boiler
4th January 2014, 16:38
Chinese archives reveal IRA approaches seeking help for armed campaign
Seamus Costello’s overtures for assistance were stonewalled by Chinese authorities
On September 16th, 1964, Seamus Costello of the Irish Republican Army stood outside the door of the newly opened Chinese embassy in Paris, bearing a letter from the paramilitary organisation’s chief of staff, Cathal Goulding.
This letter was a remarkable document. It requested Chinese assistance in the “Irish struggle against British imperialist rule and to establish a democratic people’s republic”.
The IRA hoped Mao Zedong’s communists would provide arms and training as they had done in Africa and Asia.
The Chinese diplomat who answered the door said nothing, although he took the letter, for which he was later reprimanded and told not to accept such a communication in future.
Costello’s knock on the embassy door in Paris began a curious footnote to the power politics of the cold war, where Irish insurrectionists and the revolutionaries of closed, impoverished China circled each other.
The fascinating tale came in a blog posting by China scholar Chris Connolly, who uncovered the information six years ago while researching in the archives of the Chinese foreign ministry (see iti.ms/19FfGAW).
Ideological fervour
It is a story filled with the ideological fervour and intrigue of the era. The communists had been in power less than 15 years when Costello came calling in Paris, in visits that were to prove fruitless.
He made three approaches over the next five months, and his shopping list included requests for military aid, help with training for guerrilla warfare and coaching for IRA members in the use of printing presses for the distribution of propaganda materials.
When Costello asked to see the military attache, he was told the office did not have one. The Chinese stonewalled his requests, at which point Costello “expressed his disappointment and left”.
The embassy had opened earlier that year following French president Charles de Gaulle’s decision to break diplomatic relations with Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government in Taiwan and establish them with the People’s Republic of China.
Mao’s focus at the time was inward, on rebuilding after the disastrous failed agricultural reform of the Great Leap Forward, in which millions of people died of starvation.
“They did approach at a time when Chinese foreign policy was taking a radical turn, but in a direction even less favourable to the IRA getting any assistance from Beijing than had previously been the case,” says Connolly.
China would not have wished to become embroiled in a disorganised campaign against the British in Northern Ireland, as it would not have suited its international goals.
“Everyone knows Mao’s famous dictum that ‘political power comes from the barrel of a gun’, but few know that that is only half of what he said,” says Connolly.
“The full statement was: ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Our principle is that the party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the party.’
“I think Mao would have recognised that the IRA was a military movement in search of a political base, not the other way round, and that to him was in no uncertain terms putting the cart before the horse.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/chinese-archives-reveal-ira-approaches-seeking-help-for-armed-campaign-1.1643886
Seamus Costello’s overtures for assistance were stonewalled by Chinese authorities
On September 16th, 1964, Seamus Costello of the Irish Republican Army stood outside the door of the newly opened Chinese embassy in Paris, bearing a letter from the paramilitary organisation’s chief of staff, Cathal Goulding.
This letter was a remarkable document. It requested Chinese assistance in the “Irish struggle against British imperialist rule and to establish a democratic people’s republic”.
The IRA hoped Mao Zedong’s communists would provide arms and training as they had done in Africa and Asia.
The Chinese diplomat who answered the door said nothing, although he took the letter, for which he was later reprimanded and told not to accept such a communication in future.
Costello’s knock on the embassy door in Paris began a curious footnote to the power politics of the cold war, where Irish insurrectionists and the revolutionaries of closed, impoverished China circled each other.
The fascinating tale came in a blog posting by China scholar Chris Connolly, who uncovered the information six years ago while researching in the archives of the Chinese foreign ministry (see iti.ms/19FfGAW).
Ideological fervour
It is a story filled with the ideological fervour and intrigue of the era. The communists had been in power less than 15 years when Costello came calling in Paris, in visits that were to prove fruitless.
He made three approaches over the next five months, and his shopping list included requests for military aid, help with training for guerrilla warfare and coaching for IRA members in the use of printing presses for the distribution of propaganda materials.
When Costello asked to see the military attache, he was told the office did not have one. The Chinese stonewalled his requests, at which point Costello “expressed his disappointment and left”.
The embassy had opened earlier that year following French president Charles de Gaulle’s decision to break diplomatic relations with Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government in Taiwan and establish them with the People’s Republic of China.
Mao’s focus at the time was inward, on rebuilding after the disastrous failed agricultural reform of the Great Leap Forward, in which millions of people died of starvation.
“They did approach at a time when Chinese foreign policy was taking a radical turn, but in a direction even less favourable to the IRA getting any assistance from Beijing than had previously been the case,” says Connolly.
China would not have wished to become embroiled in a disorganised campaign against the British in Northern Ireland, as it would not have suited its international goals.
“Everyone knows Mao’s famous dictum that ‘political power comes from the barrel of a gun’, but few know that that is only half of what he said,” says Connolly.
“The full statement was: ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Our principle is that the party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the party.’
“I think Mao would have recognised that the IRA was a military movement in search of a political base, not the other way round, and that to him was in no uncertain terms putting the cart before the horse.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/chinese-archives-reveal-ira-approaches-seeking-help-for-armed-campaign-1.1643886