RM News 5/6-12-98
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Jim Larkin -- an Irish and American hero
Book launch: James Larkin -- Lion of the Fold Compiled and edited
by Donal Nevin Published by Gill and Macmillan
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John J Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO (American Federation of
Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations, the umbrella
organisation for trade unions in the United States), was in
Dublin last week at the launch of James Larkin: Lion of the Fold.
He spoke of the debt that the Irish and US working classes owe to
Big Jim Larkin. Below we carry an edited version of his speech.
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Brothers and sisters, we're here to launch a splendid new book
about a hero of the Irish working class who was also a hero of
the American working class.
"The Rebel Girl", Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, recalled her first
meeting with big Jim Larkin in the Bronx, New York, which is my
neighbourhood, not too many years before my mother and father
arrived in America from Ireland, and I quote:
"One day in 1914, a knock came on our door at 511 East 134th
Street, in the Bronx. We lived up three flights of stairs and the
bell was usually out of order. There stood a gaunt man with a
rough-hewn shock of greying hair, who spoke with an Irish accent.
He asked for Mrs Flynn. When my mother went to the door, he said
simply, 'I'm Jim Larkin, James Connolly sent me'."
Larkin went on to spend ten years in America doing what he did in
Belfast in 1907 and in Dublin in 1913 - organising and agitating
from Greenwich Village in New York to Chicago to San Francisco.
His voice reached its highest and most dramatic pitch when he
delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Joe Hill, when he
preached, "Arouse! Arouse! Ye sons of toil from every rank of
labour! Ye are not murderers such as they who break ye day and
hour! Arise! Unite! Win back your world with a whirlwind stroke
of power!"
Much of brother Larkin's time in America was, of course, as a
"guest" of "Uncle Sam" in posh accommodation like Sing Sing
prison, the Toombs, Auburn and Dannemora.
Those were tough times for the American working class and Jim
Larkin roused the unskilled workers, the low-paid workers,
non-Irish as well as Irish.
He caught the imagination of writers and artists as diverse as
Charlie Chaplin, Sean O Faolain and Brendan Behan.
And he awed political leaders like Eugene Debs, George Lansbury
and New York Governor Al Smith - who commuted his latest sentence
and allowed him to go back to Ireland in 1924.
I'm sad to say that we need brother Larkin back now in the worst
way, because in America worker-bashing and union-busting are once
again the sport of choice for employers and our government has
become a bystander in the struggle for economic justice.
For workers trying to organise, freedom of speech is a sometimes
thing - if you speak up or out, you get singled out for
harassment, intimidation and discrimination.
For union sympathisers, there's no freedom of assembly - if you
assemble you get fired, just like 10,000 American workers who get
fired every year for union activities.
When do you get your job back?
Maybe never because American employers spend $500 million a year
twisting our labour laws and delaying justice for workers.
In America, we're now dealing with the legacy of Ronald Reagan
and if you have any young Jim Larkins to spare, we'd thank you to
send them over.
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