Victor Halley

rdf:langString Victor Halley

rdf:langString Victor Halley (1904-1966) 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, 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 evenutlly Vice-Chairman, of the Amalgamated Transport and General Worder Union. 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. 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 Repubican Army. From 1936 he was active, alongside Betty Sinclair, Macgougan and others, in organising relief aid for the Spanish Republic in civil war with Franco. 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. 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. In 1948, along with MacGougan and the writer Denis Ireland, Haley was a member of the Belfast 1798 Commemoration Committee. 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 [United Irish leader, Wolfe] Tone in Ireland where those who feared the Protestant tradition of association with America, French Republicanism, Freedom and Democracy". In 1950 and 51, with Diamond he led efforts within the Irish Labour Party to persuade it to organise north of the border.