I am indebted to Matt Treacy, who is doing a PhD thesis in TCD under the supervision of Eunan O'Halpin, for finding this in the Dept of Justice archive, where it has the reference number 98/6/495. It was apparently found in the possession of Sean Garland in January 1966, when his car was stopped on the way back from an Army Council meeting. It gives some insight into the then thinking at Army Council level regarding the politicisation process, which was then substantially in advance of that of the Sinn Fein leadership. I comment occasionally in italics. RJ June 2001.

The quality of the document is such that it is not feasible to scan it in; I can however convey the essentials, and anyone who wants to look into it further can access it. There are in fact four distinct documents: the Goulding political plan, the (probably Mac Stiofain) military plan, a report on the Extraordinary Ard Fheis and handwritten notes on the meeting.

The Goulding Political Plan

Actions in this mode hitherto have been on the basis of 'ad-hoc committees' and these need to be formalised and brought in 'under the direction of the Army department'; housing, free trade, co-operativism etc are mentioned.

Sinn Fein has failed to do anything like this, and the role of the Army people in this context is seen as to initiate the education and rejuvenation of Sinn Fein. This will involve reform of the structure of the Movement.

Emphasis in recruit training will shift towards social and economic objectives and away from arms and battle tactics. 'The training will be on the basis of the main task being to back up and consolidate revolutionary action initiated legally, rather than to initiate actions illegally relying on the political organisation to "explain it away", as has been the case heretofore..'.

There was however strong residual attachment to the idea of supportive military-type action in guerrilla mode, given the existence of politically-initiated actions involving large numbers of people.

It is possible to see the positive role envisaged for the present writer, but also the pathological persistence of the perceived role for military intervention, with which Goulding presumably wished to keep Mac Stiofain and O Bradaigh onside, while playing down its significance in order to keep the present writer also onside, a basically unstable and contradictory position.

In a major section headed 'Organisational Principles' it is proclaimed that the basic movement should be '..a political national and social-revolutionary organisation with an open membership and a legal existence... recruitment to be to this alone..'. The basic unit is the local or factory Cumann. Within each Cumann would be specialist groups looking to influence broader peoples' organisations, '...a training ground for revolutionary government; the transition from the gun to politics in the past has omitted this training procedure and has therefore resulted in the Fianna Fail and Clann na Poblachta processes setting in.'

Specialist groups should have the right to involve non-members in their activity, and this would be the main channel for recruitment. Quarterly regional conferences and an annual national conference; a national Standing Committee to meet weekly.

The following two key paragraphs enshrine what the present writer was prepared to accept as the beginnings of Goulding transition programme for getting rid of the Army as such and going totally political. Mac Stiofain and O Bradaigh would undoubtedly have been opposed to this, and I interpret the latter half of the second paragraph as a sop to them.

"H. The Army has its own organisational structure and (is) to function within the revolutionary organisation as backbone. Army recruits to be chosen from the best and most conscious members of the organisation. Under no circumstances should the Army recruit from outside on the basis of the emotional appeal of arms. The Army to give leadership within the organisation by the fact of its being composed of the most advanced elements within it, rather than by weight of numbers.

"I. The Army Convention to continue as a policy-making body, but this role to be played down in proportion as the basic policy decisions are seen to be made correctly, openly and in unity by the National Conference. The current position that the Ard Fheis is a rubber-stamp for the Convention is an imposition on the many good people in SF. The role of the Army Convention should evolve towards that of a specialist conference of certain people in the Movement for examining technical problems connected with the military aspect of the revolution. The Army Council will continually review this position."

The document goes on to suggest that the Movement in its new mode should encourage affiliations of friendly organisations having objective that do not conflict, the germ of the 'national liberation movement' idea. Candidates should stand in elections but not before there was a high probability of winning, with much local spade-work done, and the elected TDs and Stormont MPs would then meet nationally in a central place (perhaps Athlone, an echo here of the Republican Congress) and proceed to legislate for the whole country, generating a dual government situation, with probable military implications.

The foregoing leap of imagination is somewhat visionary, with its implied repeat of the 1919 model, and with echoes of the Bolsheviks in 1917. They clearly regarded the taking of seats in existing Partition institutions as anathema, and had not envisioned any creative national role for 'cross-border bodies' as have emerged in the Good Friday Agreement. It could be argued that the Provisionals with their current policies have gone much further than Goulding was prepared to go in this document. The present writer at the time, working in political mode, was however alive to the potential of 'cross-border bodies', as expressed in the motion introduced at the 1965 Irish Association conference in Derry.

The 'Military Plan'

The Report on the Extraordinary Ard Fheis

It begins by noting the existence of islands of opposition to the 'new thinking', noted marginally as being Tralee, Cork and Limerick. It goes on to name (with bogus names) who is who in the HQ Staff. The AG ('Clancy'/Costello) is said to be functioning efficiently. The identity of the other bogus names is open to question, but according to Garland (June 2001) they included himself, Mick Ryan and Malachi McGurran. He says credibly that 'Quirke' as Director of Publicity was Tony Meade, he then being the Editor of the United Irishman. 'Jones' (the present writer) was said to continue a 'Director of Education'. 'Nolan' (Garland) was said to be Training Officer and Operations Director, and was in a full-time capacity.

Education was sort of related to the concept of 'agitation' and there were said to be associated with this area the Joint Republican Education Centre, the Wolfe Tone Society, the Economic Independence Committee, the Housing Action Committee and Comhar Linn.

The Joint Republican Education Centre never existed as a 'Centre' but it did exist marginally in the form of a loose interaction between Sean O Bradaigh in the then SF context, the present writer acting for the 'Goulding Plan' and Tony Coughlan acting for the Wolfe Tone Society. It never assumed a cohesive existence however. The use of the word 'Joint' in the title was Goulding's attempt to invoke his political plan in the SF context. The then SF mostly traditionalist leadership, being basically crypto- or quasi-Fianna Fail, was suspicious of it, fearing leftward political development.

The Wolfe Tone Society had evolved out of the 'Directorate' set up to run the bicentenary events; it developed its own Constitution in 1964 on the initiative of the present writer; it asserted its autonomy and had ceased to be seen as 'Army Council property' by this time. I hope to treat this elsewhere, if and when I can access the records, which are mostly with Coughlan. It had by this time not yet initiated the processes that led to the setting up of the NICRA.

The Economic Independence Committee had emerged out of the WTS and was led by Tony Coughlan; the issue was the Free Trade Agreement. The Housing Action Committee had evolved out of the work 'in the field' of some Dublin activists; there was some marginal WTS involvement.

'Comhar Linn' was an attempt to finance an aspect of the politicisation process by analogy with how Gael Linn had done it for the language. Tony Meade, who worked with Gael Linn, sold the idea to Goulding, based on the availability of one Doherty who had been a successful GL operator but had for some reason dropped out. Doherty was related the Cathal Brugha, perhaps a nephew, and during his period with Comhar Linn completed and published a biography of Brugha. The idea behind Comhar Linn was to finance the development of co-operative education via a lottery. It was a total disaster and lost money. The present writer, to his eternal regret, wasted a lot of time tying to get it going, pulling in support on the personal network. I owe heartfelt apologies to the people concerned. It should have been obvious that the 'lottery' concept (basically individualist) and the 'co-operative' concept simply did not mix. Peadar O'Donnell, to his credit, said so, and tried to warn us, but by that time we were sold on the idea by Doherty and were committed to making it work. Various increasingly dubious rearguard actions were tried to make it work, but to no avail. It was on the whole a learning experience about what not to do.

The document goes on to talk about agitation: Midleton, Griffith Barracks, the Dundalk Engineering Works and the Castlecomer mines were mentioned. I have touched on the Midleton episode in my notes on Justin O'Brien's Arms Trial, in the context of an encounter with Mac Stofain. The Griffith Barracks events had been the trigger for the initiation of the Dublin housing crisis work. I don't recollect the Dundalk events, but the indications are that the strike committee invoked some 'direct action' support from the local unit. At Castlecomer I recollect meeting, in the company of Costello, with Nick Boran who was leading the strike. Boran had, I believe, been associated with the Republican Congress in the 1930s and had evolved into a leading TU position since. The objective was to attempt to develop political resistance to the closure of the mines, and it was successful in the short term.

It was noted that all the above had been on the initiative of Army activists, and that Sinn Fein had stood aside or not wanted to know. This was the measure of the extent of the political education problem if an effective integrated movement were to be developed along the lines suggested by the Goulding Plan.

Note that insofar as there is a 'model' it is that of people in trouble seeking support from the shadowy 'republic' perceived as a sort of Robin Hood State, not good for developing the autonomy of the peoples' own organisations. I was aware of this at the time, and conscious of the need to change the perceptions via the educational programme.

The document, after a digression into the emigrant organisations, concludes with notes on the United Irishman, the new editor (Meade) having been appointed the previous September; the need for it to be run as a business was noted. The 'Ulsterman' version had fallen down for lack of actual Ulster content. Publication of an Ulster-based paper the Spark was projected for the following Easter.

There is no record of this in the Linen Hall; did it get off the ground? If so, maybe we can track it down and ensure that it gets into the Linen Hall collection.

Notes on the Meeting

There is recorded an interesting remark by Goulding: '...intelligence report on NATO Free State Army officers briefing (which) revealed Americans worried about republican influence on TU movement, reckoned 500 dissidents in Ireland easily dealt with..'.

This suggests US paranoia about a repeat in Ireland of the Cuban model; it also indicates, what we always suspected, covert relations between the Free State Army and NATO. We were of course a very long way from a Cuban model, but the US paranoia appears to have spread to the Fianna Fail leadership, and to have influenced how they gave priority in 1969 to the undermining of political republicanism in the Civil Rights context, rather than to exposing the British Government and focusing international pressure on the need to disarm the B-Specials. Also Goulding must have had a 'mole' in the Free State Army officer-elite.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999