In a new Ireland workers could have it all

In October 2021, at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ policy-making conference in Belfast, trade unionists rallied under the banner, “No Going Back” and unanimously endorsed a motion committing ICTU to promoting the interests of workers in conversations about constitutional change on this island. 

The arguments in support of the motion were inspirational. The vision for a new Ireland need not be characterised by fear of the past, but rather hope for the future.

For many workers, the present reality of life in Ireland, both north and south, seems pretty unsustainable, but the potential to create a new Ireland presents the working class with a major opportunity to achieve fundamental social transformation.

I am one of the privileged ones in my circle of friends. Just last week, my wife and I bought a new house with a lovely back garden looking out over Benbradagh mountain. She’s already dreaming of a dog by the front door and weans playing football in the street.

In campaigning for a new Ireland, we could demand that every family and independent citizen has the right to a home with a garden.

Irish national self-determination presents a momentous opportunity for the trade union movement and it seems inevitable that the conditions for a border poll will be realised within the next five years.

In March, I visited the Basque Country and represented Trade Unionists for a New and United Ireland (TUNUI) at an international conference of “pro-sovereignty trade unionists”.

Pro-sovereignty trade unionism involves trade unions in occupied and stateless nations prioritising campaigns for national self-determination. Pro-sovereignty trade unionists understand national self-determination to be the primary objective in the pursuit of social justice.

The conference declared the commitment of pro-sovereignty trade unionists to defending jobs and improving the quality of work, organising feminist campaigns and fighting discrimination, defending the public sector and demanding progressive taxation, establishing rights to decent incomes for mothers and carers, fighting for sustainability and to resist the destructive capitalist exploitation of our planet, and mobilising our working classes in campaigns for social change through citizens’ assemblies. 

Sardinian, Basque, Corsican, Breton, Galician, Catalan, Scottish, and Canary Islander trade unionists attended the conference and established an international steering committee that will serve to improve engagement between pro-sovereignty campaigns throughout Europe. The Irish trade union movement, through TUNUI, will be central to this magnificent work.

In the final session of the conference, General Secretary Garbiñe Aranburu, the inspirational feminist leader of the LAB Union, the Basque Nationalist Workers’ Committees, told the packed auditorium that, “The time has come for trade unionists in occupied and stateless nations to prioritise the struggle for national liberation and self-determination”.

• Koldo Sanchez (International Secretary LAB) Seán McElhinney (TUNUI) Amanda Verrone (Deputy International Secretary and Social Justice Lead)

Over the past century, Partition has undermined the natural development of the Irish trade union movement and many other movements for progressive social change on this island. Vibrant campaigns in the south have achieved marriage equality and reproductive rights, but opportunities for similar democratic expression have been denied to people in the North. 

Likewise in the North, people have had access to universal free healthcare for the best part of a century while such rights have been denied to our compatriots in the South.

Most trade unionists acknowledge that both states on the island of Ireland have failed working people. Our societies are broken and we should commit to building our new Ireland now.

The building of a new Ireland will be a huge opportunity for everyone on this island to make demands of their future. The rights and services we might expect should be argued for immediately. 

Trade unionists should campaign for constitutional change. We should argue for the right to collective bargaining, a living wage, a Bill of Rights, universal health care, free education, affordable housing, and much, much more.

In a new Ireland, workers could have it all. 

Seán McElhinney organises with Trade Unionists for a New and United Ireland and is an Assistant General Secretary in Fórsa.