Larkin, James

Larkin, James (1876–1947), labour leader. He was born into the Irish working‐class community in Liverpool. Working in the docks, he became a convinced trade unionist and socialist. In 1907 James Sexton, leader of the National Union of Dock Labourers, sent him to Belfast as union organizer. The dockers were unorganized, dispirited, and divided by sectarianism. Larkin, through his fiery eloquence, energy, and organizational ability, soon established a strong union branch. However, to break the union, the employers locked out members, provoking the dockers' and carters' strike, lasting from May to late November 1907. Most of the city's industries were closed. ‘Blacklegs’ were attacked and had to have police protection. Three hundred Royal Irish Constabulary, led by Constable Barrett, mutinied in support of the strikers. Troops shot dead two young people during a riot on the Falls Road. Although supported by the Independent Orange Order, Larkin was subjected to a campaign of sectarianism, designed to divide the workers. Because Sexton justifiably feared that continuing strike pay would bankrupt the union, he settled over Larkin's head, on capitulation terms.

Feeling betrayed and wishing to break free of the English union leadership, Larkin founded the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU), in 1909. His combination of socialism, republicanism, and trade unionism became known as ‘Larkinism’. Larkin helped persuade the Irish Trade Union Congress to set up a congress‐based Irish Labour Party. In 1914, worn out and depressed by his failure in the Dublin lockout, Larkin headed for the United States, leaving Connolly in charge. In America he spoke at anti‐British meetings on behalf of Irish and German‐American organizations, and was a delegate to the founding convention of the American Communist Party. In a climate of ‘red scare’ hysteria, he was sentenced to three years in prison for ‘criminal anarchy’.

On his release in 1923, Larkin returned to a very different Ireland, with Connolly dead and the Irish Free State enmeshed in the Civil War. ITGWU membership, 5,000 when Larkin left for America, now approached 100,000, largely due to the efforts of Connolly's successor, William O'Brien. O'Brien had no intention of stepping down for Larkin. Following a bitter dispute, Larkin was suspended as general secretary by the union executive. In 1923, he founded the Irish Workers' League which, flying in the face of public opinion, supported the USSR. In 1924, Larkin became founding general secretary of the Workers' Union of Ireland. He attacked the labour leadership for careerism and betraying the original ideals of the movement. They in turn viewed him as a left‐wing loose cannon.

Larkin later joined the Labour Party and he and his son James Jnr. were elected to the Dáil in 1943. However, O'Brien and his supporters, claiming Communist infiltration, took the ITGWU out of both the Labour Party and the Congress. Larkin's opponents accused him, with some justification, of splitting the movement because he could not accept less than complete power. On the other hand, he was largely responsible for making labour a formidable industrial and political force.

Bibliography

Larkin, E. , James Larkin, 1876–1947: Irish Labour Leader (1965)

Peter Collins