Elizabeth Margaret Sinclair (3 December 1910 – 25 December 1981)Maurice Cronin, 'Sinclair, Elizabeth (Betty)', ''Dictionary of Irish Biography'', https://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a8088 , accessed 14 February 2021. was an Irish

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

organiser.

Early life

Born at 44 Hooker Street in

Ardoyne Ardoyne () is a working class and mainly Roman Catholic Church, Catholic and Irish republicanism, Irish republican district in north Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1920 the adjacent area of Marrowbone saw at multiple days of communal violence be ...

, Belfast on 3 December 1910, Sinclair came from a Church of Ireland family and was the daughter of Joseph Sinclair, a sawyer, and Margaret, née Turney, both natives of Belfast. She became a millworker alongside her mother after leaving school at the age of 15. She joined the

Revolutionary Workers' Groups Revolutionary Workers' Groups (RWG) were left wing groups in Ireland officially founded in 1930 with the objective of creating a Revolutionary Workers' Party. Formed initially as the ''Preparatory Committee for the Formation of a Workers’ Rev ...

(RWG) in 1932. Michael Farrell, ''Northern Ireland: The Orange State'', Pluto Press (2nd edition, June 1980); /. In 1933, she was involved in the Outdoor Relief Strike. She then attended the

International Lenin School The International Lenin School (ILS) () was an official training school operated in Moscow, Soviet Union, by the Communist International from May 1926 to 1938. It was resumed after the Second World War and run by the Communist Party of the Soviet ...

in Moscow until 1935.Betty Sinclair profile
, communistpartyofireland.ie. Accessed 25 February 2015. The RWG established the

Communist Party of Ireland The Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) is a Marxist–Leninist party, founded in 1970 and active in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland following a merger of the Irish Workers' Party and the Communist Party of Northern Ireland. It ra ...

(CPI) in 1933, and Sinclair became a leading member. In 1940 she was arrested after the CPI paper ''Unity'' published an article allegedly sympathetic to the IRA, and she was sentenced to two months' imprisonment in 1941. The same year she became a full-time party worker in Belfast.

War and post-war

When the all-Ireland CPI dissolved in 1941, Sinclair remained an active member of the

Communist Party of Northern Ireland The Communist Party of Northern Ireland was a small communist party operating in Northern Ireland. The party merged with the Irish Workers' Party in 1970 to form the reunited Communist Party of Ireland. Formation The party originated in the 194 ...

(CPNI) and served as its Secretary from 1942 to 1945. She stood for the group in Belfast Cromac at the

1945 Northern Ireland general election The 1945 Northern Ireland general election was held on 14 June 1945. The election saw significant losses for the Ulster Unionist Party, though they retained their majority. 20 MPs were elected unopposed (38%), the vast majority of whom were U ...

, taking almost one third of the votes. In 1947, Sinclair was appointed full-time secretary of the Belfast and District Trades Union Council. In 1941 Sinclair was arrested and imprisoned after publishing a controversial article in the ''Red Hand'', the official party paper of the Communist Party of Ireland. The Communist Party of Ireland and the ''Red Hand'' were worried by the IRA's willingness to explore links with

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

in order to secure support for a United Ireland, and this was expressed in the ''Red Hand'', questioning if the IRA was turning into a pro-fascist organisation. Republicans sought a chance to respond to this, and the ''Red Hand'' allowed Jack Brady to write an article voicing their views. However, the IRA was a proscribed (banned) organisation at the time in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, and publishing their material was illegal. As part editor of the party, Sinclair was held responsible for the article and later interned, originally for a two-year prison sentence, but this was reduced to two months on appeal. She served her sentence in Armagh Jail, in conditions she described as "medieval". Sinclair campaigned to restore the American

Paul Robeson Paul Leroy Robeson ( ; April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, actor, professional American football, football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for h ...

's passport. Robeson, a noted musician and activist, had supported the Allies during World War 2. However, he was denied a passport by the US State Department due to a long history of supporting left-wing politics and a pro-Soviet Union stance, as well as an anti-colonial attitude.Martin B. Duberman, 1989. ''Paul Robeson''. Bodley Head. pp. 388–389 . In 1958, Sinclair personally met Robeson when he came to Belfast while on a worldwide tour.

Final stages and death

Sinclair was the Trades Council's representative at the talks which founded the

Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA; ) was an organisation that campaigned for civil rights for Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Formed in Belfast on 9 April 1967,ultra left In Marxism, ultra-leftism encompasses a broad spectrum of revolutionary Marxist currents that are anti-Leninist in perspective. Ultra-leftism distinguishes itself from other left-wing currents through its rejection of electoralism, trade unionism ...

ists and was worsening sectarian divisions. She stepped down from her trades council post in 1975, and moved to

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

to work for the ''

World Marxist Review ''Problems of Peace and Socialism'' (), also commonly known as ''World Marxist Review'' (WMR), the name of its English-language edition, was a monthly theoretical journal containing jointly-produced content by Communism, Communist and workers' par ...

'', before returning to Belfast. On Christmas Day 1981, Sinclair died from smoke inhalation caused by a fire in her flat in East Belfast.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sinclair, Betty 1910 births 1981 deaths Politicians from Belfast Women activists from Northern Ireland Communists from Northern Ireland Accidental deaths in Northern Ireland Women from Northern Ireland in politics International Lenin School alumni 20th-century politicians from Northern Ireland Deaths by smoke inhalation