Debate contribution: Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 17 January 2024.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

17 January 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Assembly Business

Heading

Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4177595

Read the official Assembly record

Text

On behalf of People Before Profit, I express our solidarity with all those public-sector workers who are taking strike action tomorrow for pay and investment in our public services, in defiance of the rotten Tory Government and their functionaries here. Just this morning, I stood with striking education workers on the picket lines at St Joseph's Primary School, Slate Street. Their message was simple: they would rather be in school today, providing for our young people, but it is long past the time that they were given a real pay uplift and a grading review for the vital work that they do. It is not lost on anyone that those who keep our society functioning have been forced to go on picket lines while the DUP refuses to do a day's work. We are far beyond the point of making appeals to the DUP or its fellows in the Tory party. I am not here to make an appeal to the DUP, because we have been down that road before. We know its real and divisive motives, and we know that its self-serving boycott has mainly been about staving off electoral losses. Instead, I speak directly to those striking workers who have set a shining example of people-power politics, refused to accept the limitations set by the crisis of Stormont and taken action to demand better for themselves and all who have been failed by Westminster and Stormont. Every person who has languished on a health or housing waiting list is behind you. Every parent and pupil who has seen schools decimated by cuts is behind you. Everyone who has had their pay frozen and their living standards attacked and who has struggled to make ends meet is behind you. In recent weeks and months, there have been deliberate attempts by the Tories and sections of the media to demonise those workers for taking strike action. It is important to say that we do not buy the propaganda and the spin of a Tory Government who have decimated public services, handed billions to the wealthy and condemned countless people to a life of state-enforced poverty. We do not accept the lies of a Government who say there is no money for public services but plenty of money to bomb Yemen and commit arms to fund Israel's genocide in Palestine. It is also important to say that we will not play the cynical political game that tries to apportion blame to either the DUP or the Tories while letting the other off the hook. Just as the Secretary of State could stop using workers' pay as a bargaining chip to restore Stormont, so too could the DUP end its boycott and start addressing workers' demands. Both are to blame. Workers will, no doubt, be familiar with the famous adage that power cedes nothing without a demand. If there is no progress on their demands, there should be an escalation of their strike action, including a general strike and, as some have suggested, civil disobedience if necessary. Shut the place down and show that it is workers, not politicians, who truly keep our society functioning and that they should be paid a proper wage for doing so. Workers should also reject the false narratives of parties that suggest that restoring Stormont will solve issues faced by working-class people. The DUP, Sinn Féin, Alliance, the UUP and the SDLP are the same parties that, time and time again, voted against giving workers a pay rise when they had the chance to do so.

I will in a second. If you show me an Executive Minister who claims to have fought for the interests of those workers, I will show you their abysmal record. It is easier to condemn Tory cuts when you are not implementing them at Stormont. While there appears to be money on the table for workers' pay if Stormont is restored, there is no guarantee of investment in services. There is further talk of austerity measures, such as water charges and an unacceptable 15% rates hike. Given their record, questions will loom about whether any incoming Executive and the parties here will, once again, roll over for the Tories. Our message is that workers need to be ready to challenge them. The institutions, built on sectarianism, have failed workers for well over 25 years. In fact, workers on picket lines have done more to unite our communities and advance their causes than all the crisis-ridden years of the Assembly. That unity is the very thing that will deliver on their demands.

As the crisis at Stormont rolls on, more and more people will insist that the Northern state itself is fundamentally broken beyond repair. Unfortunately for the DUP, it will find that, if its boycott continues and this state is ungovernable, people will continue to demand and shape an alternative. If workers take up that struggle together, an all-Ireland alternative will, and needs to, go beyond —

— the focus of an all-class alliance and challenge the profits of the wealthy and the rich.

Solidarity to those taking strike action tomorrow. I will be on the picket lines.

858 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:33 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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