A divided past, a tangled future
Searchlight Magazine December 2009 by Matthew Collins | Monday, 28 December 2009
Matthew Collins examines how the trade unions are helping Northern Ireland’s migrant workers deal with the recession, racism and the province’s sectarian divisions
Matthew Collins examines how the trade unions are helping Northern Ireland’s migrant workers deal with the recession, racism and the province’s sectarian divisions
A shared past of industrial unrest. Photo: Matthew Collins
On the same night that world leaders were meeting in Berlin to gloat over the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, sixty Belfast schoolchildren gathered at one of Belfast’s more infamous walls: a huge concrete “peace line” that separates the Catholics from the Falls Road from the Protestants on the Shankill Road.
For some, Belfast’s peace walls are still a necessity, while for Northern Ireland’s tourists, they are a wondrous curiosity over which bricks still fly and only the hearty pass through on foot. The wall, one of eighty barriers erected across Belfast in flashpoint areas, runs large and grey, covered in graffiti, between Northumberland Street and Lanark Way. The gates between the two communities close at night.
Eleven years after the Good Friday Agreement, which bought Northern Ireland its uneasy peace, there were the usual rumblings in the Northern Irish media that the power sharing Stormont executive was running into trouble again, though none of the difficulties seemed to be overly ideological. The 22nd report of the Independent Monitoring Commission, published in November, revealed that all paramilitary groups, with the notable exception of the Provisional IRA, remain involved in widespread and sporadic criminal, sectarian and paramilitary behaviour. The Republican INLA announced it was renouncing violence shortly before the report was published and could be moving towards decommissioning, while dissident Republican groups were noted as having increased activities and membership.
Little of this can be allowed to make a difference to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), the all-Ireland umbrella of British, Irish and Northern Irish trade unions. In its modest headquarters in central Belfast, a succession of workmen walk in and out of the migrant workers unit office, switching the water supply on and off and leaving thick, muddy footprints. Belfast’s infamous winter gales follow them up a succession of narrow alleyways, carrying a mixture of thick Belfast and corrupted migrant accents, so that I’m greeted by a Polish workman in Donegal Street asking “How’s about yuh?” as I struggle by with a box of Searchlights and anti-BNP trade union organisers’ packs under my arms.
As a child in London, I often heard thick Belfast, Dublin and Cork accents as Irish migrants dug and paved their ways across Britain. The traditional Irish immigrant in Britain is a thing of the past and Ireland is itself, north and south, experiencing mass im-migration, resettlement and retirement. The Republic of Ireland is facing the bust following the enormous Celtic boom that marked Ireland’s early EU membership, with its near terrifying price rises. The Irish government and trade unions have been circling each other in preparation for a bloody head to head over job cuts as the country slides into crippling recession. The Irish Daily Mail recently fired the first salvo with a vicious attack on the Irish trade union movement on a front page of which its British namesake would have been proud, while the government has launched a programme with an initial budget of €650,000 (£585,000) to return non-EU migrants to their country of origin.
Recession has brought racism to both sides of the border. Unison’s Patricia McKeown, former All Ireland President of ICTU, recalls receiving both “British Jobs for British workers” and “Irish Jobs for Irish workers” material on both sides of the border not long after Prime Minister Gordon Brown infamously uttered the former.
In Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP and MLA Sammy Wilson gave these slogans a heartening post Good Friday Agreement slant by calling for “local jobs for local workers” irrespective of whether the workers in question considered themselves Irish or British.
Kevin Doherty, migrant worker project manager for ICTU, queries whether Wilson thinks that migrant workers do not actually live in the province, but does acknowledge a marked growth of identity politics. During November, some people in Belfast noted a “poppy fascism” – the growing (though not exclusive) view that by wearing a poppy you are one religion and that by not wearing one you are another. To me, the descen-dant of Irish immigrants who fought Nazism in Irish regiments of the British Army, it seems a curious sectarian assumption on both sides. For the approximately 80,000 migrant workers from the A8 countries (the east European states that acceded to the EU in May 2004) who share so much of Europe’s bloody history, this is another minefield.
Doherty and Kasia Garbal, ICTU’s migrant support worker, are preparing to launch a joint initiative with Belfast city council called “A shared workplace, A shared future”, aimed at unionising, highlighting and protecting Northern Ireland’s migrant workers. It calls upon all the province’s working people to support the idea of a shared workplace and a shared future for all. It’s a long overdue injection of class politics into the debate and Doherty confidently asserts that the trade union movement is “the unofficial opposition in Northern Ireland”. He raises his own eyebrows when he relates that the UUP (Ulster Unionist Party) “Tories” joined a recent protest over healthcare reforms. It’s no secret that migrant workers are employed throughout Northern Ireland’s hospitals.
Doherty describes as a “white elephant” the question of the Island’s future as either one or two separate entities. ICTU views people as workers first and foremost. Many migrant workers are blissfully, and dangerously, ignorant of Ireland’s political and communal mazes. “Each workplace is different, each worker is an individual. Migrant workers come to live and work here with luggage, not baggage. We defend that right, their right, to work and live in peace as we do all workers.”
Where then do migrant workers fit in the difficult and exacerbated dynamics between Catholic and Protestant, unionist and nationalist? It’s not a new question, neither is it one exclusively asked by obtrusive Englishmen in the back of a Belfast taxi. “Education and equality for all,” says Doherty immediately. Having left school with little more than a certificate to say he’d finished, like several working class trade unionists we meet, Doherty is juggling work with studying for an MA in trade union leadership, devised by an organisation called Trademark.
We disembark in west Belfast where some of Northern Ireland’s ideologues and demigods articulate with grand colour and artistic merit their anger, hopes and aspirations, against the dour grey walls and Belfast skyline. Here the plight of the south Belfast Roma earlier this year has been captured in stark black and white beside a stunning ICTU-commissioned mural of the 1907 Dockers and Carters strike: “Not As Catholics Or Protestants Not As Nationalists Or Unionists But As Belfast Workers Standing Together”.
Neither East Brigade, nor West Belfast Brigade, but the International Brigades Photo: Matthew Collins
In another time, the offices of an organisation such as Trademark would surely have been chokingly smoke filled and full of chaotic anger as trade unionists bounce each other off the walls. The closest we get to it is a round table where coffee mugs seem to have been glued down for posterity. Joe Law, Steve Nolan and Mel Corry of Trademark immediately gravitate towards an International Brigades flag for their team photograph. Their organisation is entrusted by ICTU with providing trade union and antiracist training across the com-munity and province. “To everyone”, emphasises Law. “It doesn’t matter if you have a kid in a Rangers (Protestant) or Celtic (Catholic) shirt. Indeed, if I were to take a ride with both of them they’d pretty soon come to a mutual understanding about whom they perceive to be their mutual enemy, and they’d very soon be having a very happy dialogue between them about ‘Pakis’ or whoever else they believe have slighted them.” But before panic erupts about the BNP solving Northern Ireland’s sectarian problems, Nolan, whose upbringing in England is reflected in his accent, reaffirms that the BNP is not the sole voice of racism in Northern Ireland. “Indeed, to be honest, I think they have a very limited appeal among Protestants.
“Migrant workers are the key issue in getting people to think and act with basic humanity and dignity and class politics over identity politics. My parents went to England but came back here after 30 years and have lived like many people, as migrants in other countries. Racism won’t bind com-munities here because it can only dig so deep and so far before it hits a nerve.”
The dynamic of modern Northern Ireland is described as nationalist gain and unionist loss. In a country that cannot raise its own taxes, the selling of a low wage economy over the heads of skilled workers and industrious people from previously secure communities, in a de-industrialised and ostensibly service driven economy, began long before the Good Friday Agreement. Security of jobs at the large employers such as Shorts, the arms manufacturer, has dried up completely, a development described as “Margaret Thatcher’s gift to working-class Protestants”. “Ask yourself this, how did Protestant boys end up second bottom to the Irish travelling community in terms of education and aspiration?” says Nolan.
Asked for their views on the “white elephant”, Law, Nolan and Corry are unequivocal. “It’s more than likely that in any plebiscite held soon, the growth of the Catholic middle class would ensure a ‘no’ vote.
“What has also happened here has been a re-emphasising of the Britishness of Northern Ireland for Protestants and Unionists. The British Army marched through Belfast recently for, as far as I’m aware, the first time since the Second World War.
“The whole idea we have is that in holding the line here against racism and sectarianism, there was an acknowledg-ment that Irish nationalism had a part to play under the Good Friday Agreement. Soldiers marching through Belfast then becomes a concession to identity politics.” Nolan empathises that he appreciates this is a difficult proposition if he were to try and sell it under the class struggle package. “There are very few easy conversations you can have in Northern Ireland about Northern Ireland.”
Protestant membership of trade unions is still equivalent to the size of the Protestant community though their overall engagement in the unions is noticeably less. Historically, trade union leaders in Northern Ireland were Protestant and Communist, but in 1968 the Communist Party refused any longer to acknowledge the border with the Republic and its influence waned. Attempts to force the Northern Irish workforce into the TUC by the Ulster Workers’ Council strike in 1974 and the umbrella Loyalist Association of Workers (LAW) caused factionalising and sectarianism. As the UWC and LAW waned, there was a gradual disengagement from Irish trade unionism, though hardened and Protestant trade unionists do remain on the diminishing shop floors.
ICTU does not keep records of the religion of its 240,000 members in Northern Ireland. Indeed a growing number of people in the province do not tick the “community representation” box on forms and others prefer the neutral description “Northern Irish”. All of Northern Ireland’s trade unions now employ migrant worker reps to overcome barriers of language and any traditional distrust of trade unions. Northern Ireland has the highest density of trade union membership of anywhere in the UK and Ireland in a population of just over 1.5 million.
At the launch of the “A Shared Workplace” project, Trademark facilitates workshops with a cross section of trade unionists and community workers from both the dominant communities, injecting the idea of class struggle over the armed struggle in tacking racism and sectarianism. During feedback sessions a number of people raise the issue of their shared past and whether and how to express it. Job not so much done as in hand.
A little bit of Polish history in a corner of Belfast. Photo: Lucas Ludziejewski/WAPNET.PL
Naomi Long, the Lord Mayor of Belfast, reads from the trade union hymn sheet in imploring migrant workers to join a trade union, while Peter Bunting, Assistant General Secretary of ICTU, speaks of “the most marginalised of our workforce”. Against a backdrop of stories of dehumanising discrimination and disregard for workers’ rights, Kasia Garbal points to a recent report by the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities (NICEM) into the economic downturn, which states that the 50,000-strong Polish community and the other A8 communities have been disproportionately hit the hardest, even in the “3D jobs” – the dirty, the dangerous and the difficult.
“We are not offering positive discrimination, we are offering trade union membership and its protection to all workers,” Bunting concludes. Bunting, lovingly referred to as “Father Ted” by his colleagues, is conscious of the disengagement by some Protestants from taking leading roles in forging a progressive change. “I’m constantly asking people to not forget about the Prod,” he tells me. “They do have tremendous, progressive leadership in the community, which also happens to be unionist.” We are, of course, talking about the legacy of the former loyalist politician David Ervine, who rallied against what he called “big house unionism” representing the interests of working class Protestants. In the bar favoured by Belfast trade unionists, a montage of photographs of three of Ulster’s most famous pipe smokers, plus their pipes, adorns the walls. They are Ervine, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and the “godfather” of the modern-day Protestant paramilitaries of the UVF, Gusty Spence, in memoriam of Ervine’s contribution to peace and progressive unionism.
ICTU Assistant General Secretary Peter Bunting photo: John O'Farrell
Bunting has ensured that Ervine’s party, the relatively small Progressive Unionist Party, has a presence at every Belfast May Day parade. “This engagement is key,” enthuses Bunting, “they have a class analysis, we need that analysis. If this engagement comes through the auspices of the trade union movement, then I think everyone in ICTU will be happy to accommodate it. There is no peace and equality without it.”
Later that afternoon, Kasia drives me to Milltown cemetery. As it’s Armistice Day, the Polish community will lay flowers on the graves of Polish soldiers who fought the Nazis and found fame in both the RAF and the Irish regiments of the British Army. We are little more than a stone’s throw away from the Republican plots of generations of Irishmen and women who have fought and died for the cause of a United Ireland. “I came to Northern Ireland with little idea about trade unions and less of an idea about Irish history. But my daughter was born here and we like living here, and this is our home,” says Kasia.
The Poles lay their flowers in a dignified and solemn silence, while a priest recites a prayer. A Belfast man, wearing a poppy and the blazer and beret of the defunct Ulster Defence Regiment, joins the Poles and salutes each grave. Doherty and I stand impassively at the back. Were this Liverpool or London, I wondered if Doherty himself would feel as compelled to wear a poppy as I did now?
The young Poles shake hands and disperse, some wearing poppies, some not. We will see each other again later in the evening for a low-key celebration of Polish Independence Day, 11 November. Watching them disperse into Belfast’s cauldron heading north, east, south and west across the city, I recall Corry’s words when I asked him how he saw the future of Northern Ireland when there is still work to be done dissecting the past. “People talk to others about our history, but we never talk to each other about it. The only thing we can all agree on is the year 1921”, the year of partition. Perhaps for Northern Ireland, sharing the future will lead to a satisfactory past.
