FROM THE ARCHIVES:The death of labour leader Jim Larkin at the end of January 1947 drew this tribute from playwright Seán O'Casey. – JOE JOYCE
‘IT IS hard to believe that this great man is dead; that this ‘lion’ of the Irish Labour movement will roar no more. When it seemed that every man’s hand was against him the time he led workers through the tremendous days of 1913 he wrested tribute of Ireland’s greatest and most prominent men.
“Yeats, George Russell, Orpen and George Bernard Shaw proclaimed him to be the greatest Irishman since Parnell. And so he was; for all thoughts and all activities surged in the soul of this Labour leader.
“He was far and away above the orthodox Labour leader, for he combined within himself the imagination of the artist, with the fire and determination of a leader of a down-trodden class.
“He was the first man in Ireland – and, perhaps, in England, too – who brought poetry into the workers’ fight for a better life.
“Lectures and concerts and other activities, he brought into Liberty Hall, and the social centre he organized in Croydon Park coloured the life of the Dublin workers, and was a joyous experience they had never known before, and won for Jim the admiration of many who had but scanty interest in the labour movement.
“So Jim Larkin, as well as being a great leader of men and an imaginative artist himself, was a foreseer of things to come. He was the man who first introduced to me the great name of Eugene O’Neill just after that playwright had had his Hairy Ape produced in New York. 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.
“He had the eloquence of an Elizabethan, fascinating to all who heard him, and irresistible to the workers. He was familiar with the poetry of Shakespeare, Whitman, Shelley and Omar Khayyam, and often quoted them in his speeches.
“In all his imaginative speeches there ran the fiery thread of devastating criticism not only of the employers, but of the workers themselves.
“Jim Larkin never hesitated to expose and condemn the faults of his followers. No man ever did more since the days of Father Mathew to persuade the workers to live a more sober and sensible life than this Jim.
“Many were jealous of his great fight and of his influence on the working class, and many still are, but the life of this man, so great, so unselfish, so apostolic, will live for ever in the hearts and minds of those who knew him, and in the minds of those who will hear of the mission to men, and of all he did to bring security and decency and honour to a class that never knew of these things until Jim Larkin came.
“There was a man sent from God whose name was Jim, and that man was Larkin. Jim Larkin is not dead, but is with us all, and will be with us always.”
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