John Swift

John Swift (1896–1990) was an Irish trade union leader and secularist.

Born in Dundalk, Swift was educated at a Christian Brothers School. His father ran a co-operative bakery but this closed and the family endured poverty. 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 briefly joined the Irish Volunteers, but took time out following an accident, and decided not to rejoin due to Larkin's opposition to the organisation.

Swift became active in the Irish National Federal Union of Bakers, attempting to recruit his fellow workers. As a result, he was sacked from his job and, due to the lack of available work in Ireland, he was forced to move to England and work in a munitions factory. There, he led a strike, and as a result was court-marshalled and confined at Wandsworth Prison. He was offered the opportunity to leave if he joined the British Army but, when he refused, was given solitary confinement. 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. 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. 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.”

That same year, Swift was appointed as national organiser of the union, by then known as the "Irish Bakers, Confectioners and Allied Workers Amalgamated Union", and in 1942, he was elected as its General Secretary. As general secretary, Swift oversaw the purchase and fitting out of a new headquarters for the union, on Harcourt Street. Alongside Nora Harkin, and Bobbie and Frank Edwards, Swift was a founding member of the Ireland-USSR Society.

Swift retired from his trade union posts in 1967 and wrote a history of the Irish Bakers.