Submission of Labour Movement Delegation to Labour Dáil Representatives

Many thanks to the person who forwarded this document to the Archive.

This is a Submission of Labour Movement Delegation to Labour Dáil Representatives from Paddy Healy, then PRO of the Trade Union Campaign Against Repression, outlining the repressive measures taken in Northern Ireland by the security forces. In particular it focuses on the death of union activist Brian Maguire in Castlereagh. It calls for the Labour movement to cease its silence and inactivity ‘on continued repression in the North’.

Here’s a post written by Alan Mac Simoin on the precursor organisation “Trade Union Coordinating Committee Against Repression“. As Alan noted:

This grouping, which soon changed its name to the less cumbersome Trade Union Campaign Against Repression, was set up in 1977 by a mixture of left republican and socialist trade unionists concerned about the growing use of the courts in industrial disputes and the increasing curtailment of civil liberties on both sides of the border.

As Alan also noted:

TUCCAR’s biggest success was undoubtably in May 1977, when they called a strike in Belfast in protest at the death of AUEW shop steward Brian Maguire at the hands of the RUC in Castlereagh barracks. About 2,000 came out, from jobs like the Royal Victoria Hospital and the Kennedy Way industrial estate. All the strikes were in nationalist West Belfast, though I do know that some large jobs in East Belfast were leafleted by a couple of younger members. And that was a very courageous thing to do at the time.

Here’s a contemporaneous report from Militant on the death of Brian Maguire. 

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