In 1914, Swift began an apprenticeship at a bakery in Dublin, and spent much of his spare time attending meetings where Jim Larkin was speaking.
He passed the time whistling arias by Verdi; a warder mistook these for Irish rebel songs and placed him on punishment rations of bread and water for a week.
[2] The hostile Irish Press noted that admission to the society's fortnightly meeting in Dublin was "by invitation only" and that its membership form stated:Convinced that clerical domination in the community is harmful to advance, the Secular society of Ireland seeks to establish in this country complete freedom of thought, speech and publication, liberty for mind, in the widest toleration compatible with orderly progress and rational conduct.
[3]It aimed to terminate, among other things, ”the clerically-dictated ban on divorce”, “the Censorship of Publications Act” and “the system of clerical management, and consequent sectarian teaching, in schools.” The paper also quoted a chairman of a society meeting to the effect that the society “did not advocate either Divorce or Birth Control but would press for facilities in both matters for people who desired them,and would endeavour to have the law here amended accordingly.”[3] This was at a time of heightened clerical militancy: in March, crowds, fired by pastoral warnings against the spread of left-wing ideas, had attacked the RWG/CPI headquarters in Connolly House, the Workers’ College in Eccles Street and the Workers Union of Ireland office in Marlborough Street.
As soon the meeting place of the Secular Society (from which it distributed the British journal The Freethinker) was exposed, it had to shift to private houses out of town.
[2] In 1936, as the Irish Christian Front mobilised in support of General Franco, members, who included the socialist Jack White, the novelist Mary Manning, and the playwright Denis Johnston, wound up the Secular Society and sent the proceeds to the Spanish Government.
[1] Swift was active on the Dublin Trades Council, succeeding Larkin as president in 1945, and becoming editor of Workers' Action, its newspaper.