A REAL hero of the trade union, labour and socialist movement has left us. Pearse McKenna, a bakery worker from the Falls Road in Belfast, became an activist in the Transport and General Workers Union and fought in numerous campaigns on behalf of the workers. 

He was targeted for assassination by the pro-empire Ulster Freedom Fighters in 1991 because of his active intervention in the Ormeau Bakery in South Belfast, to secure a neutral, non-partisan workplace, in pursuit of the policy of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), in this case free of Orange and loyalist flags and bunting.  

Pearse was seriously injured. Thankfully another one of the bullets missed, grazing his head, after McKenna dived for shelter under a bakery lorry outside of his workplace where he was shop steward.

More than a decade earlier, in 1976, while working in Peter Pan (formerly Hughes) Bakery on the Springfield Road, Pearse was involved in a walkout of bakery workers protesting over the killing by the Provisional IRA of a senior manager in the workplace car park. 

This was during the Ictu Better Life for All campaign when the trade union movement responded to the increase in political violence by campaigning for a range of social and economic demands as well as the right of all workers to go to and from their place of work without fear of attack. 

Despite the attempt on his life Pearse continued his anti-sectarian work in defence of workers through his involvement with the Counteract organisation, established to combat sectarian intimidation in the workplace.

His outlook however had a broader dimension than just the workplace and the trade union movement, although this was the bedrock of his beliefs and principles. A long time executive member of the Belfast Trades Union Council, taking on the roles of secretary and vice-president at various times, Pearse was associated with a range of left-wing causes, a regular May Day stalwart and participant in protests and marches against austerity and for an end to imperialist wars. He was a regular contributor to Unity, the newspaper of the Communist Party.

Tributes were paid to Pearse from a wide range of people including Jim Quinn, secretary of Fermanagh Council of Trade Unions, who recalled, among other things, Pearse and his wife Margaret taking the time to visit the picket of striking transport workers in Enniskillen, where they were attending the launch of a commemorative booklet on Jim Brown, a late comrade of Pearse from Co Fermanagh. 

Quinn admitted that his dietary regime was transformed after Pearse had convinced him that there was more protein in a pint of Guinness than a pound of steak.

In a few words at the Roselawn Crematorium on February 6, Lynda Walker recounted that Pearse was active in the International Brigades Commemorative Committee activities, at home and abroad, how he sold both Unity and the Morning Star at public events and how, in the articles he wrote for Unity, he exposed the hypocrisy of the Orange Order and the Unionists, challenging sectarianism from every quarter. 

Pearse was a strong supporter of socialist Cuba and participated in a range of events in Havana in 2009 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the revolution. Pearse considered that one of his finer moments was when he transported, at the request of the T&G, a package, by train across the Irish border, during the 1984 miners’ strike, leaving it in the rack above, as he ventured to the refreshment car to stock up with some additional protein. The parcel was successfully delivered to its destination in Dublin but it was only later that he learned that it contained in the region of one million pounds. That was money that the NUM striking miners wouldn’t forfeit to Thatcher’s anti-trade union sequestration laws.

Patrick Pearse McKenna, to give him his full name, was born, on August 3 1945, into a nationally minded family on Belfast’s Falls Road, played hurling and Gaelic football with the now long-defunct O’Connells Club and realised at an early stage the truth of James Connolly’s dictum that “the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour” and vice versa, dedicating his life to the emancipation of the working class. 

Pearse’s commitment to the cause attracted no rewards or elevation. In his case this was never a consideration. He remained steadfast in his principles. A man of deep integrity. Ta se ar shli na firinne anois! He left us on February 1, La Feile Bride, the first day of spring in Ireland. We are all enriched by his time among us.

We all owe him a great debt and we extend our deep condolences to his wife Margaret, sons James, Gerard and Michael and daughters Louise and Jennifer.

Brian Campfield is former general secretary of Nipsa trade union and former president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.