13 July 1922: Jim Larkin lectures the Irish Republican League of Canada

Ireland 1922, edited by Darragh Gannon and Fearghal McGarry, features 50 essays from leading international scholars that explore a turning point in history, one whose legacy remains controversial a century on. Building on their own expertise, and on the wealth of recent scholarship provoked by the Decade of Centenaries, each contributor focuses on one event that illuminates a key aspect of revolutionary Ireland, demonstrating how the events of this year would shape the new states established in 1922. Together, these essays explore many of the key issues and debates of a year that transformed Ireland.

In collaboration with Century Ireland, we are making the 50 essays freely available online. Today's essay is by Patrick Mannion and it covers the lecture given by Jim Larkin to the Irish Republican League of Canada. 

On 13 July 1922 the newly established Irish Republican League of Canada (IRL) organised a lecture by Irish republican labour activist Jim Larkin at Montreal’s Auditorium Hall. Over the course of a raucous evening, a woman in the audience tore down a Union Jack and threw it on the floor—an action that spurred an angry editorial in Toronto’s ultra-loyal Mail and Empire, which was later reprinted as far away as Abbotsford, British Columbia. This turbulent and controversial event demonstrated the intergenerational diaspora’s continuing, and frequently contested, esteem for their ancestral homeland in the closing stages of Ireland’s ‘global revolution’. Continue reading (you will be redirected to the website of Century Ireland)

Ireland 1922, edited by Darragh Gannon and Fearghal McGarry, is published by the Royal Irish Academy with support from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries 2012-2023 programme.