Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

James Larkin: Irish Labour Leader, 1876-1947 by Emmet LarkinReview by: F. S. L. LyonsIrish Historical Studies, Vol. 15, No. 59 (Mar., 1967), pp. 327-330Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30004979 .

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REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES 327

In so far as this has not been attempted, a proper balance and perspective become difficult to attain.

The author in places tends to accept and simply repeat what his sources allege. He tells us, for instance (pp. 96-7), that Cullen used as an argument in favour of denominational education the fact that the convicted Fenians had received their education in the national schools, in the Queen's Colleges, or in T.C.D., and not in catholic colleges, in the Catholic University or in the schools of the Christian Brothers. Cullen inferred from this that a catholic denominational education instilled loyalty. What the author might have pointed out, however, was that this was a piece of special pleading by Cullen, and that in any case statistically the Fenians simply had not got the same opportunity as say the 1916 men had of a Christian Brothers' education which, in the meantime, was to spread rapidly all over the country. Because of his Italian experiences the archbishop was always worried about what he called the Irish Mazzinis and the Young Ireland priests. The author appears to accept the description too readily at its face value and without examining whether the label used by Cullen to denote opponents was in fact merited at all, and without specifying by name who precisely was meant.

Should this invaluable book reach another edition the phrasing of odd sentences here and there might be worth considering. The state- ment that 'The protestants despaired of their catholic fellow country- men' (p. 2) is far too sweeping, and is indeed disproved by the careers of many whose names are mentioned in the author's own pages. The description of the Irish bishops as liberal catholics 'in the sense meant by the papacy in the nineteenth century' (p. io) is somewhat confusing when we recall that the term is associated with men whose views would not always have been approved of by the Irish bishops generally- Lamennais, Lacordaire, Ventura, Acton, Ddllinger. To write: 'After the act of union in I8oo . . . the Dublin parliament lapsed' (p. 29) is a strange way of describing its abolition. The claim that 'the Irish secular clergy were a peasant clergy' (p. o09) depends on one's definition of 'peasant' in nineteenth-century Irish circumstances. And the state- ment that 'Young Ireland and the rising of I848 had enduringly identified Irish nationalism with the land question' (p. 386) is debatable.

A few misprints may be noted: on p. 31 n. 4, ' I965' should read 'i865 '; on p. 32, 'Montelembert' should read 'Montalembert'; on p. 138 n. 7, 'A Younger Irelander' should read 'A Young Irelander'; on p. 19I n. 3, 'The Catholic Caste' should read 'The Catholic Case'.

These few points should in no way be allowed to detract from the fact that Dr Norman has placed Irish historians deeply in his debt.

DONALD MCCARTNEY

JAMES LARKIN: IRISH LABOUR LEADER, 1876-1947. By Emmet Larkin. Pp. xviii, 334. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1965. 50s.

IT is curious that although James Connolly and James Larkin are the twin pillars upon which the modem Irish labour movement rests, no

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328 REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES

adequate life of either has been written until now. Both, indeed, have suffered from biographers, but everything that has appeared so far has been either frankly journalistic or else so coloured by personal prejudice or ideological bias as to be almost useless. When, therefore, it became known some years ago that Dr Emmet Larkin was to undertake a study of his famous namesake-not relation-high hopes were raised that justice would be done to one of the most remarkable labour leaders to have emerged in these islands in the last hundred years. Dr Larkin's frequent incursions into Irish history have already shown us something of his quality. Those who have read or in other ways experienced his work (and to hear him talk about his work is itself an experience) will know not only that he possesses dynamic energy, a flair for uncovering original material and a keen, combative intelligence, but also that he combines these admirable qualities with an engaging readiness to assume for his obiter dicta almost a kind of infallibility. The present reviewer may as well confess that his response to such an assumption can best be described as Lutheran. He does not mean by this to convey that Dr Larkin is merely vox et praeterea nihil, but rather to express his own general distrust of infallibility and his conviction that no historian can know everything about anything, that the verdict in all cases must be one of reasonable doubt and that truth, even relative truth, is the laborious work of generations, not a revelation vouchsafed to individuals.

But has Dr Larkin justified our expectations? The answer must be that he has done so to a large extent, though not completely. This is beyond question a very valuable book, but it is not quite the memorable book it might have been. In two respects-in the construction of his study and in its source-material-Dr Larkin seems to have been handi- capped by the fact that his subject was so controversial a figure and also by the uncomfortable circumstance that family, friends, associates and enemies of the dead man were still very much alive and breathing, so it almost seems, down the biographer's neck. Certainly, if one takes the architecture of the book, it seems very odd that a labour leader who remained a labour-leader to the day of his death is allotted only the closing 30 pages of a 300 page book for the last 23 years of his life, and that even the painful episode of Larkin's homecoming from America in 1923 and his rapid disenchantment with the labour leaders who had replaced him in his long absence is largely confined to one relatively short chapter. Dr Larkin may contend that the last third of Larkin's life was a tragic anti-climax and there is without doubt good ground for such an argument, but in the study of history anti-climax is often in the long run as instructive as climax. One cannot help feeling that a more extended treatment of these later years would have been of great service in elucidating the weaknesses and divisions from which Irish labour has suffered so much since the treaty.

The other major reservation one has about this book concerns the source-material and Dr Larkin's treatment of it. He provides no biblio- graphy whatever and this most serious omission makes it very difficult to be sure exactly what he has had access to and what use he has made

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REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES 329

of it. True, in his preface he mentions 'restricted material' which he has been allowed to see in Dublin and in Washington; he pays a warm tribute to Larkin's old friend, Jack Carney, whom he persuaded to write a memoir for him; and he acknowledges receiving much help not only from James Larkin, junior, but also from Larkin's former associate and later antagonist, William O'Brien who, says Dr Larkin, 'not only gave me unstintingly of his time and his wide personal knowledge, but made available to me the vast resources of his most valuable collection of manuscript and printed materials in Irish labour history'. It is nowhere made clear just how extensive and valuable these materials are, nor do we ever learn the precise meaning to be attached to the phrase 'made available '.

Probably it would be unfair to press Dr Larkin too hard on this point, and no doubt he was dependent for his material on forces beyond his control. Indeed, in the first footnote to p. 49 he allows us some inkling of this when he mentions that Mr O'Brien allowed him to see certain correspondence concerning Connolly, 'but refused to allow me to quote from it because he is preparing his memoirs '. This presumably is why the manuscript material Dr Larkin actually cites is so remarkably sparse and why he has had to base the greater part of his book upon printed sources, especially newspapers. Dr Larkin has investigated these sources with his customary thoroughness and has made them yield an astonishing amount of information, but a biography which has so little of the living man in it struggles against an almost overwhelming disadvantage. Indeed, it says a great deal for Dr Larkin's enthusiasm that he has managed to communicate as much of the excitement and colour of Jim Larkin's life as he has done. Admittedly, in doing so he has a tendency to address us as if we were one of his namesake's public meetings, but if he sometimes speaks his message very loud, he always speaks it very clear and this capacity for lucid and well-organised narrative is one of Dr Larkin's great strengths as an historian.

It seems probable therefore that the deficiencies of this biography, both as to construction and as to source-material, stem from the fact that James Larkin is still, nearly twenty years after his death, much too contemporary and controversial a figure to be safely or easily handled. However, once these reservations are made, it must be said that Dr Larkin has shown great resource and skill in developing the story of what was, after all, the crucial period of Larkin's life, the seven eventful years between his arrival in Belfast in 190o7 and his departure from Dublin in 1914. These were the years which saw his most audacious experiments in organising the dockers, carters and other low-paid and depressed workers, his creation of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, and above all his clash with William Martin Murphy and other employers in the celebrated Dublin strike and lock-out of 1913. All this is told with an admirably controlled wealth of detail which makes the first half of this book a most valuable addition to our knowledge of social and economic conditions in the cities and towns of Ireland in the early years of this century. Dr Larkin's portrait of Dublin, in particular, built up

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meticulously from a great variety of reports and inquiries, brings home vividly the condition of the capital within living memory and also makes perfectly comprehensible the saeva indignatio by which Larkin himself was possessed.

That Larkin was almost larger than life goes without saying; that he was physically a big man, handsome, a marvellous orator, magnetic in the highest degree-all this we know and Dr Larkin does full justice to all these aspects of his hero. It is easy to see why the people loved him. It is, alas, also easy to see why he was in the end such a colossal failure. Like many great demagogues who thrive on the plaudits of the crowd, Larkin was at best an erratic administrator, quick-tempered, high-handed and temperamentally unsuited to the day-to-day manipula- tion of men. Perhaps we do not have to go much further to understand why control of his movement passed eventually to quieter, more cautious leaders. Even in his heyday there were signs and portents of what was to happen in later life. It is difficult, for example, to read of his out- rageous behaviour to British trade union leaders in 1913 without feeling at one and the same time sympathy for the man and bewilderment at the futility of his performance.

The more one studies Larkin's career the more one is led to the conviction that at the centre of this proud, sensitive, flamboyant man there was a kind of chaos. Intellectually, he was no doubt much inferior to Connolly and the feeling one so often gets from Connolly of a man completely in control of himself and his environment one seldom or never gets from Larkin. Even in the matter of 'the one big union ', so often regarded as Larkin's most important contribution to Irish labour history, he could be guilty, as his biographer shows, of extraordinary contra- dictions and inconsistencies. And if this was true of organisation, it was even truer of doctrine. Dr Larkin rightly sees him as a man who tried to harmonise catholicism, nationalism and socialism. Since not even Connolly could do this it is hardly surprising that Larkin never really achieved a coherent philosopohy, and although in later life he was attracted by communism he was poles apart from the standard dedicated zealot of the mid-twentieth century variety. Whatever else may be said against him, at least nature never intended him for an apparatchik.

He had one ruling passion-to achieve a better and a fuller life for his fellow-workers. And for him this meant not simply better wages, hours and working conditions, but enlargement of life by admitting into drab homes whatever could be won of education and beauty. It was this about him which attracted Sean O'Casey, and Dr Larkin is quick to see that O'Casey's verdict was the right verdict. Here was a man, wrote O'Casey in his autobiography, who could not only 'speak . . trumpet-tongued of resistance to wrong, discontent with leering poverty, and defiance of any power strutting out to stand in the way of the march forward'. Here also was 'a man who would put a flower in a vase on a table as well as a loaf on a plate '.

F. S. L. LYONS

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