Thanks
to David Granville, who does the reviews for the
Irish Democrat and edits their web-site,
my attention was drawn to The Blanket,
where my name came up in the context of Liam
O Comain's defence of Cathal Goulding. Liam's
account of Goulding's role in the politicisation
process in the 1960s is a creditable attempt to
respond to McIntyre's
accusation of 'corrosion' and 'deceit', but
I feel I need to take him up on a few details.
He
is right in attributing a seminal role to the
pamphlet 'The Irish Question and the British
People' written by Desmond Greaves (NB the
spelling), which developed the Civil Rights approach
to Northern Ireland politics in the context of
the Connolly Association and its attempts to influence
the Labour movement in Britain on Irish issues.
He
is however wrong to characterise the Wolfe Tone
Societies as being set up on the Connolly Association
model by Goulding, Costello and Mac Giolla. They
were set up originally as 'Directories', primarily
by Goulding in the context of the Wolfe Tone bicentenary
1963; they subsequently evolved with their own
constitutions into independent think-tanks fuelling
the 1960s politicisation process, with Goulding's
blessing, and with increasing involvement of MacGiolla,
Costello, Mitchell and other in the leadership.
In
this context they indeed were instrumental, via
the Maghera seminars (there were two), in initiating
a broad-spectrum Civil Rights Association at the
War Memorial Hall meeting in November 1966. The
prime mover in this context was Anthony Coughlan
in the Dublin WTS, who had worked with Greaves
in London earlier. In this context I was helping
to develop some understanding of the utility of
this process at the grassroots of the republican
movement, in support of Goulding, where I encountered
Liam O Comain and Malachi McGurran among the key
activists.
There
was in 1969 prior to the August pogrom, with the
O'Neill reforms and increasing interest from the
Labour Party in Britain under Connolly Association
pressure, the makings of a situation in which
republican politics could be legitimised, and
cross-community working-class politics developed.
The pogrom however had the effect desired by the
hard-core Unionists and B-Specials who organised
it: isolate Civil Rights in the Catholic ghettoes,
and re-invent the IRA in its traditional mode
as 'ezternal enemy' to unify all Protestants behind
the Unionist bourgeoisie.
I
have written up what I know of this period in
the context of my book 'Century of Endeavour',
linking it with the experiences of my father Joe
Johnston (1890-1972), who came from near Castlecaulfield
in Co Tyrone. He was an all-Ireland Home Rule
supporter, of whom at the time there were many
of the Protestant persuasion. He wrote his book
'Civil War in Ulster' in 1913, attacking Carson
and the Tory-Orange conspiracy which introduced
the gun to Irish politics at Larne in April 1914;
he went on to make his career in the Free State,
resisting Partition and countering its effects
politically as best he could.
My
own involvement in the process originated with
the student Marxist Left in Trinity College in
the late 1940s, and evolved in the direction of
left-republicanism during the 1950s. I had some
interaction with Sean Cronin (who incidentally
became subsequently a member of the Dublin Wolfe
Tone Society) at the time.
I
am not going to begin to comment on the McIntyre
contribution as a whole, apart from the gratuitous,
simplistic and unworthy attack on Goulding, to
which I have responded as above. I can however
suggest to him, and others like him, that if he
seeks to attack flaws in the current Adams-led
politicisation process (of which there are quite
a few), it behoves him to try to evaluate critically
what happened in the past, in particular the processes
that led to the emergence of the Provisionals
and the return to the armed struggle.
I
have attempted to contribute to this discussion
with my 'Century of Endeavour' memoir,
of which an overview can be seen at www.iol.ie/~rjtechne/blurb.htm,
and
which I understand is in the reviewing pipeline.
