Feargal O’Hanlon Memorial Lecture 2010 | The Spanish Civil War

Irish republicans and the fight for the Spanish Republic

Sinn Féin Cavan/Monaghan TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, Jim McDermott, Sinn Féin Councillor Seán Conlon and Pádraigín Uí Mhurchadha, sister of Volunteer Feargal O’Hanlon

"WE pay tribute today to the memory of the some 70 Irishmen who as members of the International Brigades gave their lives with comrades from across the world in defence of the Spanish Republic over the years - 1936 to 1939
We remember in particular Charlie Donnelly from our neighbouring County Tyrone who died in the Battle of Jarama in 1937. We recall also that Irishmen of every religious background and none joined together in that great endeavour in support of democracy and freedom"

WITH these opening words the Sinn Féin Dáil leader and Cavan/Monaghan TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin introduced the guest speaker, Jim McDermott, at this year’s Feargal O’Hanlon Memorial Lecture in Teach na nDaoine on Sunday, October 17th.
This year’s lecture was the 28th annual event, the series having commenced in 1982. A capacity attendance were enthralled by the depth of knowledge of his subject displayed over an 80-minute address by Jim McDermott.
The event was chaired by Sinn Féin’s Malachy Toal. Councillor Pádraigín Uí Mhurchadha, sister of Volunteer Feargal O’Hanlon, and Councillor Seán Conlon respectively moved and seconded the vote of thanks to their Belfast guest on what was a vivid and very interesting address.
Jim McDermott, a native of west Belfast, is a retired school teacher. A graduate in English and History from Queen’s University, he has devoted his life’s work to education in his native city and to promoting an interest in its history and in the history of the Irish people. He is the author of Northern Divisions: The IRA and the Belfast Pograms 1920-1922.
A committed trade unionist, he was the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) representative on Belfast Trades Council over a number of years and latterly represented the INTO on the Belfast Education and Library Board.
This is part of Jim McDermott’s address. The much lengthier, full version can be read online on the An Phoblacht website.

THERE is a proverb: “Yesterday’s heresies are today’s orthodoxies and tomorrow’s platitudes.”
It is now quite popular to celebrate the memory of those Irish people who supported the republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Considerable media attention, for example, was given to the funerals of International Brigades veterans Michael O’Riordan and Bob Doyle. Both men, no doubt, would have been astonished if they had received such adulation in the Ireland of the late 1930s.
The extent to which the republican volunteers had become pariahs in some parts of Ireland was brought home to me quite forcefully lately on watching an RTÉ programme in which the actress Fionnula Flanagan was interviewed by Gay Byrne on what influences had shaped her world view. Fionnula explained that she took a lot of her morality from her father, who had been a member of the International Brigades. On returning to Ireland, Terence Flanagan found it very difficult to get gainful employment as he had been fairly promptly excommunicated for his activities in Spain. For the remainder of his life he was to place integrity over material gain and this example of principle provided one of the moral yardsticks by which his daughter tried to conduct her life.

The Spanish Civil War was to last 986 days and was to cost half a million lives. Spanish republicans were utterly defeated and some were still receiving death sentences up until 1975.
A democratically-elected government was overthrown and a reactionary dictatorship put in its place headed by ‘El Caudillo’, General Francisco Franco. The Spanish Civil War showed, among other things, that ‘The Great War’ had not been ‘the war to end all wars’.  Another world war now looked inevitable.
The Spanish Civil War also showed the power of fascism and the weakness of Western democracy.
The war aroused universal interest. As many as 15,000 books were written on the Spanish Civil War and Franco himself tried to keep the Civil War a live issue in his long reign over Spain. He tended to stress his opposition to communism after World War One but he played down his antipathy to liberal democracy and socialism. It was the collective fear of what the defeat of the Spanish Republic would mean for world peace which provided the engine for the International Brigades but why was support for the Spanish Republic so weak in Ireland, North and South?
It would have been unthinkable in most parts of nationalist Ireland that anyone should dare to kill a priest [7,000 members of the Catholic clergy, including 13 bishops, over 4,000 priests and seminarians, over 2,000 monks and friars, and 283 nuns were killed in Spain; church buildings were destroyed in their hundreds]. To have seen the Spanish conflict with intelligent detachment would have required a substantial and influential body of free thinkers who could adequately open up the real issues thrown up by the Spanish Civil War. Tragically for Ireland at that time, progressive thinkers were few and their influence negligible.
The Irish Civil War had ended less than ten years previously. The bitterness of that conflict still dominated politics throughout the 1920s. The Cumann na nGaedheal Government was still seen by its opponents as the party which had permitted partition in order to create a new establishment in the 26 Counties. Fianna Fáil took power in 1932 dedicated to dismantling the Treaty arrangements of 1922.
Many in Cumann na nGaedheal were appalled at Fianna Fáil’s election victory. Some, like Eoin O’Duffy, regarded Fianna Fáil as potential communists. To the left, any hopes that de Valera would bring an era of energetic free thinking were quickly dashed despite an early alliance with the Labour Party. However, to combat Fianna Fáil support, an Army Comrades’ Association (ACA) was set up as a kind of military wing of Cumann na nGaedheal. The ACA was also variously known as Blueshirts, the National Guard, the White Army and Young Ireland Association. Its members feared the anti-Treaty IRA and under Eoin O’Duffy its numbers grew considerably, to as many as 30,000. In the 1930s, the ACA had violent and frequent clashes with the IRA.
O’Duffy once hilariously described himself as the third most powerful man in Europe (after Hitler and Mussolini). If Fianna Fáil was ‘a slightly constitutional party’ then the Blueshirts were, at worst, ‘a slightly fascist party’. They were, however, deeply antagonistic to the Spanish Republic in the mid-1930s, considering it murderously atheistic and communist.

Some important IRA leaders released in 1932 by the incoming Fianna Fáil administration certainly did have progressive ideas. Frank Ryan and George and Charles Gilmore were joined by Peadar O’Donnell in a loose alliance of socialist republicans who had come to believe that militant republicans should be giving a lead on issues such as jobs, housing and land ownership as well as pressing for an end to partition. The IRA were also deeply opposed to the ACA, believing the right-wing attitudes and pro-Treaty views they espoused would be an impediment to a socialist Republic.
There were both pitched battles and reprisals between the IRA and the ACA, with the IRA often the aggressor. Frank Ryan developed the motto “No free speech for traitors” and used it frequently in his capacity as editor of An Phoblacht. Ironically, O’Duffy and the ACA would have been equally committed to denying free speech to militant republicans.
The IRA actually grew numerically in the South from 1933-35 and the 30,000 people who greeted the IRA prisoners released from Arbour Hill Prison in 1932 indicated popular support. However, the progressive element within the IRA in 1934 were impatient for a more socially radical approach. To this end, a socialist motion calling for more involvement in the lives of Irish people was put forward to the IRA Convention on March 17th 1934. The motion was rejected and the traditional role of the IRA reaffirmed.
Three leading socialist IRA men (Frank Ryan, George Gilmore and Peadar O’Donnell) then resigned from the IRA and with other dissidents called a Republican Congress in Athlone on September 29th and 30th. The 120 delegates in attendance failed to reach agreement on tactics and the Congress failed thereafter to make progress. On top of this, delegates were dismissed from the IRA and the Congress itself was picketed by groups including Blueshirts singing “God save the Pope”.

In the North, support for the Republican Congress was very muted. Encouragingly, for a time the Congress did get some support from a small group of trade unionists from Protestant districts of Belfast who carried a banner at Bodenstown in 1934 proclaiming “Break the Connection with Capitalism”. Unfortunately, there was an altercation with a group of Tipperary republicans who were tasked with removing any political banners from the Bodenstown march. There was a scuffle and fisticuffs in an ultimately embarrassing incident. One of those carrying the banner was Liam Tumlinson from the Ravenhill Road, later to be killed with the International Brigades in Spain.
In 1934, Cumann na nGaedheal allied with the ACA and Centre Party to form Fine Gael. It was a Fine Gael TD, Patrick Belton, who formed the Irish Christian Front to support Franco. With the permission of the Irish bishops, £43,331 was lifted at Catholic Masses in October 1936. The Church was prepared to more than just give financial and moral support to the rebel forces in Spain. Cardinal McCrory of Armagh, who had once defended his flock so well in the face of sectarian murder in Belfast from 1920-22, now put Count Ramirez de Arellano in contact with Eoin O’Duffy to form a Bandera to go to Spain and fight against the Spanish Republic.
Eventually, some 750 men did make their way under O’Duffy but their contribution was not particularly distinguished. In real terms, the Irish volunteers for the Spanish Republic made a far more telling contribution. With some 275 Volunteers from Ireland or of Irish parentage, as many as one-third lost their lives. Far fewer lost their lives in the service of the Bandera. There were communists, socialists, democrats, atheists, agnostics, Protestants, Catholics and clergymen among the 275 who went from Ireland to serve with the International Brigades, men who followed their conscience rather than the dictates of clerical figures.
Frank Ryan, himself a practising Catholic, was stung by Cardinal McCrory’s assertion that support for the Spanish Republic was “evil”. He gave the famous reply:
“May I assure your eminence that as an Irish Catholic I will take my religion from Rome but as an Irish republican I will take my politics from neither Moscow or Maynooth.” It was Frank Ryan who led the Irish Connolly Column of the International Brigades in Spain.

Today no one thinks it odd if someone plays or sings Christy Moore’s song Viva la Quinta Brigada. Times have moved on. People in Ireland today are much more broadminded than 70 years ago. The full horrors of Franco’s behaviour in the Spanish Civil War and his subsequent dictatorship are now well-known and rightly condemned. The Spanish Church considered giving a general apology for its behaviour in the Civil War in the 1970s. In Ireland, the Catholic Church is not as influential today and is considerably more liberal.
In Ireland, too, there is a greater openness and maturity regarding world events but what lessons can be drawn from the Irish support for the Spanish Republic?
Probably that openness and honesty are needed in reaching important decisions. The volunteers were fully aware that there were serious flaws within the government of the Spanish Republic. There had been unjustifiable executions of clergy and destruction of church property. In the May Day revival, republican groupings had shot each other in the streets of Barcelona in 1938. Tactical errors were made and good people were sometimes sacrificed for party political gain. However, the Spanish Republic had a democratic right to govern and it fell to many young men to make a statement in arms to that effect.
Today, progressive elements need to be encouraged. New political alliances should be made, as appropriate, yet one should never stoop to political opportunism. Above all, we must avoid knee-jerk reactions.
The present economic situation is undoubtedly serious but we must never be persuaded to penalise the old, the poor, the sick or the marginalised as a quick-fix for our current problems. The true architects of our economic troubles can be found elsewhere.