Fourthwrite ..........................Issue No. 12

Mick O’Reilly talks to Fourthwrite

Leading trade unionist Mick O’Reilly of the AT&GWU, recently contributed an interview to Fourthwrite editor Tommy McKearney. Last year, O’Reilly was suspended from his position in the union by Bill Morris for what is widely seen as O’Reilly’s uncompromising championing of working class rights.

Overview

Q. What is your broad theory of the wider remit for trade unionism?

A. At its best, leaders of the trade union movement had a view of political change that they wanted. Of course the primary concern of a trade union has to be to look after the interests of its members. But what is happening now is that trade unions are losing their independence and they are becoming incorporated into the state. They are becoming like props to government. I believe that is part of the explanation for the decline of the trade union movement.

Q. Do you believe that we are drifting towards a corporate state?

A. If you look at our institutions of industrial relations and the way that conflict between classes takes place through these institutions you will find that there has been a huge movement away from workers being able to decide for themselves what they will or will not do. These institutions have defined what the answers are to the questions. There are dangers in that and I think that it is not an exaggeration to say that is a form of corporatism. In the beginning, when this process started I would say that it was a bargained corporatism. Now it is becoming less so

Partnership

Q. Are you opposed to partnership and if so is it a pragmatic or ideological opposition?

A. If people read the pamphlet that I wrote in relation to partnership they will find that I was in favour of it but I defined it in a rather different way - as a potential relationship of equals. If we are to be serious about it, we have to shift the boundaries of power in corporations and institutions and we have to shift those boundaries so that workers begin to have equality.

The old ideas of the pioneers of the Labour movement; industrial democracy and all kinds of democracy were always about shifting power. What’s been happening is the opposite of that, we are losing our power because we are losing our capacity to think critically and to understand that we interface with the state and government on the basis that we represent our members not on the basis that we represent ourselves.

And, yes, I am a pragmatist but I like to consider myself to be a progressive pragmatist. In other words, a pragmatism that is influenced by an ideology and tries to advance that ideology and that ideology I describe as republican socialism.

Q. Does southern Irish partnership manifest itself in the North and in Britain as the consensus that has emerged between New Labour and Organised Labour?

A. At the heart of the Blair project is the abandonment of the idea of social reform, of equality and of change. He intends to take the model of competitiveness and the model of the marketplace and have that as the centrepiece of the new ideology of New Labour. The unions never consented to the founding of New Labour. It is a superficial thing that has got a grip on the Labour party and is something, which I do not believe will last. There are stirrings in the Labour Movement signified by the election in the Amalgamated Transport & GWU of Tony Woodley as Deputy General Secretary. There is the election of a new leader for the Amicus union – one of the largest unions in Britain.

Union members want their leaders to stand independently of government. They want a Labour government but they want a Labour government that responds to their needs. People need decent wages, they need houses, and they need decent transport, education and health.

I must make a point about the trade union movement in Northern Ireland. You cannot discuss the trade union movement there, without mentioning the disgraceful treatment of the shop stewards in Shorts who have been disgracefully dismissed. Those shop stewards were a bastion of anti-sectarianism in a plant, which is one of the most important in N. Ireland. These shop stewards have been shamefully treated by management and regretfully the trade union movement has also colluded in their dismissals.

Suspension

Q. In light of your suspension by the AT&GWU, would you care to tell our readers what happened and how this reflects on the Irish trade union movement?

A. My suspension was a huge shock to me. I had no idea what was going to happen. Many of these accusations are trivial (you can read the details on a website). It would be true to say that Bill Morris never wanted me as regional secretary of Ireland. His preferred candidate was Liam McBrinn. There is also a group of people in the North who have never accepted me.

Bill Morris saw me as an isolated figure in the Irish trade union movement. If you regard the executive council of the ICTU as the Irish trade union movement then I was isolated. But if you see the ICTU as the membership, then from that perspective I am not isolated and the evidence of that is in all the support that I have received from throughout the trade union movement and indeed from some of my colleagues on the executive of the ICTU. Of course some of them have not been supportive and some of them may have been instrumental in giving Bill Morris the impression that this could be done.

Certain things have been introduced in this case. For example it is virtually unknown in this country to have precautionary suspensions. This has now given the employers a weapon that they can use against prominent trade unionists and shop stewards. Also, people from my union went on national television at a time when I wasn’t allowed to speak (or I would have been dismissed) and said that the "show must go on". There is a message in that. Does that mean that if one of our shop stewards is suspended on a precautionary suspension that our officials will say that the "show must go on"? Employers will not be slow to use this against us.

There is a second thing that has happened. I was removed as a delegate to the ICTU conference. The constitution of the ICTU is a very delicate flower, something that was put there covering the whole island. It is very clear that only people and trade unionists on the island of Ireland are eligible to make decisions about who represents them. My belief is that that constitution was broken and that the laws of the Republic of Ireland were broken because I was removed and nobody in Ireland removed me. I was elected by the membership to stand for that position and I was removed by a diktat from London. A letter from Bill Morris removed me and I wasn’t even told what the charges were.

I was left hanging out to dry for a month and during that month there were statements made about financial irregularities and a financial audit. Some of the media took it up but I’m glad to say that others in the media took a very different view and changed the way things were reported.

There are a lot of dangers in this for the union. The AT&GWU has cocooned and has not been recruiting. I haven’t heard a statement or of a struggle that it has been engaged in. They also took the idea of censorship much further than just stopping me speaking. They stopped the Dublin trades council meeting in our hall when they invited me to speak. For a trade union to use property to suppress democracy is to behave like our enemies and it is inexcusable.

On the positive side, I have to say that I have had huge levels of support from the membership and remember that they have been banned from discussing this. The union has used the argument that the issue is sub judice. That is rubbish since I hadn’t at that time taken a legal case. There is nothing in the constitution of the union that says that the members cannot discuss the conditions of the officers.

Q. What do you believe was at the heart of the conflict between Bill Morris and you two?

A. I’m not entirely sure because he has never shared his views with me. Perhaps there is conflict between us in relation to our spirit. I believe in bottom up trade unionism and in empowering the members and the officers. I think that Bill Morris had a different view of that, believing more in controlling the union.

We were growing as a union by about 8% per year, which may not be spectacular but is reasonable in the current climate. We also developed a very high profile for the union and the ideas that we had. We certainly used that profile to advance those ideas. There was a certain dynamic in the union and I believe that we were on the verge of making very major breakthroughs in a number of areas and it may be that some of those things influenced him (i.e. Bill Morris, Ed.).

Morris certainly didn’t like the idea that the people that had been formerly in ILDA joined us on an individual basis and he didn’t like some other things that we done. But putting it all together, it doesn’t constitute anything serious - unless you want to make it serious.

Perhaps it was a question of stopping a person who was prepared to stand up for the membership of the union against the so-called "New Labour" movement?

My own view is that there may be some truth in what was said but I can’t prove that Bertie Ahern done this or that or the other because I don’t actually know. Certainly I believe that officials from SIPTU contacted Morris. One of them, the President of SIPTU, Des Gerrity, went on record to say that he never made an official complaint. That says everything.

It has been a very bad experience for the union. The resources that have been put into it were huge. It has cost the members an awful lot of money, it has undermined the membership and the officials are embarrassed over the way it was handled. The support I have received from all the full time officers in the union has been enormous. For full time officials of a union to ballot to take industrial action is in my experience unprecedented. I have also gained tremendous support from the Executive – over half the Executive has supported me in this and of course even at the bi-annual delegate conference over in Britain I had huge support.

It is still open as to what the ultimate outcome of this is going to be but I think whatever happens the union will never be the same again. I hope that myself and Eugene prevail and get our jobs back. I don’t mean that from a personal point of view. I think that it is actually the best thing that could happen for the union and if it wasn’t I wouldn’t pursue it.

Q. What are the implications if you fail to get reinstated and have your good name cleared?

A. The battle for my good name has long been won. I’m not scurrying around corners trying to avoid people, ashamed of anything I have done. I stand over my record of over forty years in the union this year. I’ve been active in the union since I was sixteen. I don’t miss my branch meetings and I’ve been a full time officer for twenty-three years, I’ve held lots of lay positions in the union.

I don’t know what the ultimate impact of all this is going to be if the outcome is negative. It will be a bad day for the union and for trade unionism in general. People will be dismissive and will use it against trade unionism. Employers will use it. Unorganised workers will use it since the trade union movement will not seem attractive or radical to them. Yet, who knows what life will throw up but what I do want to say is that whatever happens, I have no intention of retiring. I have no intention of stopping being active. I have been involved in the workers union since I have been a kid and there is a few years left in me yet.

Crisis on the stock markets

Q. What should the international labour movement do in the face of the new and developing nature of international capitalism?

A. The Left in general and the trade union movement in particular has a big role to play. It is interesting that in every kind of dictatorship that usually the first people to go down are trade unionists. That is important to understand because the unions are a core organisation of working people. For example, we are facing into a second referendum on the Nice Treaty, which I believe should not take place because the government is essentially ignoring the outcome of the first. However, there has been no campaign by the trade union movement about what should be put to the people. Nice is really about making the world better for corporations and there is no balancing feature in the Nice Treaty that talks about workers’ rights or access to information or environmental concerns.

And if the trade union movement in Ireland takes the view that the Nice Treaty is a good thing, they shouldn’t do that from an uncritical base. They should be insisting that ordinary workers’ rights and environmental concerns have at least an equal status to that of capital. We have institutions like the United Nations, and World Trade Organisations driven solely by the corporations and there has always been a conflict between corporate power and democracy.

In the Putney debates, when the British parliament was being set up, Winstanely (the leader of the Diggers) said to Cromwell that if property triumphed in Britain, democracy would fail. That is still the big struggle that we are facing in the 21st century as there is greater centralisation of resources into and among the big corporations. We have to look for international institutions that can make sure that corporations are controlled and made accountable to states and to parliaments. If that doesn’t happen, what we have is not a proper democracy.

The trade union movement has to learn to work with others. We have to learn to work particularly with the anti-globalisation movement, and with those with concerns about the environment and community groups. We can learn a lot from others and we have to have the humility to work with them as equals. We have to energise our members and particularly our activists to do that.

Q. What is your reading of the current crisis on the World Bourse and how do you envisage it developing?

A. There is a fall in the profitability of capital there aren’t the returns that we have had, so we have seen a huge crisis. People seem to think that all these problems can be solved by better accounting techniques. That is a superficial analysis. What we are looking at is a fall in the profitability of capital and that is going to lead to a set of circumstances where there will be a demand for greater access to public services by capital. I think that our education services, refuge collection services, water supply are looked on by the corporations as opportunities and they want to get their hands on them. We are probably going to be told that the World Trade Organisation has decreed that these areas are not to be subject to popular control or popular will and that is going to be the conflict.

In the forthcoming crisis we have to have a socialism that is absolutely interlaced with the concept of human liberty. In the last century, socialism did not stand up to the test of human liberty. There were terrible lapses in the construction of socialism. If we take those two things together, the idea of liberty and the idea of socialism, in the battles that we face, then we can take public opinion with us. We can do so provided that we can hold on to our democracy and provided that we say that the corporations have enough power and we need to make them more accountable to people.

Technical questions

Q. Do you really believe that socialism is still a viable option?

A. The demand for socialism came as a result of peoples experience under capitalism. There is both an ethical and a scientific basis for socialism. What I think we are facing is a crisis about how we run society democratically and make it accountable. So when socialists are constructing socialism we have to be sure that we bring the people along with us.

We are facing a set of circumstances where the world is much more interdependent than it ever was before. We have environmental concerns that can’t be dealt with on the basis of simply controlling one national state. We have to move beyond the simple idea of grabbing hold of the state and constructing socialism. It is very hard to know where the commanding heights of the economy are anymore. In some ways they are in education, in some ways in the dynamic of the ideas that we go forward with.

The question of socialism is going to come down to a question of accountability, redistribution of wealth and fairness of access for people to the things that technology can create. The old idea was that the purpose of socialism was to unleash the potential of every human being in the world is still true. If somebody says that is out of date then as far as I’m concerned it is not and as far as I’m concerned it is the reason for existence, it makes the world go round. The fact is that we have had a situation where huge mistakes were made and terrible things done in the name of socialism and it has been an oppressive system at times. I don’t see why people who support democratic, humanistic socialism should abandon it.

People can get excited about football and whether you have a right to see it on television. That is a question of control and the Left has to champion those types of ideas. They old question of John Wesley about why the Devil should have all the best tunes is useful. We also have to find popular ways of interfacing with different groups and bringing people together.

Q. In light of the reverses suffered by the Left over the past quarter century, do you believe that it is necessary for socialism to regain the intellectual high ground?

A. The Left has always made advances where it has had popular ideas. The idea for example, that when you are ill, what should determine your treatment is the question of the level of your illness not your pocket book. That is the greatest attack that has ever taken place on the market place and yet it is still the most popular thing that working people have and want to hold on to. Remember that the NHS was once an idea and was declared to be totally impractical. So we have to make our ideas meet common sense. The Left and the trade unions and the environmental groups can only do that by attracting intellectuals. Intellectuals have a special role to play but as equals with the rest of us.

We also have to be honest and look at the failings of the kind of socialism that we have had and look at where it went wrong so that we can put something that is attractive.

There is no future for the Left that isn’t based on new ideas. We can’t go back to some form of socialism that’s finished. It has to be a form of socialism that addresses the problems faced by people and not just a question of opposition but of practical ways of doing things differently. We must find popular and democratic ways to address the big question of the corporations trampling on democracy. The Left has to look to constructing jobs for people and distributing wealth and I still believe that those things are still popular with ordinary people.

Q. What is your view of the concept of the socialist market economy?

A. There has always been markets, they pre-date capitalism itself. Markets go back to feudalism and even beyond. They are simply mechanisms of exchange. Money might not always change hands but markets have always existed. There is nothing to be gained by not admitting that there are markets. The real question is whether markets are our servants or our masters and it is a question that we will face in the coming century and afterwards. Markets are very useful things as a mechanism to tell you what is happening but you have to ensure that you don’t bow down and worship them. Also, in terms of what you might describe as superficial things, markets are perfectly OK. There is nothing that says that you have to be anti-market to be on the Left.

Q. Is it still realistic to demand a full employment economy?

A. The trade union movement has always demanded full employment. Yes, there is still a demand for full employment but this may not mean that people are working all the time. It may mean that people are moving from different jobs and moving to acquire different skills etc. We also have to look at the community aspect of employment. The world has never been so rich nor has it ever had such resources. The question facing us is how to distribute those resources and working is one of the ways of doing that. Community work is a new phenomenon that should be respected, rewarded and well funded because it is as important as a lot of work done in the market place.

Northern Ireland

Q. Do you believe that the trade union movement can play a part in overcoming sectarianism in Northern Ireland?

A. The Labour Movement has been able to do that already. For example, it had an enormous influence on sectarianism in Scotland and in Liverpool sectarianism has been pushed into the recesses of peoples’ memories. Of course the North is an entirely different situation and I’m not arguing that these examples can be automatically transferred. At the heart of the Northern Ireland state has been a question of whether it should exist or not. Going back to Connolly and Larkin’s day there has been a conflict and a tension between those who wanted a British disengagement and those who wanted to engage unionist workers in a struggle for a better life within the existing structures. Those tensions have not gone away but because the Republican Movement has accepted the Good Friday Agreement, a new way exists to allow them expresses their position in a way that can avoid violence.

There are now new forms of struggle over the quantity of resources that goes to Northern Ireland. The trade union movement could be campaigning for is a new basis to evaluate the block of money that goes to Northern Ireland and to look at a new system of evaluation which takes account of the real deprivation which exist all over the North of Ireland. If you get a common definition of what poverty is, then the trade union movement can campaign with organisations like the PUP, Sinn Fein, individual socialists, and others.

The trade union movement has within itself, the basis of an ideology that might bring people together. I remember hearing Betty Sinclair describe the Outdoor Relief riots as the greatest thing she had ever seen. She said that she had seen Protestants and Catholics throwing stones at the RUC for bread.

We are going to have a long healing period and in that healing period you can have struggles that replace the sectarian struggles and that are about a better life for everybody – in short, the old trade union slogan of a better life for all. But we need to go out and engage our people in discussion about this. One of the things we have not done is to seriously engage the membership and discuss these issues because we have been afraid of the difficulties that may arise from those kinds of discussions.