Victor Halley (15 January 1904 – 24 October 1966)[1][2] was an Irish trade unionist and socialist in Northern Ireland, who identified the cause of labour with the achievement of an all-Ireland republic.
A Presbyterian,[2] Halley was born in 1904 at 19 Carew Street, Belfast, the son of James Halley, a soldier, and Julia McCormick. He became an official, and eventually Vice-Chairman, of the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union.[3]
Haley joined the Independent Labour Party, and when in 1932 this disaffiliated from the British Labour Party, he became a founder member of the Socialist Party of Northern Ireland, which retained its Northern Ireland Labour Party affiliation.[4] A mainly Protestant organisation, it had around 150 members in the Shankill and Newtownards Road districts of Belfast,[5][6] Included were Jack Macgougan,[7] and the married couple, Ulster Volunteer veteran George McBride, and 1916 Easter Rising veteran Winifred Carney.[8]
In 1934, along with Macgougan, the original Irish Citizen Army organiser Jack White and other northern trade unionists and socialists, he attended the convention in Athlone that established the broad "anti-imperialist" Republican Congress, an initiative of a left split from the Irish Republican Army.[9] From 1936 he was active, alongside Betty Sinclair, Macgougan, McBride, Carney and others, in organising relief aid for the Spanish Republic during the civil war with Franco.[1][10]
In 1944, with other Protestant trade unionists in west Belfast, Halley joined Nationalist Party dissidents around Harry Diamond, and ex IRA volunteers in forming the Socialist Republican Party.[3] He stood for the party at the 1946 Belfast Central by-election for the party, but was defeated by Frank Hanna of the NILP by 5,566 to 2,783 votes.[11]
In 1948, along with MacGougan and the writer Denis Ireland, Haley was a member of the Belfast 1798 Commemoration Committee.[12] After the government blocked a rally in the city centre, a crowd of 30,000 gathered in Corrigan Park in nationalist west Belfast where they heard Halley declare: "The people who destroyed Tone in Ireland were those who feared the Protestant tradition of association with America, French Republicanism, Freedom and Democracy".[1]
In 1950 and 51, with Diamond he led efforts within the Irish Labour Party to persuade it to organise north of the border.[1]
He died in 1966 in County Westmeath, Ireland.[13]
References
edit- ^ a b c d Courtney, Robert (2013). Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition. Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation. pp. 331–332. ISBN 978-1-909556-06-5.
- ^ a b Halley Family 1911 Census Form
- ^ a b Matt Merrigan, Eagle Or Cuckoo?: The Story of the ATGWU in Ireland
- ^ Notes on the Socialist Party of Northern Ireland
- ^ Tallon, Ruth (2016). Winnifred and George (PDF). Belfast: Failte Feirste Thiar.
- ^ Ronaldo Munck and Bill Rolston, Belfast in the thirties: an oral history, p. 147
- ^ "Letting Labour Lead: Jack Macgougan and the Pursuit of Unity, 1913-1958", Saothar, No. 14
- ^ Quinn, James (2009). "Carney, Winifred ('Winnie') | Dictionary of Irish Biography". www.dib.ie. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
- ^ Byrne, Patrick (1994). The Republican Congress Revisited (with a foreword by Nora Harkin) (PDF). Dublin: Connolly association Pamphlet. pp. 5, 15. ISBN 0952231700.
- ^ Tallon, Ruth (2016). Winnifred and George (PDF). Belfast: Failte Feirste Thiar. p. 10.
- ^ "Northern Ireland Parliamentary Election Results: Boroughs: Belfast". Archived from the original on 22 July 2018. Retrieved 9 August 2007.
- ^ Courtney (2013), p. 342.
- ^ "Mr. V. Halley". Belfast News-Letter. 26 October 1966. p. 105.