Keaveney’s principled stand recalls that of Michael Bell in 1982

As the ITGWU/SIPTU Head of Research from 1971 to 2010, future Labour TDs among my work colleagues included, successively, Michael Bell, Eamon Gilmore and Colm Keaveney.

Why mention Michael Bell at this critical juncture? Because, barely four months after being elected TD for the first time in November 1982, Bell had been prepared to take a principled stand against the disastrous economic and social policies being pursued by the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition Government of that era.

In March 1983 he resigned the Labour Party whip and voted against that year’s inequitable Social Welfare Bill, while in May he was willing to propose amendments to the Finance Bill which we in the ITGWU had drafted with the objective of redistributing the tax burden from lower and middle incomes to those top income earners and possessors of wealth who were best positioned to bear it.