It was the sight of an infant huddled beside its dead mother in the slums of Liverpool that awoke in the young Jim Larkin a great passion to struggle against injustice.
As Jim’s granddaughter, Stella Larkin McConnon, recalls: “He was giving a hand with some work when he was 16 or so in a place called Christian Street in Liverpool.
“There was a peculiar groaning noise coming from a basement, they went down to see what it was. There was a woman lying there dead, from malnutrition, and there was a baby on top of her trying to get food. That haunted him.”
Years later the incident was still referenced in the Larkin family as a defining moment in her grandfather’s life.
However, it is as a doting grandfather that Stella remembers the ITGWU founder.
She got to know him well while waiting for her father Denis, who was also a trade union organiser and politician, to come out of meetings in Unity Hall, the then headquarters of the Workers Union of Ireland.
How I knew him was that my dad and I used to go to Unity Hall in Marlborough Street nearly every Sunday for a meeting. He would leave me with my grandad while he was having his meeting.
“He was a gentle giant, very kind and interested. He had such a strong voice. I didn’t think he had an accent it just sounded normal to me; the pity is it was never recorded.
“I remember one time, in particular, my mother took me to hear him speak to a crowd and someone put a microphone in front of him. He looked at it and said I don’t need this microphone and he didn’t – his voice was strong enough.
“Even though he left school at 11, he had a tremendous command of English. He never ever read from notes when he was speaking, it all just came out.”
As well as a passion for the workers’ movement, Larkin’s strict teetotalism was another feature he handed down to his children.
“My dad and his three brothers were the same, none of them drank. My grandad started it. He was so worried about the effects alcohol
had on people. He would always have a cup of tea. It’s something we always loved, cups of tea.”
Stella recalls waltzing with her dad at one of the many socials organised by Larkin.
“He always wanted to do things that brought people together. People were so important to him, he felt it was really important for people to get together and talk and relax.
There was no alcohol, people would have tea and sandwiches.”
Stella has been impressed by the commemoration of her grandfather’s work in recent years.
The stained glass window installed in Belfast City Hall in 2007,commemorating Larkin’s role in organising workers in that city, is a particular favourite.
As is the statue on O’Connell Street, Dublin, which Stella feels captures some of the essence of Larkin’s powerful personality.
“Every time I pass it I make sure to greet him.”
But it was the high esteem in which the working people of Dublin held her grandfather that is his ultimate epitaph.
Stella recalls her grandfather’s funeral procession in January 1947.
“I remember the day he was brought to the graveyard. There was fierce snow, it was very heavy, men digging up the road to try and get the snow off. When they saw the funeral they stopped and just put the shovels on their shoulders and fell in behind it.
“They walked the whole way out to Glasnevin. I can still see that now.”