The Irish Times Mystery Mao Poster October 2, 2012
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.trackback
The Irish Times has an article on this ‘mystery poster’
The poster refers to the “54th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising” and the first anniversary of the “Historic Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China”.
Although no date is mentioned, both anniversaries occurred in 1970. It has not yet been possible to establish who produced the poster or where it was used.
They mustn’t be aware of the CPI-ML .
It clearly never occurred to the bright sparks in the Irish Times office (or over at the Journal) to Google Irish Maoism and spend thirty seconds working it out.
You’re in Ireland, now, Mark.
It’s a strange article. At first it claims that the poster is Chinese communist admiration for 1916, before admitting that it was actually sourced in Ireland (worth nothing that it’s Parsons who wrote it, not exactly a fan of populist revolutionary movements I fear).
The ability to copy and paste has made the newspaper profession very lazy.
for some reason left-leaning documents tend to be short on referencing (some post-Foucauldian hangover, perhaps?). I took Mark P at his word and yes, within the top 3 results for ‘Irish Maoism’ (one of the others being the CPI-ML wiki) is this article from 1970 (i.e. contemporaneous with the poster):
http://www.politico.ie/component/content/article/6235.html
I assume it’s Magill or something, it doesn’t say except for a timestamp which is obviously pre-web publication.
Ironically it begins “THE RECENT HYSTERICAL outbursts about Maoism in Ireland…”
but interestingly also it list among the main issues of their agitation “The fines recently imposed on two Maoists after they were arrested at the Easter Commemoration Parade, when selling their literature”. so corroborating evidence, if it were needed, of Maoists taking an interest in nationalist commemoration. I guess it’d be nice if that extra bit of detail was uncovered and worked into the article, as it sometimes is even in the IT, but in this case it’s the spurious ‘Chinese’ connection that wins out over the more mundane/murky facts.
I also note that the IT article doesn’t mention the plough and the stars flag also partly visible behind the tricolour.
Gabba, it’s probably the PRC flag, as it’s a joint commemoration of the 1916 rising and the 9th conference of the CPC.
oops, sorry, that makes sense. and the article does mention it.
I think the magazine with the Maoist article was Nusight. There were attempts by republicans to make links with China in the 1960s as well, independently of Irish Maoists.
I notice too that they have a pre-sale estimate of £1,000 to £1,500 (that’s sterling not euros!)
You’d have to wonder ….. if it does go for that then there’s a few of us that are surely sitting on a fortune
Anniversaries occur every year – that’s why they’re anniversaries.
what a moron.
your all wrong. the true story is that michael collins invited Mao over to dublin to take part in the Rising and this poster was made up to commemorate his irish trip.
Or maybe someone just got confused between the Mao Brigade and the Mayo Brigade
Martin Turner has a great cartoon on this today….
http://sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/644586_10151111352296158_1892902903_n.jpg
Genius.
Last weekend’s Irish Times Saturday magazine has a photo on the inside back page (The times we lived in) of the CPI-ML’s bookshop. It’s from February 1970 and shows a couple of people staring in the window of Progressive Books. There’s a big Mao poster.
I’ve a copy of Marx’s Civil War in France printed in China and sold in Progressive Books with the slogan, ‘workers of the world unite -you have nothing to lose but your chains’ stamped inside the cover. It belonged to my father and was probably the first book of left wing political thought I ever read.