James Larkin: Lion of the Fold edited by Donal Nevin Gill & Macmillan, in association with RTE and SIPTU 557pp, £9.99
`He fought for the loaf of bread as no man before him had ever fought; but, with the loaf of bread, he also brought the flask of wine and the book of verse," wrote Sean O'Casey of Jim Larkin. The playwright was not normally given to hero-worship, but in Larkin he found a fellow spirit, and O'Casey did nothing by halves. To the exiled iconoclast Larkin was "a man sent from God". In his famous obituary, "The lion will roar no more", O'Casey told his readers: "Jim Larkin is not dead, but is with us, and will always be with us."
I was at Jim Larkin's funeral, or so I am told. Only seven months old at the time, I cannot say I remember the huge crowds, the dignitaries of church and state, the slush, the sleet, the broad black brimmer on the coffin or the long-stemmed pipe that lay beside it. I was there because my parents were there. Like most other working-class Dubliners of their generation, they were Larkinites. I suspect there were a lot of uncomprehending children in the crowd, brought to witness the passing of the great man who had first brought hope and taught dignity to the city's most downtrodden class.
How downtrodden is hard for any Dubliner under the age of fifty to comprehend. The tenements, with their hordes of badly clothed, hungry children are thankfully gone. People no longer see the workhouse as the inevitable destiny of old age, and evictions and the pawnshop have ceased to be an intrinsic part of everyday Dublin life.
Of course, Larkin did not achieve those changes on his own; arguably, he even obstructed progress on occasion - never more tragically than in 1913 when his own difficult personality was a major factor in the ultimate defeat of his own class. But as contributor after contributor to Donal Nevin's splendid book points out, Larkin was the larger-than-life figure needed to voice the yearnings and aspirations of 100,000 denizens of the most beautiful and most degraded capital in the British Empire.
"Lion", "titan", "genius" are words that recur again and again in this book, usually in quotes from Larkin's contemporaries. He would not have been human if he had not begun to believe them.
He had his enemies, too, of whom the two Williams were the deadliest. In his contribution to this book Professor Dermot Keogh has, not for the first time, undertaken the thankless task of defending William Martin Murphy, the Dublin tramway boss who provoked the great lock-out. Professor Keogh does his best to rehabilitate one of capitalism's great villains. Even he admits it is difficult to warm to a man who kept 20,000 workers and their families on the breadline for six months to wring "a Cathaginian peace" from the infant Transport Workers Union.
The other William was of course William O'Brien, who succeeded a decade later in ousting Larkin from the leadership of that union. Thanks to his meticulous assembly of archives and his good fortune in outliving his rival by twenty years, O'Brien ensured that it was his version of labour history that prevailed. Larkin was cast in the role of the gifted but vain leader, whose pride led inevitably to defeat. The real hero of 1913, according to O'Brien, was James Connolly, who rescued the union from Larkin's self-destructive urge.
O'Brien's success in influencing the written record had little impact on the popular memory. Workers and trade unionists embraced Connolly's memory as generously as Larkin's. Their hearts were big enough for more than one hero. It was thirty-five years ago that Donal Nevin first compiled a little book entitled 1913: Jim Larkin and the Dublin Lock-Out, in which he sought to rescue the written record on Larkin and ensure that the tradition he represented was not forgotten. That compendium has long since become a collector's item, and has now appeared on a vastly more ambitious scale.
Lion in the Fold is clearly a labour of love and must be the starting point for any future student of Larkin and his times. The first part consists of a series of essays by academics. Emmet Larkin (no relation), who has written the most authoritative biography of Larkin to date, sets the scene, while other contributors include Cormac O Grada on the socio-economic background, Ken neth Brown on the wider European scene, and Theresa Moriarty on the much neglected area of women and the early Irish labour movement.
However, it is to the collections of documents, reminiscences and literature that follow that most readers will be drawn. Nevin himself provides a knowledgeable commentary linking the various sections. Here lie all sorts of information and diversion, from Francis Devine's explanation of the origins of the famous Red Hand badge of the union, to Manus O'Riordan's account of Larkin in America and Theo Dorgan's translation from the Irish of Brendan Behan's poem "Jim Larkin". Belfast trade union stalwart Jack Carney's assessment of Larkin and Connolly as strike leaders - Connolly comes off worst - will no doubt provoke many an argument.
If the book has a weakness it is its lack of analysis. It does not even attempt to reconcile some of the blatant contradictions of fact or interpretation of facts that inevitably arise in such a vast compendium. There is also one intriguing omission. It does not say if any recording still exists of Larkin's voice. Any assessment of a man who was acknowledged to be one of the great orators of his day is necessarily incomplete without that.
However, this book succeeds wonderfully in its main purpose of celebrating the man and his beliefs. It should be in the Christmas stocking of every trade union leader and every employer in Dublin, not for sentimental reasons but because, for good or ill, Larkin cast the Dublin worker in his own image. When Dublin airport closed last March it was an impressive and, to many people, dismaying display of the enduring power of the "sympathetic strike". This book goes a long way towards explaining an extraordinary hum an, political and social phenomenon. In short, to borrow from the advertising slogan for a certain chocolate bar, it "is a lion of a book".