James McCarron

Alderman James McCarron (1851 – 10 October 1918) was an Irish trade unionist.

McCarron came to prominence as a leading figure in the Amalgamated Society of Tailors and Tailoresses, based in Derry. In the early 1890s, he was the secretary of the local branch, and was imprisoned in the aftermath of a strike.[1]

Soon becoming the most prominent member of his union in Ireland,[2] he was elected to the Parliamentary Committee of the Irish Trades Union Congress every year from 1894 until 1909,[3] and served as President on three occasions, in 1899, 1907 and 1910.[4]

In the mid-1890s, McCarron, was a proponent of land nationalisation,[5] but he later joined the Labour Representation Committee,[6] then later the new Irish Labour Party. He was elected to Derry City Council, becoming the group's leader, later an alderman,[7] and Chairman of the Public Health Committee.[8]

McCarron was an Irish nationalist, but was a staunch defender of the role of British-based trade unions in Ireland.[9] He was appointed as one of two representatives of the labour movement on the Irish Convention of 1917 and early 1918, which unsuccessfully considered the question of Irish home rule.[10]

In late 1918, McCarron set sail for Wales aboard the RMS Leinster, with fellow trade unionist Patrick Lynch. On 10 October, the ship was torpedoed and sank, with McCarron and Lynch among the dead.[11] A large memorial in the form of a Celtic cross was erected in his memory in Derry City Cemetery.[7]

References

1. C. Desmond Greaves, The Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, p.6
2. Ed. Adrian Gregory and Senia Paseta, Ireland and the Great War, p.85
3. Emmet O'Connor, "Problems of reform in the ITUC, 1894-1914"
4. Donal Nevin, Trade Union Century, p.437
5. William Patrick Ryan, The Irish Labor Movement, p.160
6. Dermot Keogh, The Rise of the Working Class in Ireland, p.45
7. "A Visitors Map to Derry City Cemetery Archived 7 October 2014 at Archive-It", Derry City Council
8. Warre B. Wells and N. Marlowe, The Irish Convention and Sinn Féin, p.88
9. John W. Boyle, The Irish Labour Movement in the Nineteenth Century, p.97
10. David W. Miller, Church, State and Nation in Ireland 1898–1921, p.366
11. C. Desmond Greaves, The Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, p.221

Trade union offices
Preceded by Richard Wortley	President of the Irish Trades Union Congress 1899	Succeeded by George Leahy
Preceded by Stephen Dineen	President of the Irish Trade Union Congress 1907	Succeeded by John Murphy
Preceded by Michael Egan	President of the Irish Trade Union Congress 1910	Succeeded by David Robb Campbell