Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Title Page -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Abbreviations -- Acknowledgements -- INTRODUCTION -- ONE: HAIL RUSSIA! LABOUR AND BOLSHEVISM, 1917-19 -- TWO: THE RACE FOR MOSCOW, 1919-21 -- THREE: CIVIL WAR COMMUNISM, 1921-2 -- FOUR: A FISTFUL OF MARXISTS: THE DEMISE OF THE CPI, 1922-4 -- FIVE: AN INFERNAL TRIANGLE: LARKIN, LONDON AND MOSCOW, -- SIX: THE SEARCH FOR A COUNTERBALANCE, 1926-9 -- SEVEN: BOLSHEVISING IRISH COMMUNISM, 1929-31 -- EIGHT: BETWEEN THE HAMMER AND THE ANVIL, 1931-3 -- NINE: BACK TO THE FRONTS, 1933-6 -- TEN: SPAIN, DECLINE AND DISSOLUTION, 1936-43 -- ELEVEN: CONCLUSION -- Bibliography -- Index -- Plates -- Copyright

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.

In 2012 the governments in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland launched their Decade of Centenaries projects to 'focus' on 'significant centenaries' occurring between 2012 and 2022-3, with an unusual degree of co-ordination between them. The initiatives have generated major public interest in the commemoration of events like the third Home Rule crisis, the 1913 Lockout, the 1916 rising, the First World War, the War of Independence, extension of the franchise to women, and partition, and also in the meaning and relevance of historiography. This paper examines the thinking behind the Decade of Centenaries, the state of the Irish Labour History Society and Irish labour historiography, the involvement of state authorities with labour anniversaries, and the consequences for publications on labour and on the public understanding of labour historiography. While the Decade of Centenaries is patently an attempt to manage the remembrance of the controversies and violence that led to the creation of the two Irish states between 1920 and 1922, it has been beneficial for historians by encouraging popular engagement with the past. Traditionally, Irish labour historiography has been weak in its presence in the academy, but strong in its organic connections with the trade union movement. The Decade of Centenaries has allowed it to exploit its strength to secure greater state and public recognition. Among the positive outcomes have been a significant increase in the number of labour historians and publications on labour, and an extension of the ambit of labour history into new fields of enquiry.