Sam Kyle

Sam Kyle (1884 – 1962) was an Irish trade unionist and politician.

Born into a Protestant family in Belfast, Kyle joined the Independent Labour Party.^[1] He became an active trade unionist, and at the 1918 general election,^[2] he stood in Belfast Shankill for the Belfast Labour Representation Committee.^[3] While unsuccessful, he was a prominent figure in the Belfast strike, 1919, and gained election to Belfast City Council in 1920.^[1]

The Labour Representation Committee became the main section of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP), and Kyle was elected for the party at the Northern Ireland general election, 1925, to represent Belfast North, standing in opposition to partition. For the next four years, he acted as the leader of the NILP, pursuing a policy of working with sympathetic Nationalist Party MPs, and the independent Unionists Tommy Henderson and James Woods Gyle, to oppose the Ulster Unionist Party. After Nationalist Joe Devlin was suspended from the Parliament for attacking the Unionist Party as "villains, bullies, conspirators and ruffians", he led the NILP in joining with the Nationalists and two independent Unionist MPs in walking out, earning them suspensions from the body.^[1]

Following the restructuring of constituencies, Kyle stood in Belfast Oldpark in 1929, but was unsuccessful, losing by just 189 votes.^[1]

In 1932, Kyle became the Irish secretary of the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union and moved to Dublin. In 1940, he was the President of the Irish Trades Union Congress. In 1943, he was elected on the Labour Panel,^[4] and sat as an Irish Labour Party member of the Irish Senate, and re-elected in 1944 serving for five years in total.^[1]

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