Betty Sinclair
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Betty Sinclair | |
|---|---|
 c. 1930–31 | |
| Born | 3 December 1910 |
| Died | 25 December 1981 (aged 71) Belfast, Northern Ireland |
| Occupation | Political organiser |
| Political party | Communist Party of Ireland |
| Other political affiliations | Communist Party of Northern Ireland |
Elizabeth Margaret Sinclair (3 December 1910 – 25 December 1981)[1] Irish communist organiser. Active in Belfast, she was involved in the Outdoor Relief strike of 1933; had Comintern training in Moscow; sought to mediate differences in the 1940s between the Communist Party of Ireland, of which she was a lifelong member, and the Irish Republican Army; chaired the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in the late 1960s; and in her last years worked for the World Marxist Review in Prague.
Born at 44 Hooker Street in Ardoyne, 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 (RWG) in 1932.[2] In 1933, she was involved in the Outdoor Relief Strike. She then attended the International Lenin School in Moscow until 1935.[3][4]
The RWG established the Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) in 1933, and Sinclair became a leading member.[4] 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.