Tomás Mac Giolla remembered… in a somewhat unlikely place… February 11, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
As was put to me…
If you live long enough you see everything, but I was honestly taken aback
by this.
Indeed…
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pity she couldn’t just leave it without the mandatory jibe about Stalinism. Tomás was anything but.
But, nonetheless, good to read.
WBS:
I agree it is good to read. Bríd Smith is a good sort. The Stalinist comment was about the WP in general and not specifically directed at Tomás.
On a general note. The WP defended so-called existing socialism to the end.The party newspaper was filled with uncritical stuff. It directed all it’s fire against the Provos in the North. McGiolla claimed it was a surprise to him when someone in the Official IRA claimed the murder of Costello. I remember him praising Dubchek long after the wall had fallen. But I have no memory of anything like this from any leading member of the WP before.Their cousins who now run the Labour Party claim that they did not know the existence of the Official IRA and thought it had gone away.He presided over the WP down the years and seemed not to notice Harris/Smullen and the extreme Stalinist element who made no secret of ther fondness of Stalinist methods.
I do know that Tony Gregory had a soft spot for him, I suppose that counts for something.
This is all like Bertie not knowing about corruption in FF and the nonsense of climbing trees.Are all our politicians including those on the left either very naieve or something else.
The comparison with Bertie is in extremely bad taste.
Secrets and lies yes but in the context of what appeared at times as a global struggle, and what may have seemed more locally as a life and death struggle.
Life is short and so am I. But Thomas McGiolla was giant in more ways than one.
Photo of Thomas’s funeral here, more later.
http://workerspartyireland.net/
I suspect some of you might be interested in just published:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FORMER COMMUNIST
Please share this link with those who might be interested.
go to WWW[dot]AMAZON.COM and search for Ludwik Kowalski
or
http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/mybook2.html
P.S. The book is waiting for a reviewer
Is that a paramilitary guard of honour?
Yes – don’t see the problem with that
no Eamonn, it’s the members of the James Larkin Cumman of the Workers’ Party from Ballyfermot.
There’s a notice on the great man just gone up on SF Keep Left. It’s a bit boilerplate though…
Saw that. Disagreed with the ‘bitter’ tag.
Apart from the usual “stalinist” swipe the bit in SF Keep Left is factually incorrect – Tomás was not brought up in a privileged background. His father died when he was 3 or 4 years of age, leaving his mother to bring up Tomás, his brother and sister in poverty. It was his uncle who ensured he got an education and Tomás later won a scholarship to UCD.