Jack Beattie

Jack Beattie (1886 – 9 March 1960) was a politician from Northern Ireland. He was a teacher by profession. He joined the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP). In 1925, he became a Member of the Northern Ireland House of Commons for Belfast East. He represented Belfast Pottinger from 1929. At one point he served as leader of the NILP.

Early Career

Belfast did not prosper in the 1920s. During the period, 1923 to 1930, unemployment in Northern Ireland averaged 19 per cent of the insured workforce. Jack Beattie proved at the very least to be a loud, if perhaps inevitably ineffective, voice for the poor of the city. During this period, many of the long term unemployed became ineligible to receive unemployment assistance. To make matters worse, the Belfast Poor Law Union, the last resort of the poor and destitute was a less than generous institution. It applied its rules on who qualified to receive assistance very harshly. On one occasion in June 1926 unemployed men protested outside a meeting of the Guardians of the Belfast Poor Law Union. Jack Beattie and William McMullen, a fellow NILP MP were among their number. The two MPs obstructed the meeting and were unceremoniously ”seized by the police and thrown out onto the pavement.” The Guardians were later congratulated for their “stand ...by a delegation of Protestant clergymen who called on the guardians ‘to cut off grants to parasites’”.

Historian, Tim Pat Coogan remarks of the time that despite the prevailing conditions:

“the Unionist ascendency was so secure that it could blithely go ahead with measures such as cutting unemployment benefits while lavishing expenditure on the new parliament building, which was opened in 1932”

Jack Beattie did not blithely play along with the establishment. One occasion perhaps highlights this better than any: In September 1932 Lord Craigavon, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, spoke in the parliament on a motion thanking the Belfast Corporation for the use of the city hall for meetings of the Northern Ireland Parliament. Beattie, incensed, seized the mace and shouted that his motion to bring “to your notice the serious position of the unemployment in Northern Ireland” had been rejected. An unusual scene of uproar ensued as Tommy Henderson joined Beattie in his protests. Bardon reports that ignoring the Speaker’s pleas for order, Beattie continued shouting:

"I am going to put this out of action....The House indulged in hypocrisy while there are starving thousands outside."

Beattie then wrested the mace from the sergeant-at-arms, threw it upon the floor, and walked out.

Unlike the majority of the NILP, he supported Irish unity, and in 1934 he was expelled from the NILP for that stance. In the same year, he became an organiser for the Northern Ireland Teachers' Organisation.

Later Career

In 1942, Beattie was readmitted to the NILP. He went on to win the Belfast West by-election, 1943 but resigned from the NILP.

In 1945, he held his seat and formed the Federation of Labour (Ireland), but took the Labour Party (UK) whip in the British House of Commons. He was the only Labour candidate returned in Northern Ireland. However, his tenure as a Labour MP was short: He joined the Labour Party in London as an individual member, using his London accommodation address but was subsequently expelled, “solely on the grounds that his place of residence was Belfast”. An incident on 30 April 1945 added yet further colour to Beattie's career. He was punched in the Stormont parliament by Harry Midgley. Midgley apologised the next day.

When the 1949 Stormont election took place, the Anti-Partition League of Ireland was at its height. The middle ground in Northern Irish politics was squeezed. The election was to be a straight sectarian fight. Conditions were, to say the least, difficult. Beattie, who had accepted money from a fund established by the Anti-Partition League, “wore a steel helmet while campaigning in east Belfast”. . When one of his election meetings was broken up by an angry mob, he sent a telegram of protest to Downing Street which read:

“Stoned by official Unionist mobs and denied the right of free speech in my election campaign tonight. Armed Stormont police took no action”.

In the end, Beattie lost his seat, disbanded the Federation and joined the Irish Labour Party. Tim Pat Coogan remarks that with the defeat of Beattie and other opposition candidates:

"for the first time the opposition at Stormont was entirely Catholic, a matter of much satisfaction to Brooke" (Basil Brooke, 1st Viscount Brookeborough).

Although he lost Belfast West in the 1950 UK general election, he retook it in 1951 but lost it once more at the 1955 election. His attempt to win Belfast Central in the NI Parliament in 1953 also failed.