Ireland and the Fall of the Second Republic in Spain

Abstract

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936 news from Spain was a daily feature on the front page of major newspapers in Ireland. The Irish Christian Front was set up which organized mass demonstrations and financial campaigns throughout the country in support of Franco. In November 1936, 700 men set sail with General EoinO'Duffy to fight on the side of Franco. The minority Irish left battled against this tide, and sent their own forces to join the International Brigades in defence of the Republic. This paper focuses on the efforts made by the Irish left to continue the campaign in support of the Republic. It explores the final days of the Irish International Brigaders on the Ebro front, their return home, and for some, their imprisonment in Francoist Spain. It looks at the efforts of one, George Leeson, to aid Spanish Republicans and International Brigaders imprisoned in the French camp of Argeles-sur-Mer. It looks at the renewed efforts within Ireland in the last year of the war to provide medical aid and food through the Irish Foodship for Spain Committee. Finally, it examines the hostile environment the International Brigaders faced when they returned home.

Notes

^*The author would like to thank the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences for their financial support.

¹See U 271: N (7, 17 and 18) de Róiste Papers, Cork City and County Archives for information on this rally.

²See letter from Haughey to his sister, 25 May 1939 available at <http://irelandscw.com/ibvol-JHLetter.htm> (accessed 28/9/2011).

³Richard Baxell, British Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War: The British Battalion in the International Brigades, 1936–1939 (Pontypool: Warren & Pell, 2007 [1^st ed. 2004]), 112–13.

⁴The deaths of Nalty and McGregor are discussed in Michael O'Riordan, Connolly Column: The Story of the Irishmen who fought for the Spanish Republic 1936–1939 (Pontypool: Warren & Pell, 2005 [1^st ed. 1979]), 132, 227. The death of Gorman is described in an interview with George Wheeler, Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, London, file 11442 reel 5 (IWMSA 11442/5).

⁵O'Riordan, Connolly Column, 132; see also Steve Nugent, No Coward Soul: Jack Nalty (1902–1938) (Toronto/Montreal: Fire Horse Productions, 2003).

⁶O'Riordan, Connolly Column, 132.

⁷Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) f.545, o.6, d.141, ll.93-95. These files were accessed on microfilm as part of the International Brigades Archive (Moscow) at the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, New York University.

⁸Robert Stradling, The Irish and the Spanish Civil War (Manchester: Mandolin, 1999), 120–21.

⁹Frank West, IWMSA 9315/6.

¹⁰Frank West, IWMSA 9315/7. West does not mention Haughey by name, though by the details he gives we can be sure it was Haughey he speaks of. A James Hanghey [sic] of Lurgan, is mentioned in a list of names of prisoners of war sent to the British Foreign Office, dated 2 January 1939. See Marx Memorial Library, London, International Brigade Archive (MML IBA), Box 28 File A/6b. A further confirmation is the letter Haughey wrote to his sister from Vancouver soon after his release. See <http://irelandscw.com/ibvol-JHLetter.htm> (accessed 28 September 2011).

¹¹See MML IBA Box 28/5, 6a, 6b, 7.

¹²For more on Ryan see Sean Cronin, Frank Ryan: The Search for the Republic (Dublin: Repsol, 1980).

¹³O'Riordan, Connolly Column, 140, n. 4.

¹⁴George Leeson, IWMSA 803/3.

¹⁵ Irish Times, 19 January 1939, p. 8.

¹⁶ Irish Times, 23 January 1939, p. 5.

¹⁷ Irish Press, 10 February 1939, p. 1.

¹⁸ Irish Press, 30 January 1939, p. 9 and Irish Press, 10 February 1939, p. 1.

¹⁹ Irish Press, 10 February 1939, p. 1.

²⁰Fearghal McGarry, Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War (Cork: Cork U. P., 1999), 161.

²³O'Riordan, Connolly Column, 139.

²¹ Irish Press, 10 February 1939, p. 1.

²²See Manus O'Riordan, ‘Communism in Dublin in the 1930s: The Struggle against Fascism’, in Strong Words, Brave Deeds: The Poetry, Life and Times of Thomas O'Brien, Volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, ed. H. Gustav Klaus (Dublin: O'Brien Press, 1994), 215–39 (pp. 220–21), and, for an eyewitness account, Bob Doyle, Brigadista: An Irishman's Fight Against Fascism (Dublin: Currach Press, 2006), 32–38.

²⁴Emmett O'Connor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals 1919–43 (Dublin: Univ. College Dublin Press, 2004), 231–32.

²⁵O'Connor, Reds and the Green, 188.

²⁶These included Bill Clare and Seán O Heidirsceoil. See H. Gustav Klaus, ‘Introduction. Beyond Nationalism and Complacency: The Evolution of Thomas O'Brien’, in Strong Words, ed. Klaus, 11–43 (pp. 19–20).

²⁷See Joe Monks, With the Reds in Andalusia (London: The John Cornford Poetry Group, 1985), 50, and an account by Jim Prendergast for The Railway Review, 13 December 1968, MML IBA Box D-4/Pa/1.

²⁸Letter from J. O'Reilly to Francis O'Reilly 12 October 1938; Thurles Chief Superintendent report 15 October 1938, National Archives of Ireland, Dept. of Foreign Affairs File 210/164.

²⁹Frank Edwards, in Uinseann MacEoin, Survivors (Dublin: Argenta, 1980), 14.

³⁰Paddy Duff to Nan Green, 25 April 1946, MML IBA Box 24/IR/8.

³¹See also McGarry, Irish Politics, 80–81.

³³Thomas O'Brien, ‘The Last Hill’, in Strong Words, ed. Klaus, 113–28 (p. 128).

³²Paul Vincent Carroll, Two Plays (London: Macmillan, 1948), 39.