How British was Larkinism? Big Jim Larkin and the British Labour Movement, 1907–1914

Abstract

Born in Liverpool in 1874, Big Jim Larkin always insisted that he was Irish. No historian has ever challenged him on the claim, or seen him as anything other than a uniquely Irish figure. And yet there was a British dimension to Larkin’s outlook. Liverpool gave him a love of soccer and travel, and shaped his interest in socialism and literature. He first went to Ireland in 1907 as an agent of a British trade union and remained keenly engaged with British Labour up to his departure for America in 1914. During the Dublin lockout in 1913, Larkin demanded aid from British workers with a sense of entitlement that no other Irish Labour leader would have entertained. His ‘Fiery Cross’ campaign made the lockout a part of British labour history. Larkinism too should be lifted out of a purely Irish context. It was not only a subset of the ‘Great Labour Unrest’ that shook British industrial relations between 1911 and 1914, but a reflex of international trends in industrial conflict and growing support for syndicalism between 1890 and 1914. Larkin was a changed man after the lockout and never again had the same level of engagement with British trade unionism.