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#uNDC15 remembers Inez McCormack

At the fringe meeting “Inez, a Challenging Woman”, a packed room sat in silence as an award winning documentary was shown about the life and work of Inez McCormack, UNISON’s former Regional Secretary in Northern Ireland and a leading campaigner across the world for equality and human rights. The silence was occasionally broken by laughs at Inez’s acerbic wit and was ended by rapturous applause, with very few dry eyes in the room, as the film closes with the news of her death and her friends remembering her.

Inez came from a background in fighting for civil rights and worked as a social worker in one of the most deprived areas of Belfast before becoming a union organiser for the National Union of Public Employees.  She was the first woman to take up such a role and the film hints at the struggles she must have faced and her view that if you can no longer be hurt, you can no longer be effective.  Her aim was always to make space for other women and to support women in getting involved, getting organised and changing the world around them to make it easier for them and others to come forward.  Her passion was for those women who are all too often invisible, those who clean, those who cook and those who care and she was determined that their union would find ways of supporting them to realise their value and recognise their power.  The Northern Ireland peace process saw her and the union at the forefront of the fight to make the Good Friday agreement one which would deliver real change for all working people across Northern Ireland.

I was really privileged to work in Northern Ireland when I was first a union organiser for the union NUPE, and the impact of working with her has remained with me throughout my whole working life.  It wasn’t just Inez, but the women of the region; Rosaleen Davidson, Anna McGonigle being just two of them, as well as Patricia McKeown, the current Regional Secretary.  They taught me the most important lesson – that we all live in space made by those who came before and our job is not to claim that space as ours but to widen it and welcome others in.  I hope we’ll get a chance to show the film in the South West as a way of widening that space for others to follow.

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Joanne Kaye

Regional Secretary 


Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
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