Dan Spring (1 July 1910 – 1 January 1988) was an Irish Labour Party politician who served as a

Teachta Dála A Teachta Dála ( , ; plural ), abbreviated as TD (plural ''TDanna'' in Irish, TDs in English), is a member of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas (the Irish Parliament). It is the equivalent of terms such as ''Member of Parli ...

(TD) for the Kerry North constituency from 1943 to 1981. He was a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government from 1956 to 1957. He was the father of

Dick Spring Dick Spring (born 29 August 1950) is an Irish businessman and former politician. He was a Labour Party Teachta Dála (TD) for the Kerry North from 1981 to 2002. He became leader of the Labour Party in 1982, and held this position until 1997 ...

, who led the Labour Party from 1982 to 1997.

Early life

Spring was born into a working-class family in

Tralee Tralee ( ; ga, Trá Lí, ; formerly , meaning 'strand of the Lee River') is the county town of County Kerry in the south-west of Ireland. The town is on the northern side of the neck of the Dingle Peninsula, and is the largest town in County ...

County Kerry County Kerry ( gle, Contae Chiarraí) is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and forms part of the province of Munster. It is named after the Ciarraige who lived in part of the present county. The population of the co ...

. He left school at the age of 14 and began his working life with a series of low-skilled jobs. When he was working at a mill, he became involved in the

Irish Transport and General Workers' Union The Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), was a trade union representing workers, initially mainly labourers, in Ireland. History The union was founded by James Larkin in January 1909 as a general union. Initially drawing its memb ...

(ITGWU) and after a while became a trade union official. He married Anna Laide (1919–1997) in 1943. Spring was a

Gaelic football Gaelic football ( ga, Peil Ghaelach; short name '), commonly known as simply Gaelic, GAA or Football is an Irish team sport. It is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score by kic ...

player, and was the captain of the

Kerins O'Rahilly's Kerins O'Rahilly's are a Gaelic Athletic Association club from Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland. They are based in the Strand Road area of the town. They are in Division 1 of the county league which they won in 2006, and compete in the County Cham ...

team with whom he won two

Kerry Senior Football Championship The Kerry Senior Football Championship (known for sponsorship reasons as Garvey’s SuperValu Senior Football Championship) is an annual Gaelic football competition organised by the Kerry County Board of the Gaelic Athletic Association since 188 ...

titles. He first played with

Kerry Kerry or Kerri may refer to: * Kerry (name), a given name and surname of Gaelic origin (including a list of people with the name) Places * Kerry, Queensland, Australia * County Kerry, Ireland ** Kerry Airport, an international airport in County ...

when he won Munster and All-Ireland Junior titles in 1930, and captain of the

county side when they won the All-Ireland final in 1940.

Politics

Through his involvement with the ITGWU he became well-known enough to stand in Kerry North for the Labour Party at the 1943 general election. He was elected as the first Labour Party

(TD) for Kerry and held his seat until he retired in 1981. In 1944, Spring was among a group of six TDs who broke away from the Labour Party because it was allegedly infiltrated by

communists Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a so ...

and formed a new party they called the National Labour Party. The Labour Party and the National Labour Party reunited in 1950, having worked alongside each other in the

First Inter-Party Government First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

since 1948. In 1956, during the term of the

Second Inter-Party Government The second (symbol: s) is the unit of Time in physics, time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally t ...

Spring was appointed as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government, which he held until the government ended in 1957. For the rest of his political career Spring never held any significant post on a national level, and as a relatively conservative rural Labour man he fell out of step with the official line of the Labour Party, which moved significantly to the left during the 1960s and 1970s. During a vote on contraception, Spring famously said that on the day of the vote, his constituents would see how he stood on the issue. On the day of the vote, he appeared as a barrister in a court far away from the parliament. Spring concentrated on his constituency work and was returned in every election he stood in until he retired in 1981, his son

Dick Dick, Dicks, or Dick's may refer to: Media * ''Dicks'' (album), a 2004 album by Fila Brazillia * Dicks (band), a musical group * ''Dick'' (film), a 1999 American comedy film * "Dick" (song), a 2019 song by Starboi3 featuring Doja Cat Names ...

then successfully contesting the seat.

References

Early life

Politics

See also

References