From Barrow in Furness to the Clyde, via Dublin

Thomas Leahy is one of the most interesting minor figures in labour and republican circles in the period from 1912 to 1923. His story does not involve the Lockout at all, except through attending meetings in Barrow-in-Furness, where he was apprenticed in the shipyards as a riveter. Speakers included Larkin and Connolly. He is good on the various Irish political movements in Britain before returning to Ireland to avoid conscription in 1914, and later on describing the local scene in Dublin.

In Dublin he joined the Irish Citizen Army. He was instrumental in founding the Irish Engineering, Shipbuilding and Foundry Workers Trade Union in 1920, which lured most craft workers in the south away from their parent unions in Britain.

He took the Anti-Treaty side in the Civil War and returned to Britain as he could no longer find employment in Ireland. He spent the latter half of his working life in Britain, first in Swansea then on Clydeside. He represented his old union, the Boilermakers, on the Committee on Production set up for the shipbuilding industry during the Second World War. There is a certain poignancy about the story of a man who spent his youth trying to break the connection with Britain, especially for Irish trade unionists, only to end his days as a leading activist in his old union on Clydeside. He was typical of many activists in the independence movement who had little to show for the risks taken and sacrifices made. He found some fulfillment through his continuing work in the labour movement.

We are indebted to Eve Morrison for this statement.

http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS0660.pdf