A silent coup by a billionaire elite is rolling back hard-won progress, exacerbating inequality, and hollowing out democracy. As we face this modern counter-revolution, Larkin’s ‘Divine Gospel of Discontent’ is not a historical artefact, but an urgent manifesto writes incoming SIPTU General Secretary John King.
Comrades, sisters and brothers,
We gather here today to remember and honour Jim Larkin the founder of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) and the Workers Union of Ireland (WUI) the main constituent Unions that came together to form SIPTU in 1990.
Born in Liverpool to Irish parents, Larkin’s life was shaped by poverty, suffering depravation from an early age. This background informed his uncompromising worldview, believing that the working class had been conditioned to accept exploitation and that only collective action could win dignity, respect and fair working conditions.
“The great only appear great because we are on our knee’s. Let us rise” captures the core of Larkin’s philosophy.
When Larkin arrived in Ireland he was already an experienced Union Organiser with NUDL. His militant tactics and fiery rhetoric brought him into conflict with his employers. Where others sought comprise, Larkin sought confrontation, where others organised skilled workers, Larkin focussed on the unskilled and labourers.
This belief led to Larkin creating the ITGWU. The Union radical in both form and spirit, organised all workers, regardless of trade or skill and promoted solidarity as its core value.
Larkin insisted that workers must not see themselves as isolated individuals, but rather part of a collective force, as he put it. “An injury to one is the concern of all”
Which remains a defining slogan of the Irish Trade Union Movement.
Larkin did not just organise unions; he understood how interconnected were the struggles in the workplace with the struggle for social change.
He saw the movement was not just about fighting for better pay and conditions, and holding on to what we had in bad times but in securing for workers a greater say in how society is ordered and how it should be improved.
His arrival in Ireland led to not just a quantitative shift but also a qualitative shift in how Unions did their business, shifting the priority from a narrow focus on pay and working conditions to a movement fighting for social reforms so as to ensure a better quality of life for all in areas such as housing and health care.
Giving rise to his founding of the Irish Labour Party in 1912.
Working and living conditions in Dublin were amongst the worst in Europe, Larkin grew the membership of the ITGWU rapidly, and this alarmed the employers who saw him not just as a Trade Union Organiser but as a revolutionary threat.
Chief among them was William Martin Murphy, who vowed to smash the Union, paving the way for the great Lockout dispute of 1913.
Ultimately the lockout ended in defeat, a harsh winter, and starvation forcing the workers back on employer terms.
This did not mean Larkin failed. No, the employer’s led by Murphy failed to smash the Union. Larkin had awoken working class consciousness, inspired resistance and resolve into workers to endure battles for justice, laying the foundations for future labour activism, social reform and political organisation.
That task, which must have seemed audacious and impossible a century ago, came within our grasp in the decades after the Second World War.
For a time, a different consensus held that wealth should be shared, that public goods should be protected, that the worker’s dignity was central to a functioning democracy.
Not so long ago the ‘age of decadence’ which spawned two world wars was rightly condemned as proof of where the encouragement of the elites to purse unbridled wealth leads. In response many democratic societies took steps to tax the rich, break up monopolies, in order to have resources to improve the lot of ordinary workers.
These programmes typified by Roosevelts New Deal in the US and the creation of a welfare state by the Labour Government in the UK, and the embodiment of Social Dialogue as a fundamental part of democracy in Europe.
But comrades, that ground has been stolen from us, the triumph of neoliberalism has seen progressive forces in retreat all over the world.
Comrades, when we revived the commemoration of Larkin in 2013 it was not just to mark the centenary of the Dublin lockout and a great trade unionist it was about invoking the spirit of Larkins Divine Gospel of Discontent as a rallying point for workers to stand together in the midst of the most serious attack on workers and trade union movement during the austerity years of the global economic crash.
As necessary as Larkins Divine Gospel was in 1913, in 2013 and every year in between it is more than necessary now.
We meet at a crucial moment, on so many levels, for democracy, for social cohesion, for peace and justice, for the future world of work. A moment of political shifts to the right, a time when our Government has abandoned the interests of working people, of global instability including a full frontal attack on democracy, and of an enduring cost-of-living crisis that is squeezing the life out of us, our families and communities.
We live now in the midst of a Billionaires Revolution.
A not so silent coup where an unelected elite has consolidated its grip on both economic and political power, so as to shape the world and its economies to serve their interests, facilitated by political parties that share their values.
They have executed a slow-motion counter-revolution against the very idea of the common good.
This is no abstract theory.
The collective wealth of billionaires surged by $2.5 trillion last year alone and the 12 richest billionaires own more wealth than the poorest half of humanity, that’s over four billion people!
It is obscene!
This is the fruit of their revolution: a world shaped by self-interest and greed, where wealth dominates our politics.
Their playbook is global: they promote far-right parties seeking to divide us, privatise state assets, sell off the family silver, pour more public money into private hands, seek to sideline the media and control the digital tools that shape our reality.
They own all our data, because they know that data is power.
When challenged, they try to silence the press, attempt to crush social movements, and even push for war, because conflict is profitable and fear is useful.
And let us be clear: Ireland has not been immune.
We are one of the countries where inequality has grown most rapidly while our neutrality is being threatened.
Because too often, the outlook determining our public policy has not been informed by Larkin’s social and international solidarity, but by the values of his opponents, the values of William Martin Murphy, who sought to crush the ITGWU and was willing to starve children to do it.
The values of a selfish elite have led us from one existential crisis to another. Like the Larkins, we must also focus on the immediate task, of protecting and advancing the interests of working people.
That is why we continue to campaign for workers to have the right to engage in collective bargaining, and to end the employer veto on this right extended to all workers in our EU peers. This will be a key feature for SIPTU in 2026.
The Government produced its action plan on supporting collective bargaining as required by the Adequate Minimum Wage Directive, the measures in this plan will only benefit workers if they are fully implemented by Government, and SIPTU will work night and day to hold them to account on this.
However, we will continue to support members in taking of Industrial and Strike Action in disputes with their employer to secure their right to collectively bargain their pay and conditions, as we did most recently in the successful dispute with Carroll’s Cuisine.
We are agitating to win pay increases right across the private sector, with hundreds of agreements concluded in 2025 and more to come in 2026.
We are winning improvements in pay and conditions of employment for workers in the community sector after years of neglect by Government following the austerity years.
And in the public service, the current agreement expires in June 2026. SIPTU members are demanding a fair deal that delivers for them.
Make no mistake: if a new deal does not protect living standards, secure real pay progress, and defend services from outsourcing and underfunding there will be no agreement, and our members will be up for the battles that will follow.
All of these developments have, and are delivering real improvements in the wages of hundreds of thousands of workers.
Despite the advances made for workers in the decades since the years when Larkin came to our shores, workers are facing many of the same challenges, job insecurity, gig economy, bogus self-employment, in work poverty, no right to collective representation.
Larkin knew the battle for pay and conditions was the foundation for working-class strength. Our fight is for a sustainable future, with good jobs, a union, and a living wage.
Employers may no longer use batons or lockouts, but they do use outsourcing, automation and globalisation to weaken unions. As Larkin warned, exploitation adapts to survive.
We must also adapt, to ensure that we build a strong, vibrant and enduring movement powerful in every community.
Our mission must one of trade union and labour movement activism, of hope and solidarity.
We will do this in a number of pillars
First, Organising. We will grow our industrial and political strength by growing our numbers. That’s a fact. Organising cannot be left to someone else. It is all our jobs.
Second, Mobilising. We will wield our industrial leverage with precision and power as a movement. When we democratically decide to act, we will act decisively.
Third, is our Political Power. We must ensure every politician and every party understands: there are real political consequences for turning over working people and for getting on the wrong side of our movement.
Comrades, in every challenge lies an opportunity, ours is the opportunity to unionise.
As true Larkinites, all of us here, must dedicate ourselves to rebuild, renew, and recapture the hearts and minds of working people.
Let us not assume someone else will do the work.
Like Big Jim and Delia, we must build a movement for the Common Good.
The history of the future is not yet written. It is up for grabs. Trade unionism and collective bargaining are not relics, they are the keys to our future, to economic balance and democratic integrity. They are the antidote to oligarchy.
Our task is the same as the Larkins: to build a strong, coherent, and fearless movement capable of facing down global capital.
It is difficult, comrades. But it is more necessary than ever.
So let us leave here today, renewed. Let us organise in the spirit of Larkin. Let us unite against the Billionaires’ Revolution. And let us prove, through our actions, that another world is possible, a world of solidarity and equality, not profit and exploitation.
A world of hope, ready to be delivered.
Thank you comrades,