In this issue:
Irish Citizen Army plaque unveiled in North Strand
SIPTU defers Luas strike action on St Patrick’s Day to consider WRC proposals
Strike action at Cadbury’s suspended
Cork County Council decision on fire service plan places lives at risk
Vote David Begg for Seanad (NUI)
Looking at the bigger picture
Seanad Éireann Election
Vote Alice Mary Higgins for Seanad (NUI)
Workers' Republic Conference
The Rising Centenary Concert
Liberty Hall & The Rising
Pull Down a Horseman
SIPTU Equality Exhibition 2016
Glórtha 1916
Mother: A film about 1916 in Laois
Workers Republic
Our union was central to the Easter Rising
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Looking at the bigger picture
Seanad election candidate David Begg discusses his life and ideas for a better Ireland with Scott Millar.

David Begg needs little introduction to anyone that has taken an interest in current affairs in recent years. In his prominent role in organisations such as the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), Concern and TASC he is long established as one of the key voices in Irish society speaking up for egalitarian values.

Speaking about what he hopes to achieve as a member of Seanad Éireann, it becomes very clear that he is man focused on a bigger picture than is the norm for Irish politics.

“The crisis of 2008 was the fourth time since independence that we have looked into the abyss of economic dissolution. It happened before in the 1930s, 1950s and 1980s. That should cause us to reflect for a minute about our development model and why we are so susceptible to boom and bust.

“Part of the answer to that means accepting you cannot run a country effectively without a strong state sector. We need State intervention to build houses, for instance. Also, how are we ever going to manage the transition to a low-carbon economy without a State-led intervention to bring the economy around?”

His ideas have been long in maturing. Born in the North County Dublin rural area of Rolestown near Swords, Begg recalls the year and a half his father spent recovering from TB as a defining experience that also introduced him to the work of one of the champions of the Irish Left.

“In the sanatorium he was under the care of Dr Noel Browne, of latter political fame. My father had enormous admiration for him as a very kind, compassionate and egalitarian man.”

Begg, who recently turned 66, is married to Máire, has three children and seven grandchildren and still lives in Rolestown. He began his working life as an apprentice electrician in the ESB in 1965.  The semi-state company provided him with a scholarship to study and he became an ESB engineer before taking up full-time employment as a union official with the then ESB Officers Association.

His activities in the trade union movement have always included a consideration for the position of the other side, and where possible seeking to negotiate a solution that could benefit all. This approach was evident in his commitment to the partnership model of industrial and state management when he assumed the role of ICTU General Secretary in 2001.

“My commitment to the Social Partnership model was dictated by a belief that we were operating in very unfavourable political circumstances, philosophically at least, and to an extent social partnership was an attempt to create a social democratic polity without the electoral political success. If you think about it, for 22 years that was reasonably successful.”

Begg says his approach was at least partly inspired by a somewhat surprising source. “In the late 1960s I saw a series of films by the Swedish director Bo Widerberg. One of them, Ådalen 31, in particular, had a huge influence on me.”

Based on real events, the film tells the story of a strike by Swedish wood pulp workers in 1931 which resulted in the killing of five men by the army at a protest against strike-breakers.

Remembering why the film had such an impact on him, Begg says; “There were no bad guys in it - that was the interesting thing. Even the employers or the ‘scabs’. It explained the position of everyone, why circumstances had brought them to where they were. The employers were shocked by the killings and the result of it was a kind of synthesis of opinion that they couldn’t go on like this and that they had to change and Sweden did change.”

Begg became general secretary of the Post Office Workers Union in 1985. During his period leading the union he managed its merger with the Irish Communications Workers Union in 1990. Begg left trade unionism in 1997 to become the chief executive of Concern Worldwide.

Having already served on the Board of Trócaire for 10 years it was a role for which he was well prepared and over the next six years saw him visiting some of the world’s worst trouble spots and disaster situations.

“I worked in 27 countries overall, mainly in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and in Central America. The main thing we were trying to do was build capacity for people to organise for themselves. However, at the emergency level it was just trying to supply people with food, mainly refugees fleeing war-torn situations.

“Everywhere I travelled with Concern, the thing that struck me very forcibly was that no matter where you go people are people and they are motivated by the same need to keep body and soul together as everybody else and it is tragedy to see people divided for different reasons.”

During his time leading trade unions and Concern Worldwide, Begg was continuing to ponder the issue of why Ireland has failed to successfully follow the social democratic model of countries such as the Nordic states. He embarked on a degree in International Relations in DCU and a PhD in sociology in NUI Maynooth to further his knowledge of the subject.

His thesis, which compared Ireland with other small European counties with open economies and how they have developed more equitable social systems, became the basis of his recently published book, Ireland, Small Open Economies and European Integration: Lost in Translation.

“The book is my magnum opus”, he said, “It contains my thoughts on social democracy that I have considered for many years.“Ireland is a particular case because social democracy really has not had a huge foothold here. I argue that this is because the outcome of the Civil War was two main political parties offering competing versions of nationalism and that the net result of all of that was that all major questions of public importance thereafter became conceptualised in terms of visions of independence rather than in terms of class interests.”

“We are now at a point, post-election 2016, that those competing versions of nationalism are now forced towards one another in a way that everybody recognises that there is no ideological difference between those parties, although there are cultural and historical differences.”

Begg believes this situation opens the way for “new alignments of political forces” and even, hopefully, the consideration of new development models for the country.

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