Sir, - I went to bury a chief on New Year's Eve. He was one of my heroes from my teenage years. I joined his crusade as a 19-year-old in 1964 and participated in his resolve to build a party of the Left from a traditionalist movement that was more intent on fighting to "free Ireland" than on freeing the Irish people from exploitation.
Twenty-two years later I had joined the long list of those who, since its inception, had for various reasons left the Republican Movement. Mine was a failure to convince the then leadership that action was required to deal with a serious problem locally that threatened to destroy the political developments being achieved by a growing party of the Left.
As we gathered on that bleak December day to await the funeral service for Cathal Goulding I had a feeling of the greatness of the man. All around the crematorium building were faces from the past, from the 1940s to the 1990s, including very many who were no longer "involved", and they mingled with others from different strands of life in Ireland. All of us came to pay our respects to a man we respected and admired for his contribution to political life in Ireland.
As soon as the funeral service began, it became apparent that those conducting it had no sense of the significance of the gathering that day.
The only message the Workers' Party had for the largest audience it had the opportunity to address since the funeral of Malachy McGurran just over 20 years ago was a paraphrase of a 1920s RC Church edict: "Outside the WP no one can be a socialist or a republican."
Yes, the WP was entitled to bury Cathal Goulding. It was entitled to remind us all of where he stood and to reiterate his defining message that those who engaged in a blind, nationalist slaughter of fellow Irish people had besmirched the name of republicanism. But to use the occasion almost exclusively as a platform to attack the most recent group of people who left on the basis of a political decision was to sully the memory of Cathal Goulding.
The intolerance and narrowmindedness of the three-and-a-quarter orations I heard before I took myself off were a total negation of the tolerance and inclusiveness propagated by Cathal Goulding during some of the worst times in our recent history.
Had the funeral notice made it clear that only current, card-carrying WP members and associates would be welcome, I am sure that, like myself, the majority of those present would have chosen to pay their respects to Cathal in a more fitting manner. - Yours, etc., Tom Moore,
Chestnut Grove, Newry, Co Down.