Donal Nevin Born: January 20th, 1924 Died: December 16th, 2012Donal Nevin, the former general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) who died last weekend, was an intellectual giant of the Irish union movement.
His service to Irish trade unionism for more than 40 years included key roles on national, international and European organisations, while he also educated a generation of trade unionists at home through his deep economic scholarship and understanding.
He was also a founding member of the Economic and Social Research Institute in 1960 when it was formed under the auspices of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society. He sat on the board of the institute until 2004.
He was also a founding member and vice-chairman of the Irish Times Trust in 1974, a post he held until 2002.
He served his time as general secretary of Ictu at a time of difficult relations with government, particularly the Fine Gael-Labour coalition of 1982. Unions felt somewhat marginalised in the context of the absence of a national pay agreement and a pay “free for all” in the private sector.
His period as Ictu leader co-incided with the rise of Thatcherism and early neo-liberalism in the UK and a particularly strong anti-union bias which emerged within the UK political system. There were strong fears among union leaders at the time that the anti union sentiment could spread to Ireland.
Through his involvement in the National Economic and Social Council, Nevin helped steer Irish public policy away from this route towards a tripartite agreement between unions, management and government.
As general secretary of Ictu from 1982 to 1989 he played a key role in Irish industrial relations during a very difficult and challenging period, culminating in the advent of social partnership and the Programme for National Recovery in 1987.
This helped provide an ingredient that had been missing, namely pay stability, which in due course underpinned Ireland’s competitiveness. It was a key building block in the early years of what became known as the Celtic Tiger, well before the onset of this crisis.
He went on to sit with employer and government representatives on the central review committee of the agreement, a critical group to unlock early difficulties in the then fledgling partnership process.
A major innovation was the circulation and preparation of Trade Union Information, sometimes with the assistance of his wife Maura and daughter Anne. This publication provided valuable information in an age when people were less conversant with economic topics.
Nevin is also credited with keeping Ictu on a non-partisan path during the days of tumult in Northern Ireland. He was determined to keep congress from going down the sectarian route.
Nevin was the force behind the Larkin monument and selected the quotations which appear on it. But his main focus was trade unionism and public policy rather than the national question or unification.
He was also strongly supportive of Ireland’s involvement in the EU, membership of which the bulk of trade unionists did not initially support.
He hailed from Limerick, was educated by the Christian Brothers and in 1941 joined the Civil Service. Nevin spent eight years in the statistical branch of the then department of industry and commerce.
In 1949 he was appointed research officer of the then Irish trade union congress. He was promoted to the assistant secretary position and in 1982 succeeded Ruairi Roberts as Ictu general secretary.
Despite being honorary parliamentary officer of the Labour Party he opted for the trade unionism and not politics. He was remembered as a powerful and impressive speaker at party conferences in the 1960s.
As a national trade union figure and leader of congress Nevin had a reserved but highly factual style. He was regarded as self-effacing and seen as a leader who would not “run with the crowd”.
Perceived by his colleagues to be a reflective man with strong principles, he was a speaker who could “stop a debate dead with one sentence”.
Nevin was regarded as being more animated by public policy and labour issues, particularly the social wage, than by the gruelling nitty gritty of day-to-day industrial relations issues.
He was an admirer of Young Jim Larkin, was deeply engaged with labour history and wrote Trade Union Century in 1994 as well as producing an anthology on Jim Larkin entitled Lion of the Fold. He also wrote a biography of James Connolly, whose collected works he edited.
Nevin served on the first board of the Combat Poverty Agency. He had a strong commitment to ending poverty and the promotion of social justice and was regarded as being very close politically to the late Labour Party leader and trade unionist Frank Cluskey.
Donal Nevin is survived by his wife Maura and daughter Anne. He was predeceased by his brothers Thomas, Jack, Frank and Dermot and by sisters Stasia, Maureen and Eileen.