Eamonn McCann tells strike rally trade union movement is ‘sleeping giant’ of society

Transcript

00:00 Derry has a long, long tradition of trade unionism and of people standing up,

00:05 I mean for the underdog and standing up for the lower elements in society generally.

00:10 I think this is by no means the first, it's the biggest, but of course not the first trade union

00:15 demonstration in the centre of Derry. We've come a long way. The biggest demonstration until that

00:21 time that took place in Derry was a trade union demonstration in, and don't try to be bored by

00:28 the fact that I mentioned some year far away, 1881, here in 1881, Eleanor Marks, who was my

00:36 old friend, Derry MacLennan, the late Derry MacLennan, used to say, "Ah yes, Carl's wee girl."

00:42 Eleanor Marks came to Derry, invited by Derry Trades Council. She was a member of London and

00:49 District Trades Council and she came over to speak here and the reason she came over was to help,

00:55 was to drive by women workers in Derry to unionise the shirt factories in Derry and that happened.

01:02 Derry was the first place on this island where there was an organised and militant

01:10 women's trade union movement. We're one of the first in these islands and that's the tradition

01:15 which is kept on. When I think of Cathy Harkin and Noelene O'Kane and all the other brave women

01:21 of recent years, they have actually helped the whole of Derry. So we've been a long

01:26 trade union tradition and we are bigger than anybody else. There are more members of trade

01:32 unions in the north of Ireland right now, organised into 34 affiliated unions attached to the Irish

01:40 Congress. We are the 200,000 members, bigger than all the political parties and all the orders,

01:48 orange and green, all of them put together. We are bigger than they are.

01:52 In a way we have been the sleeping giant of Northern Ireland society. When the trade union

02:01 movement comes together like this and I look down from this platform, the best thing that I see

02:07 is the fact that when I look around I couldn't tell you who comes from where, what community

02:13 anybody comes from. We're here together. When people talk, they do all the time, of the need

02:19 to get the two communities together. But here we are, here we are. We are the peace process.

02:26 We are sort of the organisation of the future. There's a connection between peace and the

02:32 conditions of life of the mass of ordinary people here. There's a connection between that

02:38 and the trade union movement. It's the great mission of the trade union movement.

02:42 I want you to read a wee poem, a wee bit of writing. A lot of union songs around, you know,

02:51 Billy Bragg sings some of them and Paddy Ness sings some of them and so forth. And also,

02:59 the younger members of the crowd might recognise this, Rage Against the Machine.

03:06 That's got a union song too, which is written in the midst of a strike wave in California,

03:11 where they were living. It says, "Come rain or sleet or dark of night, come wind or frigid snow,

03:18 there's thousands of us on these streets and our number is going to grow. And when we put

03:24 the government on trial, we'll be in the front row. Let's take a round, we're a union town,

03:30 but we count for our wages. Gary says no."

03:36 Great trade union leader in the past, Jim Larkin, talked about the militancy of the trade union

03:56 movement standing in front of him in the centre of Dublin. And he said, "This is all we know on

04:02 earth and it's all we need to know." Forward with the trade union movement, forward dairy workers,

04:08 forward with the cause of justice led by the trade union movement. Thank you very much.