MAOISTS IN DUBLIN SCHOOLS, 1970
Sep 18th, 2012 by Conor McCabe
Article from the Irish Times on the Maoist influence in Dublin secondary schools in 1970. The Maoist group in question was The Internationalists, soon relaunched as the Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist).
Full article below the fold.
I think there was an expulsion in a Limerick School as well but I think it might have been in the months after feb 70. In March their bookshop was fired at and I think it might have been in the hysteria after that.
I think it was a bit rich of the Principal of the school to opine that he would not permit political movements amonsgt pupils in his school whilst ramming Catholic religious doctrine down the throats of those same pupils. Religion is all about power and so is politics.
But then, 1970 was a different planet - communism was seen as the “great evil”, Vietnam was engulfed in war and conservative, isolated, holy Ireland was getting its first nasty taste of the Troubles.
Some names of pupils are contained in that interesting newspaper report. It would be interesting to know - Where Are They All Now? Emigrated, or disappeared into suburban respectability? Interesting careers or stifling office jobs?
The Trinity Maoists, some of whom spoke with plummy English public school accents, were an amazing, short-lived social-intellectual phenomenon in the period c.1967-72. They seemed to have millenarian religious characteristics - a kind of political fundamentalist fanaticism akin to jehovas witnesses - and I can certainly see that the Brothers in that school saw maoism as a polar opposite to the mainstream catholicism of Ireland at that time. The deification of Mao was something upsetting too, I’d guess.
How did maoist influences fare at the same time in the secular schools of France? Some comparisons might throw light on the Irish situation.
Was this the same incident that Colin Meaney speaks about (on tv some months ago) he said he was expelled also from O Connell’s School?
As far as I knw Paul, it is. Colm Meaney was involved with the student Maoists at that time.