second eldest son of Irish immigrants, James Larkin and Mary Ann McNulty, both natives of
County Armagh. The impoverished Larkin family lived in the slums of Liverpool during the early years of his life. From the age of seven, he attended school in the mornings and worked in the afternoons to supplement the family income—a common arrangement in working class families at the time. At the age of fourteen, after the death of his father, he was apprenticed to the firm his father had worked for but was dismissed after two years. He was unemployed for a time and then worked as a sailor and
docker. By 1903, he was a dock foreman, and on 8 September of that year, he married Elizabeth Brown.
From 1893, Larkin developed an interest in socialism and became a member of the
Independent Labour Party. In 1905, he was one of the few foremen to take part in a strike on the Liverpool docks. He was elected to the strike committee, and although he lost his foreman's job as a result, his performance so impressed the
National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL) that he was appointed a temporary organiser. He later gained a permanent position with the union, which, in 1906, sent him to
Scotland, where he successfully organised workers in
Prestonand
Glasgow.
Organising the Irish labour movement (1907–14)[
edit]
In January 1907, Larkin undertook his first task on behalf of the trade union movement in Ireland, when he arrived in
Belfast to organise the city's dock workers for the NUDL. He succeeded in unionising the workforce and, as employers refused to meet the wage demands, he called the dockers
out on strike in June. Carters and coal men soon joined in, the latter settling their dispute after a month. Larkin succeeded in uniting
Protestant and
Catholic workers and even persuaded the local
Royal Irish Constabulary to strike at one point, but the strike ended by November without having achieved significant success. Tensions regarding leadership arose between Larkin and NUDL general secretary
James Sexton. The latter's handling of negotiations and agreement to a disastrous settlement for the last of the strikers resulted in a lasting rift between Sexton and Larkin.
In 1908, Larkin moved south and organised workers in
Dublin,
Cork and
Waterford, with considerable success. His involvement, against union instructions, in a dispute in Dublin resulted in his expulsion from the NUDL. The union later prosecuted him for diverting union funds to give strike pay to Cork workers engaged in an unofficial dispute. After trial and conviction for embezzlement in 1910, he was sentenced to prison for a year.
[3] This was widely regarded as unjust, and the then
Lord-Lieutenant,
Lord Aberdeen, pardoned him after he had served three months in prison.
After his expulsion from the NUDL, Larkin founded the
Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) at the end of December 1908. The organisation exists today as the
Services Industrial Professional & Technical Union (SIPTU). It quickly gained the affiliation of the NUDL branches in Dublin, Cork,
Dundalk and Waterford. The
Derry and
Drogheda NUDL branches stayed with the British union, and
Belfast split along sectarian lines. Early in the new year, 1909, Larkin moved to Dublin, which became the main base of the ITGWU and the focus of all his future union activity in Ireland.
In June 1911, Larkin established a newspaper, The Irish Worker and People's Advocate, as a pro-labour alternative to the capitalist-owned press. This organ was characterised by a campaigning approach and the harsh denunciation of unfair employers and of Larkin's political enemies. Its columns also included pieces by intellectuals. The paper was produced until its suppression by the authorities in 1915. Afterwards, theWorker metamorphosed into the new Ireland Echo.
In partnership with
James Connolly, Larkin helped form the
Irish Labour Party in 1912. Later that year, he was elected to the
Dublin Corporation. He did not hold his seat long, as a month later he was removed as he had a criminal record since his conviction in 1910.
Dublin Lockout 1913[
edit]
Main article:
Dublin Lockout
In early 1913, Larkin achieved some notable successes in industrial disputes in Dublin; these involved frequent recourse to
sympathetic strikes and
blacking (boycotting) of goods. Two major employers,
Guinness and the
Dublin United Tramway Company, were the main targets of Larkin's organising ambitions. Both had craft unions for skilled workers, but Larkin's main aim was to unionise the unskilled workers as well. He coined the slogan "A fair day's work for a fair day's pay'.
[4]
Guinness staff were relatively well-paid, and enjoyed generous benefits from a paternalistic management that refused to join Murphy's lock-out.
[5] This was far from the case on the tramways. The chairman of the Dublin United Tramway Company, industrialist and newspaper proprietor
William Martin Murphy, was determined not to allow the ITGWU to unionise his workforce. On 15 August, he dismissed forty workers he suspected of ITGWU membership, followed by another 300 over the next week. On 26 August, the tramway workers officially went on strike. Led by Murphy, over four hundred of the city's employers retaliated by requiring their workers to sign a pledge not to be a member of the ITGWU and not to engage in sympathetic strikes.
The resulting industrial dispute was the most severe in Ireland's history. Employers in Dublin engaged in a sympathetic
lock-out of their workers when the latter refused to sign the pledge, employing
blackleg labour from Great Britain and elsewhere in Ireland. Guinness, the largest employer in Dublin, refused the employers' call to lock out its workers but it sacked 15 workers who struck in sympathy. Dublin's workers, amongst the poorest in the whole of
Great Britain and Ireland, were forced to survive on generous but inadequate donations from the British
Trades Union Congress (TUC) and other sources in Ireland, distributed by the ITGWU.
For seven months the lock-out affected tens of thousands of Dublin's workers and employers, with Larkin portrayed as the villain by Murphy's three main newspapers, the
Irish Independent, the
Sunday Independent and the
Evening Herald. Other leaders in the ITGWU at the time were
James Connollyand
William X. O'Brien, while influential figures such as
Patrick Pearse,
Constance Markievicz and
William Butler Yeatssupported the workers in the generally anti-Larkin Irish press.The Irish Worker published the names and addresses of strike breakers, Irish Independent published the names and addresses of men and women who attempted to send their children out of the city to be cared for in foster homes in Belfast and Britain.
[4][6] But Larkin never resorted to violence. He knew it would play into the hands of the anti-union companies and knew he could not build a mass trade union by wrecking the firms where his members worked.
[4]
The lock-out eventually concluded in early 1914 when the calls for a sympathetic strike in Britain from Larkin and Connolly were rejected by the British TUC. Larkin's attacks on the TUC leadership for this stance also led to the cessation of financial aid to the ITGWU, which in any case was not affiliated to the TUC. Although the actions of the ITGWU and the smaller UBLU were unsuccessful in achieving substantially better pay and conditions for the workers, they marked a watershed in Irish labour history. The principle of union action and workers' solidarity had been firmly established. Perhaps even more importantly, Larkin's rhetoric, condemning poverty and injustice and calling for the oppressed to stand up for themselves, made a lasting impression.
Larkin in the US (1914–23)[
edit]
Jim Larkin at his 8 November 1919 booking for "criminal anarchism" in the state of New York.
Some months after the lock-out ended, Larkin left for the United States. He intended to recuperate from the strain of the lock-out and raise funds for the union. His decision to leave dismayed many union activists. Once there he became a member of the
Socialist Party of America, and was involved in the
Industrial Workers of the World union. He became an enthusiastic supporter of the
Soviet Union and was expelled from the Socialist Party of America in 1919 along with numerous other sympathisers of the
Bolsheviks.
Larkin was reported as having helped disrupt
Allied munitions shipments in New York City during
World War I. In 1937, he voluntarily assisted US lawyers investigating the
Black Tom explosion by providing an
affidavit from his home in Dublin. According to
British Army Intelligence officer, Henry Landau:
Larkin testified that he himself never took part in the actual sabotage campaign but, rather, confined himself to the organising of strikes to secure both higher pay and shorter hours for workmen and to prevent the shipment of munitions to the Allies.
[7]
Larkin's speeches in support of the Soviet Union, his association with founding members of the
American Communist Party, and his radical publications made him a target of the "
First Red Scare" that was sweeping the US; he was jailed in 1920 for 'criminal anarchy' and was sentenced to five to ten years in
Sing Sing prison. In 1923, he was pardoned and later deported by
Al Smith, Governor of New York.
Return to Ireland and communist activism[
edit]
Upon his return to Ireland in April 1923, Larkin received a hero's welcome, and immediately set about touring the country meeting trade union members and appealing for an end to the
Irish Civil War. However, he soon found himself at variance with William O'Brien, who in his absence had become the leading figure in the ITGWU and the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress. Larkin was still officially general secretary of the ITGWU. The ITGWU leaders – Thomas Foran, William O'Brien, Thomas Kennedy: all colleagues of Larkin during the Lockout – sued him. Their counsel told the court that Larkin had justified the occupation by false and malicious attacks on their characters, to oust them and to gain sole control of the union. The Master of the Rolls, presiding, declared: "It is surprising that a man of Mr Larkin's intelligence should launch so desperate an invective against these people for irregularities, in the misapplication of funds and the falsification of documents, when I have before me a document which bears the name of James Larkin, which has been proved to be a mis-statement." Larkin's "mis-statement" asserted that the Transport Union had £1,746.69 in the Hibernian Bank in December 1913, whereas the union account was completely empty. Moreover, since all relevant union account books had mysteriously been destroyed, no explanation for the missing money was possible. The court duly found against Larkin, ordering him to pay the costs of both sides. The bitterness of the court case between the former organisers of the 1913 Lockout would last over twenty years.
[6]
In September 1923 Larkin formed the
Irish Worker League(IWL), which was soon afterwards recognised by the
Cominternas the Irish section of the world communist movement. In 1924 Larkin attended the Comintern congress in Moscow and was elected to its executive committee. On his return Larkin announced that he had addressed some 20 million Russians, having been elected as one of "the 25 men to govern the world" and boasted that he had been appointed a Chief of Battalion of the Red Army, whose 2.5 million men had "pledged to come to the assistance of Irish workers". However, the League was not organised as a political party, never held a general congress and never succeeded in being politically effective. Its most prominent activity in its first year was to raise funds for imprisoned members of the
Anti-Treaty IRA.
During Larkin's absence at the 1924 Comintern congress (and apparently against his instructions), his brother Peter took his supporters out of the ITGWU, forming the
Workers' Union of Ireland (WUI). The new union quickly grew, gaining the allegiance of about two-thirds of the Dublin membership of the ITGWU and of a smaller number of rural members. It affiliated to the pro-Soviet
Red International of Labour Unions.
Larkin launched a vicious attack on the Labour leader, Tom Johnston, who like Larkin, was Liverpool-born. But whereas Johnston had spent most of his life in Ireland, Larkin had been as long in the US as he had in Ireland. "It's time that Labour dealt with this English traitor," Larkin trumpeted. "If they don't get rid of this scoundrel, they'll get the bullet and the bayonet in reward. There's nothing for it, but a dose of the lead which Johnson promises to those who look for work." This incitement to murder Johnston in a still-violent post-Civil War country cost Larkin £1,000 in libel damages.
[6]
In January 1925, the Comintern sent
Communist Party of Great Britain activist
Bob Stewart to Ireland to establish a communist party in co-operation with Larkin. A formal founding conference of the Irish Worker League, which was to take up this role, was set for May 1925. A fiasco ensued when the organisers discovered at the last minute that Larkin did not intend to attend. Feeling that the proposed party could not succeed without him, they called the conference off as it was due to start in a packed room in the
Mansion House in Dublin.
At the
September 1927 general election, Larkin ran (a huge surprise for all) in
Dublin North and was elected.
[8] However, as a result of a libel award against him won by William O'Brien, which he had refused to pay, he was an undischarged bankrupt and could not take up his seat.
Larkin was unsuccessful in his attempts in the following years to gain a position as a commercial agent in Ireland for the
Soviet Union, and this may have contributed to his disenchantment with
Stalinism. The Soviets, for their part, were increasingly impatient with what they saw as his ineffective leadership. From the early 1930s Larkin drew away from the Soviet Union. While in the 1932 general election he stood without success as a communist, in 1933 and subsequently he ran as "Independent Labour". In 1934 he gave important evidence on the 1916
Black Tom explosion to
John J. McCloy,
[9]allowing a case for damages against Germany to be reopened; presumably because of Germany's new Nazi government.
[10]
During this period he also engaged in a rapprochement with the Catholic Church. In 1936 he regained his seat on Dublin Corporation. He then regained his Dáil seat at the
1937 general election but lost it again the following year.
[11] In this period the Workers' Union of Ireland also entered the mainstream of the trade union movement, being admitted to the Dublin Trades Council in 1936, although the
Irish Trade Union Congress would not accept its membership application until 1945.
Return to the Labour Party[
edit]
Larkin's gravestone in Glasnevin Cemetery
In 1941 a new trade union bill was published by the Government. Inspired by an internal trade union restructuring proposal by William O'Brien, it was viewed as a threat by the smaller general unions and the Irish branches of British unions (known as the 'amalgamated unions'). Larkin and the WUI played a leading role in the unsuccessful campaign against the bill. After its passage into law he and his supporters successfully applied for admission to the Labour Party, where they were now regarded with more sympathy by many members. O'Brien in response disaffiliated the ITGWU from the party, forming the rival
National Labour Party and denouncing what he claimed was communist influence in Labour. Larkin later served as a Labour Party deputy in Dáil Éireann from 1943–44.
[11]
James Larkin died in his sleep on 30 January 1947. His funeral mass was celebrated by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin,
John Charles McQuaid, and thousands lined the streets of the city as the hearse passed through on the way to
Glasnevin Cemetery.
Commemoration[
edit]
Literature[
edit]
Larkin has been the subject of poems by
Brendan Behan,
[12]Patrick Kavanagh,
[13] Frank O'Connor and
Lola Ridge; his character has been central in plays by
Daniel Corkery,
George Russell (Æ), and
Sean O'Casey;
[14] and he is a heroic figure in the background of
James Plunkett's novel
Strumpet City.
[15]
Songs[
edit]
James Larkin was memorialised by the New York Irish rock band
Black 47, in their song The Day They Set Jim Larkin Freeand The Ballad of James Larkin was recorded by
Christy Mooreand also
the Dubliners.
Paddy Reilly sings a song simply entitled Jim Larkin that describes the lot of the worker and their appreciation of the changes made by Larkin and Connolly .
Monument[
edit]
Statue of James Larkin on O'Connell Street, Dublin (
Oisín Kelly 1977)
Today a statue of "Big Jim" stands on
O'Connell Street in Dublin. The inscription on the front of the monument is an extract in French, Irish and English from one of his famous speeches:
Les grands ne sont grands que parce que nous sommes à genoux: Levons-nous.
Ní uasal aon uasal ach sinne bheith íseal: Éirímis.
The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise.
The slogan, first used on the 18th century French radical paper Révolutions de Paris,
[16] also appeared on the masthead of the Workers' Republic, founded by James Connolly in Dublin in August 1898. Originally the organ of the
Irish Socialist Republican Party, this periodical later became the official organ of the
Communist Party of Ireland, which was founded in 1921. The original slogan is usually attributed to
Camille Desmoulins (1760–1794), the
French revolutionary;[
citation needed] but it appears, only slightly modified, in an essay written by
Étienne de La Boétie(1530–1563) and first published in 1576.
[17]
On the west side of the base of the Larkin monument is a quotation from the poem Jim Larkin by
Patrick Kavanagh:
And Tyranny trampled them in Dublin's gutter
Until Jim Larkin came along and cried
The call of Freedom and the call of Pride
And Slavery crept to its hands and knees
And Nineteen Thirteen cheered from out the utter
Degradation of their miseries.
On the east side of the monument there is a quotation fromDrums under the Windows by
Seán O'Casey:
...He talked to the workers, spoke as only Jim Larkin could speak, not for an assignation with peace, dark obedience, or placid resignation, but trumpet-tongued of resistance to wrong, discontent with leering poverty, and defiance of any power strutting out to stand in the way of their march onward.
A road in
Clontarf, North Dublin, is named after him.
James Larkin Way[
edit]
A road in L4 1YQ,
Kirkdale, in his home city of
Liverpool, just off
Scotland Road, is called James Larkin Way.
Liverpool Irish Festival 2008[
edit]
To celebrate Liverpool's capital of culture, the Liverpool Irish Festival held a 'James Larkin Evening' at the 'Casa' bar-the Dockers pub in central Liverpool. This was attended by Francis Devine who wrote the general history of the Trade Union movement in Dublin and the formation of SIPTU, it was introduced by Liverpool/ Irish, Marcus Maher, who came over from Dublin to present a special commissioned painting by Finbar Coyle to James Larkin's last remaining Liverpool nephew, Tom Larkin. The painting reflects both Dublin, where Larkin would spend his remaining political career, and on the other side the 'Liver Birds' and his home city of Liverpool.
People[
edit]
The
Transport and General Workers' Union activist
Jack Jones, whose full name was James Larkin Jones, was named in honour of his fellow Liverpudlian.
