Sir James SextonCBE (13 April 1856 – 27 December 1938) was a British trade unionist and politician.[1]
Early life
Sexton was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 13 April 1856 to an Irish-born family of market traders,[2] who shortly afterwards moved to a slum area of St Helens, Lancashire. He grew up in poverty and began work in the local glass-making industry at the age of nine after briefly attending school. His father and grandfather were active members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and he accompanied his grandfather during his recruitment work for the organisation. The family home was once visited by Michael Davitt.
Sexton eventually wandered to Liverpool, where he worked as a sailor, then arrived in London after deserting the ship he was sailing on and took a job at a chemical factory. After three years onshore, he again became a sailor for a while, eventually returning to Liverpool as a docker on Liverpool Docks due to the death of his father.[3] In 1884, he set up his own business as a coal merchant.
Trade union activity
While working as a dock labourer he was extremely distraught by the living conditions of himself and his colleagues which were brought upon them by their wealthy bosses. He would often express this sentiment openly, which lead to him becoming blacklisted by most dock employers. Sexton then spent a year organising a local union that was shortly thereafter amalgamated into the Knights of Labor.[3]
His local union workers held their first strike in 1885, which Sexton described as a "total failure", nonetheless the strike turned him, in his own words, into "an agitator and nothing but an agitator". During this time, Sexton also became active in the Irish Home Rule movement, however he ceased participating in it shortly after the Parnell split.[3]
In 1889 he joined the new National Union of Dock Labourers (later National Union of Dock, Riverside and General Workers) and was elected general secretary in 1893, defeating James Larkin. While in this position, he successfully lobbied for dock labourers and employers to be subject to the Factory and Workshop Act 1901, when previous Factory Acts had not included them. He engaged in much union, cross-union and political organising both in this position and thereafter. He was elected as general secretary of the Trades Union Congress in 1905.[3]
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