Hollywood star pays tribute to Connolly
A Hollywood actor is to pay tribute to one of Ireland’s trade union legends at a rally in Belfast this weekend because of a personal family connection.
Patrick Bergin, who stared in the movies Patriot Games and Sleeping With The Enemy, arrived in the city to take part in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ May festival marking the 100th anniversary of James Larkin’s involvement in the 1907 dockers and carters strike in the city.
The strike saw more than 5,000 dockers down their tools for four months in a fight for better pay and conditions, uniting Catholic and Protestant workers.
When Royal Irish Constabulary police refused to escort ’scab workers’ to the docks, soldiers were called in to end industrial action.
The 1907 strike in Belfast is seen as having been a template for the famous Dublin lockout six years later in which Larkin was a major figure.
Mr Bergin, who has been lined up to play James Larkin in a biopic of the republican and socialist icon James Connolly, revealed his family connection to the trade unionist.
“My connections kind of go back through my work with the actor Adrian Dunbar who is directing the film,” he revealed.
“However I also have a connection with Jim Larkin through my father.
“My father worked with him and had communication with him. My father was an organiser for the labour movement in Carlow during the 1940s. I think Jim Larkin came down and visited him once but there was certainly written communication.
“My dad was also a campaign organiser for the National Labour Party in Ireland and came up here to get a man called Jack Beattie elected in west Belfast around 1948.
“So that’s the atmosphere that I was brought up in and when I got the chance to play Jim Larkin, Big Jim himself, it was a real honour.”
Mr Bergin will appear at a May Day rally in Belfast tomorrow organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
The actor will read poetry in honour of the trade unionist.
“I’m really here in a personal capacity,” he said.
“I am really not here as Patrick Bergin the actor but really as Paddy Bergin Senior.
“There are a couple of poems my dad wrote and he told wonderful stories about his time here in west Belfast organising Jack Beattie’s election.
“They resonate quite deeply. We had a thing at home which I have been struggling to find and I hope we haven’t lost it.
“My brother Pierce said he had it in his wallet – a flyer from election time of Jack Beattie.
“The evening before the election this flyer came back from the person whose letter box it was pushed through with the most incredible piece of poetry in the back with an abusive message and an explanation why the voter would not be voting for Jack Beattie.”
Mr Bergin said the movie which is currently in pre-production would focus on the personal life of James Connolly.
Jim Larkin had a small but significant role in the script.
“Reading the books about Jim Larkin is one thing,” he said.
“Listening to what my dad said about him, he was on the edge of being a bit of a bully – a big man who encouraged people to stand up for themselves, a big man who instilled that sensibility in others.
“He could keep a lot of things going a once and a number of ideas. His office was one that was constantly busy.
“One of the most resonant things about him that would linger with me is his insistence on not being paid in the pub. There was the element of the puritan about him but for practical reasons.
“Obviously we also talk about the courage of him not only coming to Belfast to organise workers but also America. So you are talking about a man who was obviously on the world stage.”
