On 01 January 2023, Ireland marked 50 years as a member of the EEC (now EU).
This followed a referendum on Ireland’s membership of the EEC in which an overwhelming 83% of voters supported the move.
But back in 1972 a special delegate conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions had decided, by a slim majority, to oppose Ireland joining the EEC and for ICTU to organise a trade union campaign for a ‘No’ vote in the referendum.
A paper written in 1999 by the then ICTU deputy general secretary, Patricia O’Donovan takes a whistle-stop tour through the trade union archives into the whys and the hows of the failed campaign of opposition to EEC membership.
O’Donovan, who had joined ICTU in 1977 as an EEC information officer, goes on to show how ICTU quickly came to terms with membership and an enthusiastic participant in European activities over the next 25 years.
