Sam Kyle

Who was Sam Kyle?

Sam Kyle was an Irish trade unionist and politician.

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

The Labour Representation Committee became the main section of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, 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.