Tomás Mac Giolla:TOMÁS MAC GIOLLA was a former TD and Dublin lord mayor who led a significant section of the republican movement into parliamentary politics.
As president of Sinn Féin, and later the Workers’ Party, he was central to his party’s journey from nationalism to socialism. However, despite the Official IRA ceasefire in 1972, allegations of paramilitary links continued to be made throughout his political career.
In July 2009 he told Hot Pressmagazine that he had indeed been a member of the Official IRA so-called army council, and said he did everything he was asked to do for the IRA. He denied having prior knowledge of the bombing at Aldershot in Hampshire, England, in 1972, in which five women cleaners and a British army chaplain were killed. And he further denied ordering any "executions" carried out by the Official IRA.
Responding to republicans who believed that an alien ideology – socialism – was being foisted on them, he insisted that socialism had nothing to do with atheism or totalitarianism; it was an indigenous philosophy and an integral part of republicanism since the founding of the United Irishmen.
Ulster Unionist MP Ken Maginnis praised him in 1988 for reaching out to the Protestant tradition in his final address as party president. In that address he urged Protestants to “stand firm against Provo sectarian terror”.
He was born near Nenagh, Co Tipperary, in 1924. Known as Tom Gill, he was educated locally by the Christian Brothers and at St Flannan’s College, Ennis, where his classmates included the future archbishop of Dublin, Kevin McNamara, and the future distinguished Dominican, Austin Flannery.
A student at University College Dublin during the 1940s, he graduated with a BA in 1947; afterwards, as a night student, he obtained a BComm. His contemporaries at UCD included future taoisigh, Charles Haughey and Garret FitzGerald. On graduating, Mac Giolla joined the ESB, where he became a revenue accountant. He left the ESB in 1977 to devote himself full-time to politics.
His family had no strong political allegiances but leaned towards Fine Gael. Partition was the issue that sparked his interest in politics. A massive all-party rally held in O’Connell Street, Dublin, in 1949 to condemn the passage of the Ireland Act at Westminster greatly impressed him. But the failure of the constitutional parties to take further action prompted him to join Sinn Féin.
By 1956, when IRA attacks in Northern Ireland began, Mac Giolla was a member of the Sinn Féin ardchomhairle. In 1957 he was arrested and interned in the Curragh. Released after two years, he was again arrested in 1961 and sentenced by a military tribunal to six months’ imprisonment for failing to give an account of his movements. In 1962, following the collapse of the Border campaign, he was elected president of an isolated and demoralised Sinn Féin.
Together with the IRA chief-of-staff, Cathal Goulding, he sought to revive the republican movement. They turned to socialism for inspiration as to how they might make republican aims seem relevant to the everyday concerns of people. The goal was a workers’ and small farmers’ republic. But Mac Giolla always counselled caution. A former colleague described him as a “middle-of-the-road man who understood the importance of not trying to go too fast”.
Sinn Féin began to emerge as a political entity in its own right, no longer in the shadow of the IRA. Members became involved in social agitation in the Republic, while republicans in Northern Ireland were involved in the burgeoning civil rights movement.
However, some members were unhappy with the increasing emphasis on politics. They felt vindicated in 1969 when the IRA was caught unawares by the eruption of violence in Belfast. This and the proposal to drop the policy of abstentionism were among the causes of the Sinn Féin split in 1970 that resulted in the formation of the Provisionals.
There followed intermittent violent feuding in Northern Ireland between Official and Provisional factions, which was exacerbated by the emergence in the mid-1970s of the IRSP/INLA, following a further split. But Official Sinn Féin survived these setbacks and continued its political evolution.
In 1979 Mac Giolla was elected to Dublin City Council, and in 1982 won a Dáil seat for what was now the Workers’ Party. He and Proinsias De Rossa were impressive parliamentarians in debate and presentation of policies – the very stuff of parliamentary democracy. They took a strong stand on both the abortion and divorce referendums, and in 1984 Mac Giolla led a walkout from the Dáil when then US president Ronald Reagan addressed the Oireachtas.
Their efforts were rewarded when in 1989 seven Workers’ Party deputies were returned to the Dáil and De Rossa was elected to the European Parliament. Yet within three years, the majority of members in the Republic had left to form Democratic Left.
Deep divisions had emerged over the nature of the party, which some press reports suggested was funded by Moscow gold. A special conference in February 1992 debated a motion from De Rossa, now president, to make the party fully democratic and to sever any remaining links with paramilitarism.
Mac Giolla declared his support for the motion, but long-time comrades like Goulding and Sean Garland, along with a majority of Northern members, opposed it. Lacking the necessary two-thirds majority, the motion was lost.
He did not follow his six fellow TDs into Democratic Left, viewing their departure as a betrayal. He denounced what he described as a “leadership-led coup against the party and its membership”.
Having lost his Dáil seat in 1992, he was elected lord mayor of Dublin in 1993. He stood unsuccessfully for the European Parliament in 1994, bowing out of electoral politics after failing to win a seat in the 1997 general election.
Asked in a radio interview in 1987 about his political odyssey, he said: “I know my past, and in fact I am proud of everything I did. I was learning all the time. That’s all history.”
His wife May (née McLoughlin) survives him.
Tomás Mac Giolla: born January 25th, 1924; died February 4th, 2010