Mick Lynch tells Cork festival that Left must refocus ‘to lift whole working class’

The left needs to refocus on its core values and not allow itself to be distracted by peripheral issues, British trade unionist Mick Lynch told a gathering at Cork’s recent Spirit of Mother Jones festival.

Mr Lynch, who served as the general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers in the UK until his retirement in March, has become something of a stalwart of the Shandon-based festival celebrating the Cork-born US union organiser.

“I’ve been captured by Mother Jones and the Robert Tressell festival in Dublin,” Mr Lynch told The Echo.

The Mother Jones festival has been running in Cork since 2012, while the Robert Tressell festival, which is now in its third year, celebrates the work of the author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, who was born Robert Croker on Dublin’s Wexford St in 1870.

Mr Lynch said he supports the festivals because he believes in the importance of their work.

“I believe we’ve got to keep our working class culture going as an alternative, not just to the right wing, but also to the professional politicians who would have you think that the world is all about technical solutions,” he said.

“The world is also about belief and principles and history, the history of where we’ve come from; if we don’t know where we’ve come from, we’ve got no idea where we’re going to go.”

He added that he was always happy to visit Ireland, “if I can get a pint of Beamish wherever I go”.

The Londoner has strong ties with Cork, his late father’s hometown, and while in Cork he addressed the weekly pro-Palestine rally.

“It’s so admirable, the way the Cork people have come out week on week, and for much longer than they would have wanted to, but it’s vital that we keep the energy going and keep the campaign going, right across Ireland and right across the world,” he said.

“The British people are doing it as well, but it doesn’t get the coverage, I’m afraid, because the media have shown that they don’t want to cover these events.”

In his contribution to the Mother Jones festival, he recalled: “I said a few challenging things, and I like to be challenged by people who’ve got something to say.”

Asked what those challenging things were, he replied: “I think we’ve got to return and focus on lifting the whole working class and not get split into minor issues.

“The right taints us and pictures us as people who are obsessed by certain causes, whether that’s equalities or rights issues, and I think the fundamental of what the trade union movement and the labour movement must do is economic transition, to change working class communities, which will stop the division between migrants and native workers, so that we rise as a working class, so that everyone moves forward.”

The housing crisis is something which Mr Lynch said is common to Ireland and Britain and he believes is an example of rampant capitalism resulting in societal suffering.

“All of that is in the hands of developers, and it should be in the hands of the people, through corporations and councils, housing associations and other bodies, to build housing that people need, affordable under public ownership,” he said.

“It’s really important, that bit, so that it’s democratically controlled.

“Council ownership is good because it gives them an asset. It’s something that they can borrow against, and councils all over the Western world have lost their assets, they’ve lost the ability to borrow properly, and they’ve lost the ability to raise revenue, because council houses do that. It’s a constant stream of income, which isn’t a bad thing. The landlord in any town or city or county should be the people. It should be about sharing wealth, not storing it all up into dividends and share prices for the oligarchs and the multi-billionaires. It’s that stuff, redistribution of wealth through changing the economy,” Mr Lynch added.

“And we’ve got to get back to that, where trade unionists and labour people know what they’re talking about, about the way work is structured and the way the economy works, it should work for all of us, not just a few.”