ITGWU commemorated with new stamp

An Post has issued a stamp to commemorate 100 years of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU).

Founded by labour leader "Big Jim" Larkin in 1909, the ITGWU was the forerunner of the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (Siptu which was established following the merger of the ITGWU and the Federated Workers' Union of Ireland in 1990.

The 55c stamp designed by artist John Conway depicts an iconic photograph of Jim Larkin which was the template for a bronze statue dedicated to the labour leader in Dublin's O'Connell Street.

Speaking at the launch in the GPO today, Siptu general secretary Joe Mr O’Flynn said, “An Post is to be congratulated for making the centenary of the founding of the ITGWU with this superbly designed stamp by John Conway."

"It is a fine tribute to Big Jim Larkin and his comrades by a leading agency of the Irish state that the ITGWU and the trade union movement generally did so much to establish and nurture."

“The ITGWU was formed by four basic tenets: Belief in the tactics of collective action; a social philosophy; Irish unions for workers in Ireland and strong political action in workers’ interests. Above all, the new union in 1909 brought hope where there was despair. The seeds planted by Jim Larkin, James Connolly and dockers from Belfast, Cork, Dublin, Dundalk and Waterford have flowered perennially, among workers from all industries and sectors of the economy and will continue to do so.”

“If anything Larkin’s vision of creating a society based on social equity is even more important today than in the past, whether it is in protecting conditions of employment, such as workers’ pension rights, or ensuring the most vulnerable members of our society are not forced to pay for the present crisis”, Mr Flynn said.

Born to Irish parents in Liverpool in January 1875, Jim Larkin moved to Belfast in 1907 and founded the ITGWU. In 1912, along with James Connolly, he founded the Labour Party as the political wing of the Irish Trade Union Congress.

He was immortalised in Irish history for his role in the 1913 Dublin Lockout when he called a strike of the tramway unions. A lockout of workers by the city's employers ensued when employees on the capital's trams displayed the badge of the ITGWU on their lapels and abandoned their vehicles in favour of strike action.

Larkin famously appeared at a proscribed rally in Dublin city centre disguised as a clergyman on Sunday August 13th, 1913. As he addressed the gathering, the Dublin Metropolitan Police drew their batons and attacked the assembled crowd. Two civilians were killed and 478 people were injured in the riot that followed.

He went to America the following year and was imprisoned for his political activities in 1920. He was pardoned and was deported to Ireland in 1923.

'Big Jim' went on to found the Workers' Union of Ireland which was recognised by Comintern (Communist International - the agency charged with promoting revolutionary communism outside Russia) as the Irish section of the world communist movement.