Comrades - We are living in momentous times.
James Larkin
Intolerance has been the curse of our country.
I am careful about my conduct because I know this cause requires clean men.
Claiming for ourselves liberty of conscience, liberty to worship, we shall see to it that every other individual enjoys the same right.
The employers cannot carry on industry nor accumulate profits if they have not got the good will of the workers or their acquiescence in carrying on such industry.
I never stood in a public house bar and alcoholic drink never touched my lips.
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.
The fate of you, the aristocracy of industry, will be as the fate of the aristocracy of land if you do not show that you have some humanity still among you.
Stop at home. Arm for Ireland. Fight for Ireland and no other land.
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.
Humanity abhors, above all things, a vacuum in itself, and your class will be cut off from humanity as the surgeon cuts the cancer and alien growth from the body.
We are beaten, we will make no bones about it; but we are not too badly beaten still to fight.
By God's help, and the intelligent use of their own strong right arms they could accomplish great things.
We are now on the threshold of a newer movement, with a newer hope and a new inspiration.
No, men and women of the Irish race, we shall not fight for England. We shall fight for the destruction of the British Empire and the construction of an Irish republic.
We make mistakes, we have our faults, and God knows some of us have more than our share, but when danger threatens and duty calls, we go smiling to our own funeral.
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.
The men whose manhood you have broken will loathe you, and will always be brooding and scheming to strike a fresh blow.
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.
Those who want to divide the workers have resorted to the foulest methods.
The land of Ireland for the people of Ireland.
For years and years I have done the work I was born for.
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.
I have raised the morals and sobriety of the people.
I have tried to kill sectarianism, whether in Catholics or Protestants.
Man must be associated with his fellows.
Russia is the only place where men and women can be free.
The question of religion was a matter for each individual's conscience, and in a great many cases was the outcome of birth or residence in a certain geographical area.
There must be freedom for all to live, to think, to worship, no book, no avenue must be closed.
Therefore it is essential that some means should be sought whereby the work of the nation may be carried on without constant yet at present necessary dislocation.
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.
You may succeed in your policy and ensure your own damnation, by your victory.
