Paul Grace 1932-2009
Paul Grace, a trade unionist who played a significant role in the Civil Rights Campaign and in various efforts to establish Labour politics in Northern Ireland, died on 2 May 2009 aged just under 77. – writes Pat Muldowney
Paul was born in Eglish in Co Tipperary, near Cloughjordan, on 29 June 1932, one of six brothers in a family of twelve. At age 16 he went to work in England and joined the RAF there. He served in Ballykelly, Co. Derry, in the 1950’s, where he was “batman” to the Commanding Officer.
Like most southern Irish people, he had little initial knowledge of Northern society. He told me that he once went out with a girl who said her father was an Orangeman. He understood this to mean that the man worked in the fruit trade.
He married in 1954 and lived in Artisan Street, in the present location of Rosemount Gardens. At that time he was notable as the only possessor of motorised transport – a motorbike – in that area.
After leaving the RAF he worked for the Post Office, and became active in the Post Office Workers’ union in Derry. In the 1960’s he was involved in the Derry Housing Action Committee, the Derry Unemployed Action Committee and Derry Labour Party.
In Derry, the housing and unemployed campaigns were the basis of the Civil Rights campaign in which Paul became heavily involved, liaising between different parts of the campaign around the North, and organising the all-important stewarding of rallies and demonstrations to ensure they remained peaceful. He was a member of the Derry Citizens’ Action Committee which ran the Civil Rights campaign in Derry. Tall and commanding in bearing, he wielded a lot of influence in the campaign.
Soon after this he was appointed a full-time official in the Post Office union, and he worked for about twenty five years in England, maintaining his home in Derry.
In 1977 the Campaign for Labour representation was started by David Morrison, with Eamonn O’Kane, who had also been Northern Ireland Labour Party members involved in the Civil Rights agitation. As the NI Labour Party faded like snow on a ditch in the face of social and political realities, the CLR sought to put the onus for socialist politics where it belonged – on the Labour Party which at that time was the sovereign government of the state.
The CLR was a membership group which lobbied within the British Labour Party and, in Northern Ireland, strongly publicised the view that British governments, including Labour governments, were, in effect, colonial rulers in Northern Ireland as they did not receive, or even seek, an electoral mandate to govern there. Their power and authority there was based, ultimately, on armed force.
In 1988 I arranged a meeting in Derry of officers and officials of most of the larger trade unions in the Derry area, to discuss the British Labour Party issue, and how it might be progressed by N. Ireland union members who had a role in terms of the powerful block vote in determining Labour Party policy. The meeting was chaired by James O’Kane, Independent Chairman of Strabane District Council and former Republican activist. Eamonn O’Kane and David Morrison attended on behalf of the CLR.
The obstacles to the project were discussed, along with strategies for overcoming them. The obvious points were that Catholic trade unionists might resist the entry of a British political party to the Northern Ireland scene. But the British Labour Party had a policy of Irish unity by consent, and it was fairly obvious that Irish unity, if it were to come about, could only happen if the British government agreed to it. The British Labour Party, though out of government at that time, was the most likely means by which this might happen. Also, in 1988 the British miners’ struggle, and other resistance to the Thatcher government, had been keenly observed and had the effect of a quite positive attitude to the British Labour Party in some left-wing circles in Derry.
On the other hand, Protestant trade union members might resist a party which supported Irish unity. Against this, it was argued that, if unionist Protestants wanted their views and opinions to be heard in the seat of power and government in Britain, they could not accomplish it from the sidelines. “If you’re not in you can’t win” was the line put by Eamonn O’Kane to the meeting.
But, though important, these were marginal issues for those present, whose primary purpose was to promote effective socialist politics through the electoral system. This was their motivation, not the unionist-nationalist question. In fact they saw participation in the electoral politics of sovereign state power as a means by which the sectarian issue might be eased out of Northern Irish politics.
The approach to be followed was simple. The British Labour Party had various component parts, including trade unions whose delegates to Party conferences voted as a union of hundreds of thousands of members – the “block vote” – and therefore potentially wielded decisive power in the policy-making of the Party. The unions were much more powerful than individual party members. On any policy issue, union delegates to the Party conference followed the line or policy determined by their own union conference. In regard to Northern Ireland issues (such as whether the Party should seek an electoral mandate in N. Ireland by organising and contesting elections there) union conferences generally deferred to the views of their members and delegates from Northern Ireland itself.
Those present at the Derry meeting of 1988 were members of British-based trade unions. As such, though they could not participate in the electoral and governing work of the British Labour Party, they were entitled to participate in Labour Party conferences and policy making. They could wield enormous influence on their union’s policy on N. Ireland matters, and hence, through the “block vote”, on the Labour Party’s Northern Irish policy.
Most of these unions had a local Northern Irish regional decision making council, and this would have to be won over to a policy of using their union’s block vote to change the Labour Party’s policy on electoral involvement in N. Ireland.
There was a striking elegance to this strategy. By successive leveraging, a relatively small number of people in N. Ireland could accomplish a political measure which could transform the way Northern Ireland was governed. And it was not pie-in-the-sky. The issue could be presented to union branches and councils in N. Ireland in which many of the participants were non-sectarian socialists, and step by step, the Party organisation issue could be taken through their union policy making processes, and then, by the block vote, carried in the Labour Party conference.
Those present at the Derry meeting were union officials and activists to whom the cut and thrust and wheeling and dealing of union politics were second nature. The strategy and its purpose appealed strongly to them.
Subsequent to this meeting, the participants remained loosely co-ordinated, if not unorganised, as they sought to bring union power to bear in the councils of the British Labour Party. The CLR continued to be the public face of the campaign, agitating in Northern Ireland and Britain, and presenting powerful arguments against the way in which the British state governed in N. Ireland.
Meanwhile, in the Post Office union, Paul Grace, as a union official in the London Head Office, debated the issue in branches and meetings throughout Britain as part of his regular schedule of work. This union was left-wing, with political groups in control of many areas. But Paul overcame their rather doctrinaire and convoluted arguments against Labour representation in Northern Ireland, partly by the power of his personality, but also by throwing the argument back to them – to explain their reasoning to someone like him, a non-ideological Tipperary-man to whom their theories made no practical sense.
They may not have realised that they were dealing with a subtle and experienced person, who had been able to dominate, in his own way, the left-wing cauldron of Derry politics in 1969, where the impossible was accomplished – the temporary removal of the British Imperial state from a square mile or so of its land- and air-space by unarmed civilians. I doubt whether the practical reality of this was something that most British left-wing activists of the time could even begin to comprehend. But Paul knew it, as he knew by experience the possibilities and limitations of political activity, electoral and otherwise.
With other unions, the Post Office union moved to a supportive position. Two of the people who expressed this support were the union General Secretary Alan Johnson, now Labour’s Minister for Health, tipped to be Gordon Brown’s successor, and Kate Hoey, a Northern Ireland-born MP for a London constituency who had Post Office union sponsorship.
The CLR and various trade union campaigns began to yield results over the next few years, into the early ’90’s. But as the project entered the realm of practical reality, cracks and tensions emerged. In Derry it was known that Paul Grace would soon be retiring from his job as a trade union official in England, and returning to live permanently in Derry; and it was hoped that he might exert a positive influence.
In fact, his retirement to Derry in 1994 practically coincided with a meeting organised by Kate Hoey MP whose purpose and intention were to take control of the relatively unorganised Labour supporters in Derry with a view to hijacking their campaign in the unionist interest. Strange but true.
Within a fairly short time it was obvious to Paul, and to everyone else involved, that it was not going to be possible to use the British Labour Party to bring about a non-sectarian form of socialist electoral politics in Northern Ireland.
Paul had a happy and contented retirement, and he enjoyed a passion for golf, which he continued until his final illness.