Interview with Carmel Gates, General Secretary of the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance (NIPSA), and a member of Militant Left (sister party of the Socialist Party)
NIPSA is an Irish trade union of 47,000 members. Health workers, education workers, civil service workers and more. The left has a majority on the union executive.
Since I got elected in 2021, we’ve grown from 39,000 members. That is largely as a result of the campaigning work we have done. From 2022 until 2024 every section of the union was engaged in industrial action. When workers see unions take action and see what unions do, they join. The union has grown, built on a programme of struggle and taking the battle to the government. That included the first ever public service general strike in January 2024, which succeeded in winning extra money for the Northern Ireland budget.
NIPSA’s fighting stance has given members the confidence to take the lead on fighting racism.
Union stewarding
Trade unions are the only organisations that can organise workers and organise them safely, and so NIPSA put forward a proposal to have trade union-trained stewards on demonstrations to ensure that counter-protests against the racists are well organised and safe. If the trade unions lead, with stewards who are properly trained, then we can drive the racists off the streets.
Our action has been in response to the racist activity that has grown in the North since the summer of 2024, when a group went on a rampage in Belfast. They were attempting to march to the mosque to attack it and, although they didn’t get there, they did attack businesses and shops on the way.
We called on the rest of the trade union movement to engage and be part of the counter-demonstration that day. Many individuals did turn out and as the campaign went on, more trade unionists did mobilise.
We used that experience to bring a motion to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) Northern Ireland conference in November 2024, that it should organise a trained group of stewards who would be ready and able whenever the racists took to the streets. The motion was passed.
We made that call because we learned from the work that we’ve done previously. In the North of Ireland during the 1980s there were sectarian killings, and families forced to move out of their area. ‘Militant’ called for trade union defence. For united, democratic defence of workers and communities.
We need to fight on the things that give rise to racism. Significant poverty has affected a whole layer of working-class people who now feel they have been left behind. People are without homes, without jobs, and without proper services. Unless we take up those issues then there is fertile ground for racists to blame refugees and migrants.
Workers’ party
Building a working-class political alternative is also part of the fight against racism. A meeting in August 2025 brought together trade unionists to begin a discussion to establish a new working-class political voice.
Because of sectarian divisions, that task has always been difficult. Nonetheless, we have always called for workers’ unity and socialism. What we do know is that 3,000 people signed up to the Labour Party in the North when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. Those 3,000 haven’t gone anywhere, and more and more young people are now very disillusioned with ‘politics’ and sectarianism. I believe there will be a thirst for a new party based on workers’ unity and socialism.
In fact, ‘For workers’ unity and a socialist economy’ was the backdrop and the slogan of NIPSA conference 2025. It’s now in the NIPSA constitution. Through our role in the union we’ve normalised the language of socialism so much that when we have the privilege of speaking on behalf of members in the media, the presenters often joke to us, ‘So when you are you going to mention a socialist economy’!
- This interview was first published in the Socialist issue 1332, August 2025
