Victor Halley (1904–1966)[1][2] was a 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 at 19 Carew Street, Belfast, on 15 January 1904, 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 small Socialist Party of Northern Ireland, an integral part of the Northern Ireland Labour Party.[4]

In 1934, along with Jack Macgougan, 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.[5] From 1936 he was active, alongside Betty Sinclair, Macgougan and others, in organising relief aid for the Spanish Republic during the civil war with Franco.[1]

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.[6]

In 1948, along with MacGougan and the writer Denis Ireland, Haley was a member of the Belfast 1798 Commemoration Committee.[7] 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]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Courtney, Robert (2013). Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition. Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation. p. 331-332. ISBN 978-1-909556-06-5.
  2. 1 2 Halley Family 1911 Census Form
  3. 1 2 Matt Merrigan, Eagle Or Cuckoo?: The Story of the ATGWU in Ireland
  4. ↑ Notes on the Socialist Party of Northern Ireland
  5. ↑ Byrne, Patrick (1994). The Republican Congress Revisited (with a foreword by Nora Harkin) (PDF). Dublin: Connolly association Pamphlet. pp. 5, 15. ISBN 0952231700.
  6. ↑ "Northern Ireland Parliamentary Election Results: Boroughs: Belfast". Archived from the original on 22 July 2018. Retrieved 9 August 2007.
  7. ↑ Courtney (2013), p. 342.
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