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William O’Brien Election leaflet, 1922
William O’Brien was a leading figure in the Irish trade union movement in the first half of the twentieth century. He was heavily involved in the socialist takeover of the Dublin Trades Council and played a leading role in the campaigns to create the Irish Labour Party and the 1913 Lockout. He served as President and Treasurer of the Irish Trade Union Congress, but his most important work was in rebuilding the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union with its president, Tom Foran, after Connolly’s execution in 1916. By the early 1920’s, it was the largest union in Ireland with half of the entire ITUC membership. O’Brien was elected to Dublin Corporation on a ‘Republican Labour’ candidate and as one of the first Labour Party TDs in the Treaty election of 1922. However, his cold bureaucratic persona was not a vote catcher and his political career was brief. It was severely damaged, as were the political prospects of Labour generally, by the split with his former ally, Jim Larkin over control of the ITGWU on the latter’s return from America in 1923. (Ephemera, Dublin City Archive)
KE 193 Thomas Johnson
Thomas Johnson served as ILP&TUC President in 1916 when he paid tribute to the rebels who had died in Dublin but also to trade unionists killed in the First World War. He was one of the key Labour strategists during the revolutionary decade and served as leader of the Labour Party in the Free State Dáil. His rhetoric was sometimes revolutionary but his instincts conservative, with the focus on defending workers interests’ within the constraints imposed by militant nationalism and the Treaty settlement. (Independent Collection, NLI)
ITUC 1901 Report: Alexander Bowman
Alexander Bowman was the son of a Catholic father and Presbyterian mother who reverted to her maiden name of Bowman when she moved to Belfast after her husband’s early death. Bowman began work at 10 in a Belfast linen mill and developed an early interest in trade unionism, becoming the founding secretary of the Belfast Trades Council in 1881. He was secretary of the Protestant Home Rule Association for a time before moving to Britain where he continued his involvement in radical politics, joining the overtly Marxist Social Democratic Federation. Returning to Belfast in 1895 he became secretary of the Municipal Employees Trade Union. He was elected to the City Council as a Trades Council candidate but retired from active involvement in the labour movement after being appointed superintendent of the Falls Road corporation baths. (ITUC Report, 1901)
ITUC 1901 Report: Reception Committee
The 1901 report of the ITUC was the first that was printed and distributed to affiliates. It is the only one from the period to carry photographs. This one shows the reception committee of local councillors in Sligo with Frank Gallagher, P J Farrell and Henry Reilly all representatives of the Sligo Trades Council. Gallagher and Farrell were also delegates and Gallagher was elected as Joint Secretary of the ITUC for the coming year with E L Richardson (ITUC Report, 1901)