Cathal Goulding

Cathal Goulding (2 January 1923 - 26 December 1998 [cite book | title = Cathal Goulding, Thinker, Socialist, Republican, Revolutionary 1923-1998 | publisher = Workers Party | date = 1999 | pages = p. 35 ] ) was Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army and the Official IRA.

One of seven children born into a republican family in East Arran Street in the north inner city of Dublin, Goulding was involved as teenager in Fianna Éireann, the IRA youth wing which he joined with his neighbour and lifelong friend Brendan Behan. When Goulding reached the age of seventeen he joined the IRA.

In 1945, he was involved in the attempts to reestablish the IRA which had been almost decimated as a result of the action of the authorities in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. He was among twenty five to thirty men who met at O'Neill's pub, Pearse Street, to try to re-establish the IRA in Dublin. He organised the first national meeting of IRA activists after the Second World War in Dublin in 1946 and was arrested along with John Joe McGirl and ten others and was sentenced to twelve months in prison when the gathering was raided by the Garda Síochána. Upon his release, Goulding organised IRA training camps in the Dublin mountains. In 1953, Goulding (along with Seán Mac Stíofáin and Manus Canning) was involved in an arms raid on the Officers Training Corps School at Felstead, Essex. The three were sentenced to eight years imprisonment but were released in 1959 after serving only six years. [cite book | last = Moloney | first = Ed | authorlink = Ed Moloney | title = A Secret History of the IRA | publisher = Penguin Books | date = 2002 | pages = p. 80 | doi = | isbn = 0-141-01041-X]

In 1959, Goulding was appointed IRA Quartermaster General and in 1962 he succeeded Ruairí Ó Brádaigh as IRA Chief of Staff. In February 1966, together with Sean Garland, he was arrested for possession of a revolver and ammunition. In total, Goulding spent sixteen years of his life in British and Irish jails.

In August 1969, Goulding issued a statement calling for the Irish Army to invade Northern Ireland to protect the Catholic minority from loyalist rioters.

Goulding was instrumental in moving the IRA to the left in the 1960s. [J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army, 1979, Irish Academy Press; Robert W. White, Ruairi O Bradaigh: The Life and Politics of An Irish Revolutionary, Indiana University Press, 2006.] He argued against the policy of abstentionism and developed a Marxist analysis of The Troubles. He believed the British state deliberately divided the Irish working class on sectarian grounds in order to exploit them and keep them from uniting and overthrowing their "bourgeois" oppressors. This analysis was rejected by those who later went on to form the Provisional IRA after the 1969 IRA split.

Goulding remained chief of staff of what became known as the Official IRA until 1972. Although the Official IRA, like the Provisional IRA, carried out an armed campaign, Goulding argued that such action ultimately divided the Irish working class. After public revulsion regarding the shooting of William Best, a British soldier, who was also a Catholic native of Derry City, and the bombing of the Aldershot barracks, the Official IRA announced a ceasefire in 1972.

Goulding was prominent in the various stages of Official Sinn Féin's development into the Workers Party. However, in 1992 he objected to the political reforms proposed by party leader Proinsias De Rossa and remained in the Workers Party after the formation of Democratic Left. He regarded the Democratic Left as having compromised socialism in the pursuit of political office. ["Workers Party braces itself for another painful schism", Irish Times, 4th January 1992]

In his latter years Goulding spent much of his time at his cottage "The Schemers" near Myshall, County Carlow. He died of cancer in his native Dublin and was survived by four sons. He was cremated and his ashes scattered, at his directive, at the site known as "the Nine Stones" on the slopes of Mount Leinster.

References

ources

* T. E. Utley, "The Lessons of Ulster" (1975) (Friends of the Union, 1997)
* The Workers' Party, "Cathal Goulding: Thinker, Socialist, Republican, Revolutionary, 1923-1998", (1999).

External links

* [http://workerspartyireland.net/goulding.html Worker's Party website]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20070206183944/http://irelandsown.net/goulding.html Text of Goulding's "There Must be a Fight" speech of 1965]
* [http://www.workerspartyireland.net/goulding.html Text from Workers' Party publication on Cathal Goulding (1999)]