James Larkin

The best thanks we could offer those who went before and raised the Irish working class from their knees was to press forward with determination and enthusiasm towards the ultimate goal of their efforts, a Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland.

Russia is the only place where men and women can be free.

It means that the men who hold the means of life control our lives, and, because we workingmen have tried to get some measure of justice, some measure of betterment, they deny the right of the human being to associate with his fellow.

Claiming for ourselves liberty of conscience, liberty to worship, we shall see to it that every other individual enjoys the same right.

I never stood in a public house bar and alcoholic drink never touched my lips.

There must be freedom for all to live, to think, to worship, no book, no avenue must be closed.

A mutual arrangement, I repeat, is the only satisfactory medium whereby the present system can be carried on with any degree of satisfaction, and in such an arrangement the employers have more to gain than the workers.

I am, of course, aware that the ultimate solution is the ownership and control of the means of life by the whole of the people; but we are not at that stage of development as yet.

Comrades - We are living in momentous times.

Those who want to divide the workers have resorted to the foulest methods.

The souls you have got cast upon the screen of publicity appear like the horrid and writhing creatures enlarged from the insect world, and revealed to us by the cinematograph.

We shall not fight for the preservation of the enemy, which has laid waste with death and desolation the fields and hills of Ireland for 700 years.