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Life
b. Dublin, worked in Post Office, 1916; elected to national executive of POWU, 1920; appt. full-time secretary, 1924-48; elected Labour TD, Co. Dublin, 1926-27; elected TD Kildare, 1932-63, and Labour Party leader; incorporated resolution on public ownership in party Constitution, 1936, together with removal of aim of Workers’ Republic which was counter to Catholic doctrine; supported James Larkin’s return to the Parliamentary Party, 1943, and suffered the disassociation of the ITGWU, a breach not healed until 1950; |
Tanáiste and Min. of Social Welfare, 1948-51, serving under John A. Costello in coalition govt.; Min. of Industry and Commerce, 1954-57; President of Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International, 1957; lost seven seats (returning 12) in election of 1957; resigned and succeeded by Brendan Corish, 1960; d. Dec. 1963, Dublin; Norton, who advocated Free Trade and European Union, is considered to have been harshly treated - even demonised - in Noel Browne’s autobiography. DIB DIH |
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Commentary
Brian Inglis, Downstart (London: Chatto & Windus 1990): ‘It very soon became clear that the leaders of the Labour Party, when they attended our meetings, regarded even the mention of [James] Connolly’s name with deep suspicion. Socialism, too, was a dirty word. The Party’s main support lay among farm labourers, in those constituencies where the farms were large enough to employ labour, and they tended still to accept unquestioningly the authority of the Church. To the Church, Marx was anathema. Norton and the others were determined not to allow their supporters to be alarmed by mavericks in the city. The successor to the Irish People, when it appeared, was scrupulously anodyne. Very soon, it disappeared.’ (p.172.)
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Notes
Flouting the bishops (not): ‘If the question is raised as one in which the Bishops are to be on one side and the Government on the other side, I say, on behalf of the Government, that issue is not to arise in this country. This Government will not travel down that road [...] There will be no flouting of the authority of the Bishops of Catholic social or Catholic moral teaching [...]’ (In The Irish Times, 1947 - i.e., during the controversy surrounding Noel Browne’s 1947 Mother and Child Bill; quoted in Anthony Alcock, Understanding Ulster, 1994, p.19.)
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