Cathal Goulding (2 January 1923-26 December 1998) was Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army from 1962 to 1969, succeeding Rory O'Brady. Goulding was the last IRA Chief of Staff before the group's 1969 split, and he became the leader of the Official IRA faction during the early stages of The Troubles. His Marxism-Leninism and rejection of abstentionism led to the schism between the OIRA and the Provisional IRA.
Biography[]
Cathal Goulding was born in Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland on 2 January 1923 to a family of Irish republicans, and he joined the Irish Republican Army in 1939 at the age of 16. He often got into trouble with the Irish government during the 1940s, and he was imprisoned at Wakefield Prison during the 1950s, during which time he befriended Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs and took up an interest in the Russian Revolution and communism. In 1959, he became Quartermaster-General of the IRA, and he succeeded Rory O'Brady as IRA Chief-of-Staff in 1962. He was influential in moving the IRA to the left during the 1960s, and he opposed abstentionism, leading to a split between his "Official IRA" faction and the Provisional IRA abstentionists. In 1972, after just a few years of fighting, the Official IRA declared a ceasefire in response to the 1972 Aldershot bombing and the killing of a Catholic soldier in the British Army. He retired to his college in Raheenleigh, County Carlow after leaving the "compromised" Workers' Party of Ireland, and he died in 1998 at the age of 74.