Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome David Begg to the House, it is a pleasure to have the General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions here. It is important to mark the 1913 Lock-out centenary in this way and that we speak also about its relevance to modern Ireland. I had to propose to a previous meeting of the Committee on Procedure and Privileges that Mr. Begg would address us, and it is great that he is here to do so. As the Leader has said, we have gone one better than the Lower House in our approach to marking the centenary.

I am personally delighted because I had the pleasure of working with Mr. Begg on the TASC democracy commission, which I view as a precursor to the constitutional convention in the sense that we looked at issues around participation in democracy and encouraging greater participation by young people in particular. We did important work on that issue.
Mr. Begg has given a wonderful, clear and comprehensive overview of the complex history and the context of the Lock-out. There is no doubt it was a tragedy and a defeat. As Mr Begg mentioned, it was effectively an unconditional surrender and a betrayal of the working classes who had united in solidarity behind the charismatic and strongly revered Jim Larkin. Of course, he was equally loathed by those on the other side and, in many ways, he became a divisive figure. The Lock-out has achieved an iconic status and it was undoubtedly a pivotal moment in Irish history. One strand of historical work focuses on the personality of Larkin and the relationship he had with other leaders, such as Connolly and O'Brien. That highlights the splits and divide in the trade union movement which Mr. Begg described as a kind of civil war, which is one of enduring effects after 1913. That is only one interpretation of 1913 and it is often the interpretation of those who take an anti-trade union perspective. However, there is another important take on the Lock-out that has left a more lasting legacy to which Mr. Begg alluded. The widespread and common perception of 1913 is that it was a brutal put-down by a ruthless employer, William Martin Murphy and his allies, of workers and their families who were living in appalling conditions and in starvation. Those conditions are so far removed, happily, from current circumstances that it is often hard to see the relevance. There is a renewed interest in the social context of the Lock-out. One only has to look at the revived interest in Strumpet City and recent cultural events, including the reopening of the house on Henrietta Street, the television programmes about tenement life and people's living conditions, and recent dramas in the fringe festival and in Dublin City Hall for culture night to see that.

All of these events have focused on people's living conditions at the time and the impact of the employers' tactics on women and children, in particular.

The Lock-out has left a powerful legacy in Irish society, namely, an enduring attachment not specifically to trade unions but to the principle of communitarianism and the idea of social protection, and, in particular, a determination that families should never again be left in that type of destitution. As Mr. Begg observed, however, there is a great deal of analysis to be done on why social democracy has not had a stronger hold in Irish politics. There certainly has been a strong adherence to a model of the welfare state and of social protection which is broadly in keeping with the European tradition of social democracy. It has, however, taken a particular shape in this country over many years. Some historians describe the Catholic Church as having operated here as a sort of shadow welfare state, providing many of the social protections that were undertaken directly by the state elsewhere. The social protection model in this country is not the same model we saw develop in the Nordic countries, for example, but it none the less marks an enduring adherence to communitarianism.

There are many particular factors to which we can point that might explain why the Labour Party and social democracy more generally did not gain politically from this commitment to communitarianism. The decision by the party to opt out of the 1918 general election is often seen as a pivotal moment in the development of what is referred to as the two-and-a-half-party system. There is an important legacy to tease out in terms of the Irish political system and our social perspective. In the context of our EU membership, we see that Irish governments, comprising a range of political parties and even where the Labour Party is not involved, have adhered very strongly to the social market model. Mr. Begg also pointed to our long adherence to the social partnership model between 1987 and 2009, which is in keeping with the spirit I have described.

There is a further legacy to consider here, which is the unfinished business of 1913. This legacy, which has lived on in the trade union movement and in our industrial relations system, is the voluntarist model of engagement, where traditionally there was no statutory basis for collective bargaining and where unions and employers instead negotiated on a voluntary basis. As Mr. Begg observed, International Labour Organisation conventions and, more recently, the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights have pointed strongly to the need to ensure rights to collective bargaining and trade union recognition in the workplace. This was the central issue in the 1913 Lock-out and in many trade disputes in this country in the intervening years. It is the unfinished business of 1913 that we still have not implemented those rights in law. An attempt was made in 2004, as Mr. Begg pointed out, in the amendments to the industrial relations legislation. That attempt was undermined by the Supreme Court decision in the Ryanair case in 2007, which took a very restrictive interpretation of the legislation. There is a strong academic argument that the decision in that case breached ILO Convention No. 98 and did not take sufficient cognisance of the true content of the freedom of association rights. I am very pleased that the programme for Government negotiated in 2011 includes a commitment to review the need for the inclusion of the principle of union recognition in legislation. I look forward to seeing that done in the lifetime of this Government.

I referred earlier to the cultural legacy of 1913. In the year when we finally decided to name a bridge in Dublin after a woman - Rosie Hackett, a trade unionist involved in the Lock-out - it is clear that it is a cultural legacy that lives on very strongly. As Mr. Begg observed, the values and motives that drove the women and men who took part in the Lock-out are still very much alive and kicking in this city and country today.