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The Irish Labour Party has had many leaders but only one of them has been leader of the Opposition in the Dáil. He was Thomas Johnson, who was born 150 years ago on May 17th, and during his time as Labour leader from 1917 to 1927, he played a highly significant role in the events that led to Irish independence and in the early years of that independence.
He was born in South Hunter Street, Liverpool, only child of Thomas Johnson, a foreman in a sailmaker’s yard, and Margaret Boardman.
Leaving a nonconformist education society school at age 13, he was a messenger boy for a few years before becoming a buyer of fish in Ireland for a Liverpool fish merchant, working mainly out of Dunmore East and Kinsale.
His experience of Liverpool working-class living conditions developed in him an abhorrence of unemployment and poverty and aroused his interest in socialism as a solution for social problems.
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He read widely in socialist literature, joined the Liverpool branch of the Independent Labour Party and the Fabian Society, took night classes at Liverpool Polytechnic and as a member of Liverpool Parliamentary Debating Society became an able public speaker.
He and his wife Marie Tregay, a national school teacher who shared his political views, moved to Belfast in 1903, and for the next 15 years, he travelled throughout the northern half of Ireland for a London firm dealing in animal treatment and foodstuffs.
He joined the Belfast Trades Council and supported James Larkin when he arrived in the city in 1907 to organise the dockers.
A strike they organised in the port, which started with nationalist and unionist worker solidarity, eventually collapsed in sectarian rioting, which deeply disappointed Johnson.
A member of the committee that organised James Connolly’s return to Ireland from the US in 1910, he became close to Connolly, who was secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) in Belfast.
In 1912, he and Connolly and William O’Brien set up the Irish Labour Party, of which he became vice-chairman.
During the long-running 1913 strike and lockout in Dublin, Johnson and his wife toured northern England, raising funds for the Dublin workers affected.
He was president of the Irish Trades Union Congress and Labour Party from 1914 to 1916 and campaigned against Irish recruitment to the British army during the war.
The 1916 Rising came as a surprise to him but he helped as much as possible members of the labour movement who were imprisoned because of the fighting and kept unity in the movement, despite the conflicting views that existed.
His opposition to the imposition of conscription on Ireland in 1918 led to him losing his employment, after which he moved to Dublin and became secretary of the Mansion House Anti-Conscription Committee.
On his advice, Labour did not contest the 1918 general election so as not to split the Sinn Féin vote and he was mainly responsible for drafting the Democratic Programme adopted by the first Dáil.
His leadership role in the labour movement proved significant in its support for the War of Independence and he backed the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
He was returned as a TD for Dublin County in the June 1922 election and in the post-Civil War Dáil, from 1923 to 1927, he led the Opposition in the absence of anti-Treaty Sinn Féin TDs.
As J Anthony Gaughan has written in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, “he ensured the survival of constitutional politics and democratic institutions in the Free State by his courageous and constructive leadership of the Opposition. Widely admired for his dedication, honesty, integrity and high-mindedness, he came within one vote of being President of the Executive Council in August 1927.”
Larkin’s return from the US caused a power struggle for control of the ITGWU and labour movement, resulting in a libel case against Larkin in 1925, which Johnson won.
He lost his seat in the September 1927 election and was succeeded as Labour leader by TJ O’Connell.
He was a member of and led the Labour senators in Seanad Éireann (Irish Free State) from 1928 until its abolition in 1936, playing a major role in Labour-Fianna Fáil cooperation during those years.
He didn’t involve himself in the Larkin-William O’Brien power struggle for control of the Irish labour movement in the 1940s and served as one of two workers’ representatives on the Labour Court from 1946 to 1956.
He died in Clontarf in Dublin on January 17th, 1963.
He and his wife had one child, Thomas James Frederick, who became the well-known actor Fred Johnson.
Since 1984, Labour Youth has organised an annual Tom Johnson Summer School.