Scores gathered at the graveside of Winifred Carney on Saturday [19th November] to mark the 79th anniversary of her death. A trade union organiser, member of Cumann na mBan and the Irish Citizen Army, she is buried in Milltown Cemetery in Belfast.

The event was chaired by Lasair Dhearg’s Martine Jackson, who called for wreaths to be laid by Aindriú Mac Ruaidhrí on behalf of Lasair Dhearg, and Sarah Sonner on behalf of the Connolly Youth Movement, before introducing Patricia Campbell to deliver the main oration.

Patricia said:

“I am honoured to have been invited to speak about this formidable revolutionary woman, Winifred Carney who was imprisoned for her beliefs. In many ways she was written out of history and you have revived her memory and what she stood for. Winifred Carney played a leading and active role in the Irish Citizen Army, the first citizens army of the working class in the world in which women played a full part.

The Irish Citizen’s Army were formed to protect the working class from the ruthless landlords, employers, and to achieve economic sovereignty. They knew that a country without economic sovereignty is far from free.

The bureaucratic trade union movement at that time believed that “unskilled” workers couldn’t be unionised, they totally underestimated the worth of the working class and history shows that they were proven wrong. The trade union movement at that time saw “unskilled” workers as incapable of organising. Let’s remember where these so called “unskilled” workers came from, they were the children of the “famine” survivors that made their way into the cities from rural Ireland to find employment.

As all of this was unfolding, Winifred was Secretary of the women’s section of the Irish Textile Workers’ Union and she wrote with Connolly, the 1913 Manifesto to the ‘Linen Slaves of Belfast’. It was a timely and hard hitting manifesto at a time when Belfast workers, mostly women and children were working long hours in horrific conditions, bare foot and hungry for as little as 3d per day…Some if not many of you are the bloodline relatives of women and children from that era.
 
To speak of “unskilled’ workers, Carney and Connolly in their manifesto, highlighted the skill of the workers in the mill, “spinning is a skilled trade’, they said, “requiring a long apprenticeship, alert brains, and nimble fingers”. They made the point that qualified spinners in Belfast received a wage less than some of the pious mill owners would spend weekly upon a dog. They made the point “Many Belfast mills are slaughterhouses for the women and penitentiaries for the children.

Can you imagine what that must have been like? Carney and Connolly were frustrated that the workers couldn’t unite together and fight for better conditions they knew that the workers felt powerless and they gave them an injection of words to awaken them. They challenged them on their servile attitude. In that manifesto, they concluded with a strong message, “Sisters and Fellow-workers, talk this matter over, do not be frightened by the timid counsels and fears of weaklings. Be brave. Have confidence in yourselves. Talk about success, and you will achieve success… Let’s bring that message to our workers and communities today. How can we not see there is a need more than ever to reject this current rotten system laced with economic policies that keep working class communities in poverty. It was brute capitalism then and it is brute capitalism now. To days minimum wage and the safety net social benefits for those in need, is not much more than 3d per day in 1913.

Winifred Carney was a friend and confidante of James Connolly she was present with Connolly at the GPO during the 1916 rising. Before the partition of this country, James Connolly warned what would happen if we went down the road of partition. He said there would be “a carnival of reaction” . Connolly didn’t live to witness it. Winifred Carney did. We can only imagine what it must have been like for women in those days as she and many others fought for a woman’s right to vote and play a full role in the revolution. Unfortunately it was going to get worse Winifred lived through that carnival of reaction when the right wing blue shirts and the nationalist FF took control, aided and abetted by the British establishment and the Catholic Church.

We would have no doubt what Winifred must have felt to witness the abuse and criminalisation of women and their babies in the mother and baby laundries. Indeed Belfast had its own laundry, run by the Catholic Church. Partition didn’t affect the Catholic Hierarchy , they were the strongest all Ireland organisation, wielding much power.

It was through organising in the trade union movement, she met her husband, An unlikely bedfellow some might say, as they were from opposite poles, she a firm Socialist Republican and he a unionist. However, they found common ground in trade union work, (I can only assume that she found more common ground with her future husband than some of her former nationalist comrades who joined the right wing alliance of church and state’.
 
So here we are today, a generation born into this failed 6 county statelet. Many of us have memories of the British military on our streets in the 70s 80s and 90s. Many present here today have no lived experience of life in this statelet pre Good Friday Agreement. There has been much social change in the last 25 years but one thing that hasn’t changed is that the place where Winifred Carney lived and organised for a better Ireland, is researched as the most disadvantaged in Western Europe.

We are facing yet another election and people will be left to vote along sectarian lines and left with no choice but the promises and soundbites about “fixing our NHS” and “make politics work”. They have diminished the NHS and their politics hasn’t worked for the people. We don’t need this type of electoralism. Winifred Carney stood for election as a Sinn Fein candidate in the 1918 general election. She didn’t secure enough votes. Unfortunately the people lost out on her principled politics. She wasn’t the type of SF candidate or liberal feminist that would talk about rights and then sign them away with a bureaucratic pen.

We’ve seen the Stormont executive and the governments of the 26 countries implement ruthless free-market policies and practices, reinforcing legislation that undermines trade union strength. Here public sector workers and will be striking for better pay. We must support the public sector workers, hailed as essential workers, clapped and hailed. Will they be clapped when they strike for better pay? But we will be supporting and clapping for them.

It is encouraging to see the development of community groups like Lasair Dhearg making your voices heard.

We are hearing much about a united Ireland and the term “a shared Ireland”. Shared with who? The multi million corporations? that profit from our national resources and charge us extortionate rates for what belongs to the people. Water, fuel, housing health should not be a commodity.

As Socialist Republicans we need to be careful that we don’t ‘sleep walk’ into a rich mans/woman’s United Ireland. The rich and powerful North and South are promoting their versions of an ‘Agreed’ or ‘Shared Ireland’. We need to have these conversations and we must talk about how the Irish government have and are handing control of our vast renewable energy resources to Big Energy while people starve and die and they soak up the profits of our collective labour.

While we all know what is wrong we must collectively work on the solutions. We must organise all-Ireland campaigns on such issues. Right now The Irish government has attended meetings of what has been described  by the US as a “NATO alliance”. we must seriously object to this. We must not allow our future generations to be used by the ruling classes as canon fader for imperial interests. We must not wait for a British government decision to hold a referendum, nor for conservative politicians and the rich north and south, to broker a deal between themselves. We must build class consciousness and unity of our class …through joint struggles. and lead from the front to decide our own future which must include public ownership and public control of Ireland’s resources and infrastructure.

Right now we are on the edge of the worst economic crisis in our lifetime. Winifred Carney lived through decades of economic decline and poverty but she fought until the end. It is imperative that we move forward with her agenda to bring about a workers republic and an end of partition.

As we stand by her grave side today we must take heed of her legacy and build strong trade unions and work within our communities to challenge and overturn this failed system.”

ENDS