An Cosantóir

16 These words, later immortalised, were uttered by Charles Patrick 'Charlie' Donnelly, a native of Tyrone, killed fighting on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. The Republican volunteers who fought against Franco were celebrated by the Irish Folk singer Christy Moore in "Viva la Quinta Brigada" where this song evoked the memory of the Irish Socialist Volunteers, also known as the "Connolly Column" who were part of the 15th International Brigade who fought against Fascism in Spain on the Republican side. On the Francoist/Nationalist side General Eoin O'Duffy, first Commissioner of An Garda Síochána THE IRISH IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR By Dr Rory Finegan (Comdt Retd) Photos provided by Dr Rory Finegan (Comdt Retd) (Irish Police) and founder of the 1930's proto-Fascist Group "The Blueshirts" also led a contingent. Giles Tremlett, a correspondent with the Guardian has written a nuanced and insightful account of the role of the International Brigade members who fought during the Civil War in "The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War." The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) is of significant, but often, neglected importance in the history of the 20th Century. It was a conflict that presaged the calamitous Second World War, witnessed atrocities on both sides, and acted as a test bed for the employment of tactics and equipment in the ensuing conflict. On the anti-Fascist side, many of the International Brigade members from a disparate and diverse ideological background, later utilised the visceral experience of their combat in Spain as key members of resistance groups throughout Nazi occupied Europe. In that respect they were indeed the cosmopolitan Internationale 'vanguard' against Fascism, yet it must also be remembered that some of them held almost messianic ideological allegiance to Stalin and were blind to the callous repressiveness of his despotic regime. Today, in Ireland the Spanish Civil War is seen as a conflict between Democracy and Fascism rather than Christianity and Communism. As a result, the veterans of the International Brigades have gradually come to be regarded as heroes, while the Irish Brigade's 'crusaders' on the Francoist/Nationalist side have been forgotten or are reviled as supporters of Fascism. While this may be a vagary of history, the real story as always is more complicated and nuanced. At the time, the conflict was perceived as out of sync and an outlier in European history, where Spain was held to be but a ghost of its former imperial power. It is also suggested that the war represented the first European democratic stand against Fascism, yet critically most European states adopted a formal position of non-intervention and were voyeurs, as both Stalin and Hitler carried out a de facto proxy war in Spain. From an Irish perspective, it is noteworthy that Ireland under De Valera also adopted this strict neutral stance towards the war in keeping with the policy of the League of Nations. Fergal McGarry in "Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War" (Cork, 1999), notes that despite the Irish republican socialist members who fought on the anti-Franco (Republican) side; the reality was that the great majority of Irish men who fought in Spain did so under General Franco. Both the Irish public and body politic in the new emerging nascent state, viewed the conflict through the perceived lens that the 'Nationalists' under Franco were a bulwark against godless Communism and defenders of the Catholic faith. There had been deep historical ties between Ireland and Spain stretching back to the period of the Nine Years War (1593-1603) and the Irish émigré experience encapsulated as part of the "Wild Geese" martial tradition. The fact that Franco became the figurehead of a military putsch/coup d'état against an albeit flawed, yet democratically elected Republican government, was a matter of sublime indifference to the wider Irish audience. While this perceived religious undercurrent was an aspect of the potent mix of the conflict, the real significance of the unfolding Spanish tragedy was that it was a "clash of [ideological] civilizations"; of Fascism versus Communism, the common shared characteristic of which was that both were inherently anti-democratic. It was therefore hardly surprising that unfolding events in Spain became conflated with domestic politics in the newly fledged Irish Free State, still emerging from the trauma of the Anglo-Irish War (1919-1921) and the now embedded visceral bitterness of Ireland's own Civil War (1922-1923). The Irish Volunteers who fought on opposing sides in the Spanish Civil War were emblematic of the political and ideological divisions that remained in Ireland, in effect these divisions were superimposed and transferred to the Spanish conflict. It is within this context that General Eoin O'Duffy, the former Garda Commissioner and Blueshirt supremo, mustered a contingent of 700 personnel to fight for Franco. Correspondingly the far left in Ireland, including former irredentist anti-Treaty IRA elements under the charismatic Frank Ryan, with the support of the Irish Communist Party (CPI) led a nucleus of 200 men to fight for the Spanish v Eoin-O'Duffy in Irish Brigade Uniform "We ran for cover, Charlie Donnelly, the commander of an Irish company is crouched behind an olive tree. He has picked up a bunch of olives from the ground and is squeezing them. I hear him say something quietly between a lull in machine gun fire: Even the olives are bleeding." Joseph O'Connor (1992), "Even the Olives are Bleeding"

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