THE FUNERAL will take place in Belfast on Wednesday of trade unionist and co-founder of the Labour Party of Northern Ireland, Lord Blease of Cromac (93), who died in hospital last Friday following a short illness.
Known as Billy Blease, he was an active trade union member and became the first Northern Ireland officer of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) in 1967. Following his retirement from Ictu he accepted a Life Peerage in 1978, and remained an ardent supporter of the trade union movement in the House of Lords.
Paying tribute to Lord Blease, the assistant general secretary of Ictu Peter Bunting said he had believed in the "autonomy and integrity" of working class people and strove always to promote the view that there was a will in Northern Ireland to improve the lives of all people, regardless of religion or nationality.
He was born in 1914 and educated at Belfast Technical College, the National Council Labour Colleges and the Workers' Educational Association. He entered the workforce in 1929 as a shop apprentice, becoming a grocer's assistant and grocery branch manager between 1938 and 1940. In 1940, he got a job in the Belfast Shipyards, where he worked as clerk until 1945 when he became branch manager of the Co-op Society of Belfast.
In 1959 he became an officer of the Northern Ireland committee of Ictu and in 1975 a member of the the Independent Broadcasting Authority, a position he held until 1979. He was active in the Northern Ireland Labour party since the early 1950s, contesting, unsuccessfully, elections to the Northern Ireland parliament in 1953 and 1965. From 1979 to 1983, he was opposition spokesperson on Northern Ireland and was a Labour Party whip for 10 years.
In 1985 he and Paddy Devlin, a former Social Democratic and Labour Party councillor and Northern Ireland Assembly member, formed a new group, the Labour Party of Northern Ireland (LPNI). They ran several candidates in the 1985 local government elections, but none were successful.
In 1987, the group merged with the Northern Ireland Labour Party, Ulster Liberal Party and the United Labour Party to form a party known as Labour '87 with the aim of campaigning for a united Labour Party. The LPNI won a local government seat in a by-election in Newtownabbey in 1987.
He is survived by his sons Victor Maurice and Paul and daughter Gillian, 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.