Life
1900-1963; b. Dublin, worked in Post Office, 1916; natinal executive of
POWU, 1920; full-time secretary, 1924-48; Labour TD, Co. Dublin, 1926-27;
TD Kildare, 1932-63, and party leader; incorporated resolution on public
ownership in party constitution, 1936, together with removal of aim of
Workers’ Republic which was counter to Catholic doctrine; supported
James Larkin’s return to the Parliamentary Party, 1943, and suffered
the disassociation of the ITGWU, a breach not healed until 1950; Tanáiste
and Min. of Social Welfare, 1948-51; Min. of Industry and Commerce, 1954-57;
President of Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International, 1957; lost
seven seats (returning 12) in election of 1957; resigned and succeeded
by Brendan Corish, 1960; d. Dec., Dublin. DIB DIH
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Notes
Brian Inglis, Downstart (London: Chatto &
Windus 1990), writes: ‘It very soon became clear that the leaders
of the Labour Party, when they attended our meetings, regarded even the
mention of [James] Connolly’s name with deep suspicion. Socialism,
too, was a dirty word. The Party’s main support lay among farm labourers,
in those constituencies where the farms were large enough to employ labour,
and they tended still to accept unquestioningly the authority of the Church.
To the Church, Marx was anathema. Norton and the others were determined
not to allow their supporters to be alarmed by mavericks in the city.
The successor to the Irish People, when it appeared, was scrupulously
anodyne. Very soon, it disappeared.’ (p.172.)
Flouting the bishops (not): ‘If
the question is raised as one in which the Bishops are to be on one side
and the Government on the other side, I say, on behalf of the Government,
that issue is not to arise in this country. This Government will not travel
down that road [...] There will be no flouting of the authority of the
Bishops of Catholic social or Catholic moral teaching [...]’ (In The Irish Times, 1947 - i.e., during the controversy surrounding
Noel Browne’s 1947 Mother and Child Bill; quoted in Anthony Alcock, Understanding Ulster, 1994, p.19.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)