Cathal Goulding
| Cathal Goulding | |
|---|---|
| Born |
2 January 1923 Dublin, Ireland |
| Died | 26 December 1998 (aged 75) Dublin, Ireland |
| Political party |
Official Sinn Féin Workers' Party of Ireland |
| Spouse(s) | Patty Germaine (m. 1950; separated) Beatrice Behan (née ffrench-Salkeld) |
| Children | Cathal Og Goulding Paudge Behan Aodhgan Goulding Banban Goulding |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |
 Irish Republic
|
| Service/branch |
Irish Republican Army Official Irish Republican Army |
| Years of service | 1939–1972 |
| Rank |
Chief of Staff Quartermaster General |
| Battles/wars | The Troubles |
| Other work | Political activist |
Cathal Goulding (Irish: Cathal Ó Goillín; 2 January 1923 – 26 December 1998) was Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army and the Official IRA.
One of seven children born on East Arran Street, north Dublin to an Irish republican family, as a teenager Goulding joined Fianna Éireann, the youth wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He joined the IRA in 1939. In December of that year, he took part in a raid on Irish Army ammunition stores in Phoenix Park, Dublin; and in November 1941 he was gaoled for a year in Mountjoy Prison for membership of an unlawful organisation and possession of IRA documents. On his release in 1942, he was immediately interned at the Curragh Camp, where he remained until 1944.
In 1945, he was involved in the attempts to re-establish the IRA which had been badly affected by the authorities in both the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. He was among twenty-five to thirty men who met at O'Neill's pub, Pearse Street, to try to re-establish the IRA in Dublin. He organised the first national meeting of IRA activists after the Second World War in Dublin in 1946 and was arrested along with John Joe McGirl and ten others and sentenced to twelve months in prison when the gathering was raided by the Garda Síochána.
Upon his release in 1947, Goulding organised IRA training camps in the Wicklow Mountains and took charge of the IRA's Dublin Brigade in 1951. In 1953, Goulding (along with Seán Mac Stíofáin and Manus Canning) was involved in an arms raid on the Officers Training Corps armoury at Felsted School, Essex. The three were arrested and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, but were released in 1959 after serving only six years at Pentonville, Wakefield and Stafford prisons. In 1956, an attempt was made by the IRA to free him from Wakefield Prison, but this attempt was aborted when alarms were sounded at the prison. During his time in Wakefield prison, he befriended EOKA members and Klaus Fuchs, a German-born spy who had passed information about the US nuclear programme to the Soviet Union, and became interested in the Russian Revolution.
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