Betty Sinclair

Elizabeth Margaret Sinclair (3 December 1910 – 25 December 1981) 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.

Early life 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. In 1933, she was involved in the Outdoor Relief Strike. She then attended the International Lenin School in Moscow until 1935. 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 (CPNI) and served as its Secretary from 1942 to 1945. In 1947, Sinclair was appointed full-time secretary of the Belfast and District Trades Union Council. In 1958, Sinclair personally met Robeson when he visited 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 (NICRA) in 1967, and she served as NICRA chair until 1969, when she resigned, claiming it had become dominated by ultra leftists and was worsening sectarian divisions. She stepped down from her trades council post in 1975, and moved to Prague to work for the World Marxist Review, before returning to Belfast. On Christmas Day 1981, Sinclair died from smoke inhalation caused by a fire in her flat in East Belfast.