• Could you describe the background to your visit to Belfast?
Gerry MeMorrow: This was a supposedly factfinding tour organised by the Greater London Association of Trades Councils. We were elected by our particular Trades Councils to take part in this tour.
Beforehand there was a meeting at which the schedule was described by the delegation's secretary, Jack Dromey. It was suggested then that it was a very narrow one, and we proposed that the delegation should meet a wider cross-section of the community. But we were told that the schedule had all been prepared in Belfast and couldn't be diverged from.
Yet two days after that meeting we received letters from Jack Dromey saying that the trip had been postponed for almost a month because no arrangements had been made in Belfast. Rosemary Sales: When we finally arrived in Belfast itself on the Thursday night (3 July), we found that four things that hadn't been mentioned in the original report on 7 June were actually included: these were a visit to Harland & Wolff, a visit to a Government Training Centre, and visits to two Official Republican Clubs.
Two of these - Harland & Wolff, and the Government Training Centre - were completely irrelevant, tourist type trips.
• Could you explain why you were forced to leave the main delegation body?
Mike Knowles: On the Thursday night we met with some members of the Executive of Belfast Trades Council, and had a short discussion with them. On the Friday the whole morning was taken up with the visit to Harland & Wolff. The afternoon was similarly taken up with the completely irrelevant visit to a Government Training Centre.
Then at 5 o'clock on the Friday we met Brendan Harkin, who's General Secretary of the Public Services Alliance an amalgamation of the Civil Service unions in Northern Ireland.
Photo: CHRIS DAVIES (Report Delegation secretary Jack Dromey-tried to prevent discussion on troops RS: Gerry asked a question on the troops, and then Jack Dromey tried to steer the discussion away from this on to the economy, unemployment etc. We didn't think this was what we'd really come for - people were busy asking questions on the Social Contract and so on. We felt it was necessary to bring the discussion back onto the question of troops As we have often explained in Red Weekly, the need for the British labour movement to take up the question of Ireland is vital. Any steps in this direction are obviously welcome; thus on fact-finding tours.
gates of the correctness of specific policies (e.g. a Bill of Rights to be passed at Westminster).
This was the case with a delegation from the Greater London Association of Trades Councils which visited Belfast on 3-6 July.
(NUT), Secretary of Hackney Trades Council - attempted to change the visit into a genuine their experiences.
hear. • So by this stage you still felt that you were meeting a very narrow section of opinion?
GMc: Well, we hadn't met any people who weren't either in the Communist Party or supported the Communist Party's line • except in Harland & Wolff's, where some of them seemed to be pretty sectarian in their opinions.
RS: So we decided that while we didn't want to miss any of the important sessions, we would go to meet the Editor of Andersonstown News, who introduced us to a number of people from the Andersonstown area, which is the largest Catholic ghetto in Belfast.
We were so interested that we thought that the other delegates should hear what these people had to say.
When they arrived, the chairman refused to allow them to meet the delegation, and so we felt that having invited these people along we had no alternative but to walk out of that particular session MK: At about 7 o'clock that night we met up again with the delegation, but when we approached them we were told by the chairman of the Greater London Association of Trades Councils, fom Pilfold, that we were on our own now and they didn't want anything to do with us.
• Could you say something about the views expressed to you during the latter part of your visit?
RS: The main thing we found in people's minds was the question of the presence of the British troops on the streets. We saw a great deal of evidence of Army harassment even during the truce.
When we asked them what did they thin about the presence of British troops the vas majority of the people we met in the Catholic ghetto areas said that they didn't want the the IMG has always supported the idea of trade union delegations visiting the North of Ireland Unfortunately many of these 'fact-finding' trips have been stage-managed to convince deleThree of its members, however - Rosemary Sales (ATTI) of the Barnet Trades Council Exec utive, Gerry McMorrow (ASTMS) of the Hackney Trades Council Executive, and Mike Knowles fact-finding tour and were excluded from the delegation for their pains. We asked them about bottling plant in a Protestant area. Its workforce is predominantly Catholic, and recently there was an attempt to assassinate five people, who escaped by locking themselves in a fridge.
The shop stewards there immediately asked the Army for protection, but the shop steward we talked to was told by the Army that they just hadn't the manpower to offer any protection. He made the point that when he went home, to his own area - Turf Lodge, a Republican area - the place was crawling with soldiers. doing nothing during this period of truce but harassing the people, there.
GMe: Another incident of harassment that we came across happened after a community oiganisation from Andersonstown had put up signs of their own accord on a section of the Andersonstown Road saying 'Accident Black Spot'. The Army first removed these signs and then later apologised and said would the people go down to Andersonstown Barracks and cellect their signs.
SELF MK: Well, we found that the Bill of Rights simply wasn't an issue in people's mindspeople didn't believe that it was possible for Westminster to legislate a Bill of Rights, they saw that sectarianism was built into the whole way the British presence operated, and this was the main thing they were concerned about.
• Why in your view was the leadership of the delegation so inhibited about meeting a wide cross-section of opin ion?
GMc: The delegation was supposedly sent as a fact-finding tour, but the overwhelming impression we got was that the line had been pre pared, and the only organisations that we were to meet were organisations which supported the Bill of Rights as the way forward.
As we see it, the whole purpose of this delegation was to confirm to the London trade union movement that this line, the Com munist Party line, had mass support in North ern Ireland. Without these incidents, they could have come back and said that everybody we met supports this line.
•What do you think London trade unionists should be doing about all this?
MK: The delegation's main function in London was set up as to have a report-back conference which would be open to all trade unionists and would be held in the autumn. We think that London trade unionists should insist (a) that this conference be held, because there are strong vite speakers from amongst the three expelled members to their branches and trades coun cils, particularly if speakers from the rest of the delegation are making a report at their meetings RS: Yes, we want to make sure that when the report-backs are taken both sides are heard -that we're not condemned and censured unheard, but that the whole discussion, the whole way that the delegation was rigged, comes up - and that the facts are available to the whole trade union movement.
PUBLIC MEETING
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DETERMINATION IRISH
suspicions that it will be cancelled or be a clos ed meeting, (b) that trade unionists should in-
NORTH TROD: