Under a winter morning sun on an icy picket line a young woman gripped her toddler’s buggy and held aloft a placard emblazoned with the word “Shame”. Lucy Collins, a mental health nurse at Belfast City Hospital, placed photographs of DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson alongside Northern Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris on the home-made sign to express her frustration at being paid less than her NHS colleagues in Britain: “NHS cares…If only these 2 did”, it read.
“We’re not valued,” she said. “These politicians are elected for the people. We’re saddened and disheartened by them. I’m here with my two children today, they’re our future. What really matters to people? Our health, our schools, our safety.”
Collins was among the tens of thousands of public sector workers who staged strike action across Northern Ireland on Thursday in a long-running dispute over pay parity. The UK government last month made an offer to grant a £580 million pay award as part of a £3.3 billion deal for the North – a move that would have averted the mass walkouts – but was dependent on Stormont’s restoration. The DUP is continuing its boycott of the powersharing institutions over post-Brexit trading concerns.
Domestics, porters, bus drivers and teachers marched through the city streets and roared their demands for fair pay.
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As sub-zero temperatures began to rise the mood turned to anger. Belfast’s main thoroughfare heaved with flag-carrying workers who converged on City Hall; children were dotted throughout the crowd with schools being shut. St John ambulances were on standby and police officers on motorbikes drove alongside feeder parades as the rally ballooned in size. There was no trouble.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said one woman, stepping back from the six-deep crowd listening to trade union leaders’ addresses from a stage in front of City Hall.
Cheers and whistle-blowing got louder when teaching union leader Justin McCamphill from the NASUWT shouted: “To the DUP we say, ‘get back into government…The Tories have taken our money, the DUP should not take our hope’.”
A paramedic who worked through the Troubles said people “have had enough”.
“I think the fact we know the money is there and know this Tory government isn’t for bending to whatever demands are made of them, by whoever…it’s a terrible indictment of our politics,” said Eddie Richmond. “But it’s not about green, it’s not about orange any more. It’s about the haves and the have-nots – and the haves don’t seem to care about the have-nots.”
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