Assistant General Secretary Gerry Murphy speech at unveiling of statues of Mary Ann McCracken and Winifred Carney at Belfast City Hall
Good afternoon, Lord Mayor, distinguished guests and citizens of Belfast.
I am delighted, as the representative of the trade union movement across this island and particularly as its principal officer in the north to be in attendance today at this hugely significant event.
The two sculptures unveiled today are not only a fitting recognition, at long last, of two of our most important historical female figures but also a reflection of the city as it is now.
I lead a movement which is 200,000 strong across the north and currently 57% of that membership is female. Mary Ann McCracken and Winifred Carney were early pioneers in the battles which have seen women, rightly, assert their rights to equality of opportunity and treatment.
Their examples have thousands of living legacies, in every workplace and all communities across this city.
Mary Ann McCracken was born into a progressive and liberal household during the Enlightenment, an original republican, you might say. She has been described as a “radical humanitarian, a social activist, campaigner and entrepreneur”.
She was a feminist before the word was invented.
She was an active supporter of the United Irishmen.
She challenged her class and the merchants of Belfast when she campaigned for the abolition of slavery.
Her concern for the oppressed was spread across the entire social and economic fabric of Belfast from the workhouses to the mills. It included education provision and improving pay and working conditions; she would have made a great shop steward, or maybe a trade union general secretary?
History does not repeat itself, but every now and then it rhymes.
Winifred Carney was born 21 years after Mary-Ann passed on, and her life took her through momentous times and events. Her politics were shaped by the industrial revolution, by the emergence of Irish Nationalism and its Unionist counter, and by a simultaneous global revolt when socialism took hold in the minds and hearts of working people from every creed and in every nation, city, mine and mill.
