Patrick Belton

Belton was born in 1884 in Rathcline, near Lanesborough, County Longford, the son of farmer Richard Belton and Mary (nee Rhatigan).[2] He attended the local national school and subsequently won a scholarship to King's College, London. Following his education, he stayed in London and entered the Civil Service. He became very friendly with Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins at this time. In 1905, he was present at the establishment of the Sinn Féin organisation in London, and in November 1909, according to some sources, he initiated Michael Collins into Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). He was a prominent member of the Geraldines GAA Club in London, and he was for many years its President. In 1909 he became Secretary of the London County Board of the GAA.

In 1910 he was transferred to the Irish Land Commission in Dublin.

Belton took part in the 1916 Easter Rising. His obituary in the Longford Leader noted that he "...was associated with Michael Collins and other London comrades when they came to Ireland in 1916 for the Rising. After the Rising he was suspended from the Land Commission on suspicion of having been connected with the event, but was later reinstated". A detailed narrative of his activities during the 1916 Rising is contained in a handwritten letter he sent in 1937 to Máire English, supporting her claim to a Military Service Pension. It suggests that he was either physically in the GPO at some stage during the Rising, or in some way attached to the insurgents based there.[3]

After reports in 1918 that 'large bodies of Sinn Féiners' had assembled and were drilling on his lands, the police raided his house on 30 July. While some of those present managed to escape, two revolvers and more than fifty rounds of ammunition were discovered in the house. Various papers were found which showed Belton's involvement with the Irish National Aid Association, the Irish Volunteer Dependants' Fund, Sinn Féin, and the Patriots' Graves Committee. There was a pass admitting the bearer to the graveside of Thomas Ashe on the day of his funeral. On 31 August 1918, Belton was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour for possessing arms and ammunition. He served his sentence in Mountjoy and Belfast jails.

In the 1923 general election, he stood unsuccessfully for the National Democratic Party in Leix–Offaly.[4]

Belton was elected as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) for Dublin County in the June 1927 general election.[5] In the eight-seat constituency, he was the third person to be elected, after Kevin O'Higgins (of Cumann na nGaedheal), who would be assassinated one month later, and Bryan Cooper. Fianna Fáil, which had been founded in 1926 by Éamon de Valera, contested Free State elections but its policy was to refuse to take seats in the Dáil; this was because the Oath of Allegiance, agreed in the Treaty, required all TDs to swear, inter alia: “I will be faithful to H.M. King George V, his heirs and successors...”

On 26 July 1927, he made headlines by breaking with Fianna Fáil policy, taking the Oath of Allegiance and entering the Dáil (Dan Breen, perhaps surprisingly, had done this on 25 January). The next day's paper quoted him as saying that he was taking his seat in the hope of saving the nation "from the degradation and destruction" which he believed the passage of proposed new legislation would involve. These measures included, in addition to the Electoral Amendment Bill (requiring inter alia that all Dáil candidates take the Oath of Allegiance), a Public Safety Bill incorporating tough new measures, and which was partly a reaction to the assassination on 10 July of Kevin O'Higgins by IRA members. The National Executive of Fianna Fáil expelled him from the party and called on him to resign his seat. Éamon de Valera said: “As for Mr Belton, everybody who was not absolutely blind could see that Mr Belton, since his election, has been manoeuvring for an opportunity to go in and take the oath. He will be alone, however.”[6]

Ironically, on 11 August, De Valera and the 42 other Fianna Fáil TDs had a change of heart and decided to take the Oath after all, characterising it as "merely an empty political formula".

At the time of his dismissal from Fianna Fáil, Belton had been a TD for only six weeks. He subsequently lost his seat in the general election of September 1927, in which he had to stand as an Independent. From this time onward, there was a mutual and obvious enmity between Belton and de Valera.

He joined Cumann na nGaedheal in 1933, and was returned as a TD for Dublin North at the 1933 general election.[7]

On 22 August 1936, the Irish Independent called for the formation of a committee to help the (pro-Franco) citizens of Spain in their war effort. These calls for support resulted in the formation of the Irish Christian Front (ICF). The ICF held its initial meeting at the Mansion House in Dublin on 31 August 1936. Belton became the organisation's president. The group had overwhelming support from the general population as well as the backing of the Catholic Church.

The ICF claimed that it was non-sectarian, in order to build up its support base.[8] It also claimed to be non-political, interested only in helping the church in Spain and not partisan politics.[9] Despite these claims, the organisations' ideological leanings soon became apparent:

When our organisation's work is complete we will make Ireland a very hot spot for any communist to live in...if it is necessary to be a fascist to defend Christianity then I am a fascist and so are my colleagues.

— Patrick Belton, Irish Independent, 12 October 1936[10]

The ICF would hold pro-Catholic and anti-communist rallies, drawing an estimated crowd of 40,000 on one occasion, and would seek to publicise the massacres committed by the Spanish Republicans. In November 1936, Belton travelled to Spain to arrange for a shipment of medical supplies to be purchased with funds raised from church-gate collections. However, Belton, a supporter of nationalist Spain, claimed that the important battle was to be fought at home and not abroad. Belton opposed Eoin O'Duffy's dispatching of the Irish Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, opposing the move on the grounds that he believed the battle against communism would be fought at home, not abroad .[10] During this time, Belton began openly engaging in Antisemitism:

We hear the boasting coming from the Government Benches, we heard it today, of the progress of industrialisation. It is time that we in this country came down to tin-tacks and got some little moral courage. It is time for us to pull the wool off our eyes and tell this House and tell the country what industrialisation in this country really means. It means that we are handing this country over to a gang of international Jews.

— Patrick Belton, Dáil Éireann debate – Thursday, 4 March 1937[11]

Communism can only be kept out of this country by clearing the breeding grounds of Communism, and those breeding grounds are poverty, bad conditions and propagandists. I suggest that Jews have been the propagandists of Communism the world over, and we should not let them into sheltered trades and positions in this country to carry on their propaganda.

— Patrick Belton, Dáil Éireann debate – Wednesday, 10 March 1937[12]

The ICF's popularIty would dwindle following Belton's loss in the 1937 general election, as well as its inability to change the government's policy on Spain and in the face of heavy casualties suffered by O'Duffy's volunteers.[10]

Belton had been involved in farming and/or market gardening from an early stage, even dating back to his time in the Land Commission. In 1917 he had acquired a sizeable holding at Belfield Park in Drumcondra, and in 1938 he moved to a farm at Bellevue Park, Killiney on Dublin's southside. In 1937, he was active building several hundred houses at Belton Park, part of Puckstown Lane, which he renamed Collins Avenue. He also became active in the licensed trade, opening a public house on Collins Avenue. Around that time, however, his health seems to have taken a turn for the worse. Reporting to the October 1937 Special Convention of the ICF, the organisation’s honorary secretary stated that in April Belton “suffered from a severe breakdown in health caused by overwork, principally his efforts on behalf of the Irish Christian Front, and more especially by hardships undergone by him through his journey to Spain. His illness necessitated a considerable slowing down of activities.” Despite this deterioration in health, he was elected as a Fine Gael TD for Dublin County at the 1938 general election. In 1939, he attempted to buy Glencairn House from Boss Croker's estate, but the sale fell through. He lost his Dáil seat at the 1943 general election.

He died on 30 January 1945, at his home in Killiney, County Dublin. His death prompted the Longford Leader to write as follows: "The regretted death of Mr Patrick Belton has occasioned widespread sympathy throughout the country but particularly in his native county of Longford with his family and relatives. The name of Belton in Dublin has been associated with one of the most remarkable personal undertakings of enterprise and courage in this country in the present century. A veteran of the war of independence, a civil servant in his early days, court-martialled, imprisoned and suffering dismissal because of his national sympathies and activities, the late Mr Belton proceeded on a course of independent enterprise which astonished the greatest financiers of the day. In addition to his great practical undertakings in housing, tillage, dairying and many other pursuits, which provided extensive employment, Mr Belton was a Dáil deputy for a number of years and a Member of Dublin Corporation, County Council and practically every other public body in Dublin"

Three of his four sons – Richard, Jack and Paddy - served as members of the Oireachtas, as did his granddaughter, Avril Doyle.

"I did not agree with the wisdom of Irishmen going out to Spain." – Irish Press (26 November 1936)

"I have never been a party politician in the sense that I would obey the orders of any political junta who would tell me to do a thing, whether I considered it right or wrong." – Irish Press (30 January 1937)

"The Minister for Finance [Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh] was there or thereabouts at the birth of Sinn Féin. I was there or thereabouts, too, certainly at the birth of Sinn Féin in London. When we look back on those 40 years and remember that Sinn Féin won out, is it not a sad commentary on the policy which our young minds then grasped with enthusiasm to find that in this country which we got free of debt 20 short years ago—these 20 years have greyed our hairs and wrinkled our faces but they represent a short time in the history of a nation—we have piled up a debt of £111,000,000? …... What is wrong? Have we proved, as was often flung in my face in London, that the Irish cannot govern themselves? What have we to say in regard to that £111,000,000? We have not a single asset to show apart from a crop of pensions. We pensioned one another." – Dáil debate (19 May 1942)

• Families in the Oireachtas