International Brigade Memorial Trust
1936
16 February: A Popular Front coalition of socialists, liberals, communists and regional nationalists wins the Spanish Republic’s general election. Right-wing conspirators immediately begin plotting to overthrow the government.
11 July: MI6 agent Hugh Pollard takes off from Croydon in a chartered plane for the Canaries. From there he flies General Francisco Franco to Spanish Morocco to launch a military uprising with the support of Spain’s fascist party, the Falange.
18 July: The army revolt spreads to the mainland and the Spanish Civil War starts. Workers’ militias put down the rebellion in most major cities. Hitler and Mussolini immediately transport Franco’s elite Army of Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar to begin the march on Madrid.
22 July: Britain rejects an urgent request from Madrid to purchase fuel supplies.
3 August: Britain and France present proposals for an international ‘Non-Intervention Agreement’ for Spain. All the European powers agree, but Germany, Italy and Portugal continue to send weapons, aircraft and troops to the fascist rebels.
22/23 August: Artist Felicia Browne becomes the first British casualty of the Spanish Civil War. As a member of a communist militia she was killed while on a mission to blow up an enemy munitions train near Tardienta in Aragón.
4 September: Francisco Largo Caballero of the PSOE socialist party takes over as the Spanish Republic's Prime Minister from José Giral of the Republican Left party.
16 September: The Communist International (Comintern) decides to call on national communist parties to recruit volunteers for the International Brigades.
26 September: The Soviet Union decides to send arms to the Spanish Republic.
18 October: The International Brigades are formally established by a decree of the Spanish Republic. They are based in Albacete.
8 November: International Brigade units go into action for the first time and check the fascist advance on the outskirts of Madrid. British volunteers, part of an English-speaking company in the German Thälmann Battalion, engage in fierce fighting in the University City.
24 December: Start of the Battle of Lopera, near Córdoba, which claims the lives of more than a dozen British and Irish volunteers in the French Marseillaise Battalion. Meanwhile, recruits from Britain are arriving in Spain in sufficient numbers to create a separate British Battalion.
1937
8 February: Málaga falls to the fascists. Refugees are mercilessly bombed and shelled on the ‘Road of Death’ to Almería. Thousands of Republican supporters in the city are also assassinated in a brutal repression replicated everywhere in the Francoist zone.
12 February: The newly formed British Battalion sees action at the Battle of Jarama, south east of Madrid. Some 150 men are killed, but the fascists fail to cut the Madrid-Valencia highway to encircle the city.
26 April: The historic Basque town of Gernika is fire-bombed by Hitler’s Condor Legion. The atrocity is immortalised in Picasso’s painting ‘Guernica’, which is displayed in the Spanish Republic’s pavilion at the world fair in Paris.
3 May: A police move to regain control of the telephone exchange in Barcelona sparks five days of street clashes in which government forces overcome anarchist and revolutionary Marxist militias.
17 May: Juan Negrín replaces fellow PSOE socialist Francisco Largo Caballero as Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic.
23 May: Arrival in Southampton of the steamship Habana bringing 4,000 refugee Basque children from Bilbao escaping Franco’s bombing campaign in northern Spain. The British government only lets them enter on condition that no public money is spent on their upkeep.
6 July: The British Battalion takes part in the Republican offensive at Brunete, west of Madrid. Initial gains are soon reversed by superior fascist airpower. The battalion suffers more than 70 deaths.
24 August: The British Anti-Tank Battery joins the successful assault on Quinto in Aragón in a move to take Zaragoza. The British Battalion joins the action against nearby fascist defences and at Belchite, which is captured after desperate hand-to hand fighting.
23 September: The International Brigades are formally incorporated within the Republican Army, with a quota of Spanish soldiers in each battalion.
21 October: Gijón is overrun by the fascists, completing their conquest of Republican territory along the Atlantic coast.
6 December: Labour leader Clement Attlee visits the British Battalion at Mondéjar. In appreciation the No.1 Company is renamed the Major Attlee Company. Another visitor is the American film star, singer and political activist Paul Robeson.
1938
8 January: In a major boost for morale, Republican forces capture the city of Teruel.
17 January: In bitter cold and several feet of snow, the British Battalion is brought into to the defence of Teruel. Despite ferocious artillery bombardment, the ground is held, but at the cost of 24 lives. Franco brings up more troops and firepower and on 21 February the Republican Army retreats from the city.
7 March: Franco launches a blitzkrieg-style offensive through Aragón. The British Battalion and other Republican units retreat in disarray. The battalion suffers 120 losses in clashes at Belchite, Caspe and Calaceite. Scores are also captured. The International Brigades HQ is rapidly moved from Albacete to Barcelona.
3 April: Fascist forces reach the Mediterranean at Vinaròs, thereby cutting Republic in two. The British Battalion regroups north of the Ebro.
25 July: The Republic launches a daring offensive across the Ebro along a wide front. The British Battalions’s advance is halted at Gandesa by fierce fascist counter-attacks. The Battle of the Ebro claims the lives of 90 British and Irish volunteers.
21 September: Socialist prime minister Juan Negrín announces the withdrawal of the International Brigades. While Britain and France negotiate with Hitler and Mussolini to abandon Czechoslovakia, the move is a last desperate attempt to shame the Western powers into forcing Germany and Italy to pull their forces out of Spain.
23 September: Final day of action of the British Battalion at Corbera d’Ebre.
28 October: Cheered by enthusiastic crowds, 13,000 International Brigaders march through Barcelona in an emotional farewell parade. Dolroes Ibárruri – La Pasionaria – tells them: “You are history. You are legend.” Meanwhile, fighting at the Ebro continues until mid November, by which time all the early Republican gains have been reversed.
7 December: The returning British Battalion arrives at London’s Victoria station to be greeted by tens of thousands of supporters. Clement Attlee is among those to make welcoming speeches.
1939
26 January: Barcelona falls to Franco’s forces. Two weeks later the fascists reach the French border. Half a million refugees flee to France, where they are interned in concentration camps.
27 February: Britain recognises Franco’s government.
5 March: Supported by anarchists and dissident socialists, Republican General Segismundo Casado seizes power in Madrid with the aim of ending the war. MI6 involvement in the move is suspected.
26 March: In defiance of Prime Minister Juan Negrín, who wants to fight on, Casado orders an end to resistance. Franco’s forces march into Madrid. Casado escapes on a Royal Navy ship to London.
28 March: The last refugee ship to leave Spain is the British-crewed Stanbrook with 2,600 Republicans on board. They are taken to safety in French Algeria.
1 April: Franco declares victory. International Brigaders pledge to “continue the fight we helped to wage in Spain”.
Until 1975
International Brigaders form the International Brigade Association. The IBA initially campaigns to free foreign International Brigade veterans imprisoned in Europe. After the Second World War it sponsors lawyers to observe trials of political prisoners in Spain and sends food parcels to their families. Brigaders mount regular protests outside the Spanish embassy and against visiting representatives of the Franco regime. Activities continue until the dictator’s death in November 1975 and Spain’s return to democracy.
Places mentioned in the timeline.
IBMT Archivist Alan Lloyd reports from the city's Victoria Park on 17 July…
It was a great day in Portsmouth for the unveiling of a beautiful new memorial to the 14 men from the Portsmouth area who went to fight fascism in Spain, with six of them being killed or dying of wounds.
Engraved on the bench are the names of the local brigaders alongside the famous quote from La Pasionaria: 'You are legend. You are history.'
Portsmouth Trades Union Council, which saw the project through, did a fantastic job, as did masons Somerville Stone.
IBMT Secretary Megan Dobney speaks at the unveiling.
There were rousing speeches from Portsmouth Trades Union Council, IBMT and Portsmouth City Council, along with Lisa Croft, the granddaughter of International Brigader AC Williams, who was there with her brother Tim and family.
Activist and granddaughter of AC Williams Lisa Croft stands alongside her grandfather's plaque.
Lisa, Tim and family unveiled the plaque, along with Joan Joslin, the niece of Jimmy Moore, whose grave is in Milton Cemetery.
Louis MacDonald (front), Secretary of Portsmouth Trades Union Council, at the unveiling.
Thanks to all those who were able to support the International Brigade Memorial Trust by buying merchandise; it is an important part of raising funds, along with membership subs, to continue our work.
A living memorial for all to enjoy.
The IBMT would like to thank Alan Lloyd for his tireless work to identify the Brigaders named on the bench.
Rob Hargreaves reports on the unveiling of a new plaque in June…
Memories of speedway legend Clem Beckett, who died a hero’s death in the Spanish Civil War, were affectionately revived by locals close to his boyhood home.
Almost a hundred years after a 40,000 crowd of adoring fans witnessed one of Clem’s record-breaking rides at Manchester’s White City stadium, a rather smaller gathering of fans assembled in the sleepy hamlet of Top o’ th’Meadows, on on the outskirts of Oldham, to pay homage to their hero.
The new plaque is near Beckett's boyhood home.
The occasion was the unveiling of a plaque in Clem Beckett’s honour, by his 96-year-old niece, Margaret Barlow, who lives close to Clem’s boyhood home in Saddleworth. She enthralled her audience with tales of ‘Daredevil’ Beckett’s career as a motorcycle speedway rider and performer on the ‘wall of death’, before drawing back a curtain in the form of a chequered flag to reveal the plaque.
Ready to wave the chequered flag: Karl Jones, who led the campaign, with Margaret Barlow, Beckett's niece.
Sheep farmer Karl Jones commissioned the plaque and had it erected on the side of his farmhouse. “I was very moved to learn about the connections we have with Clem Beckett, and to discover that Margaret was my neighbour”, he said. Before it’s unveiling, the plaque was fittingly covered by the chequered flag which marked hundreds of dirt-track victories for Clem.
During his astonishing rise from humble working-class roots to fame as a speedway rider in the 1920’s, Clem remained a loyal member of the Communist Party, and was among the first British volunteers to go to Spain when war broke out. He was killed in action, at the Battle of Jarama, manning a machine gun on the flanks of ‘Suicide Hill’, covering the retreat of comrades outgunned by fascist troops reinforced by Hitler and Mussolini.
Supporters gather in the sun to remember International Brigader Clem Beckett.
Dolores Long, chair of IBMT affiliate North West International Brigade Memorial Group, and daughter of Sam Wild, who fought alongside Clem Beckett at Jarama, and later became the commanding officer of the British Battalion, thanked Karl for his efforts. She stressed the importance of memorials in preserving the memory of the 2,500 volunteers from Britain and Ireland who fought against fascism in Spain, of whom more than 500 were killed in action.
Words spoken by RMT General Secretary EDDIE DEMPSEY at the IBMT’s annual commemoration on 4 July 2026 at the International Brigade memorial on London’s Southbank.
The history of the International Brigades is not just any history, it's our history too in the RMT. Visitors to our head office in Unity House will see a memorial, which lists well over 120 names of railway workers and seafarers, members of the NUR and NUS, who offered their lives in defence of democracy and in the fight against fascism in Spain.
These were ordinary workers. They were dockers, they were guards, they were signalmen, they were seafarers, and they made an extraordinary decision to go and defend democracy in Spain. They saw first what our establishment didn't: the threat that fascism posed at a time when the politicians were more interested in appeasement and tacit support for Franco.
Our forebears understood the threat, not just to democracy, but to our labour movement. One of the figures in our history to sound the early warning was NUR President William Dobbie, who warned workers about what he had seen in Germany – the crushing of the trade union movement and the throwing in prison of trade unionists. He raised the alarm by saying that fascists recognised their enemies in our movement. This is why trade unionists were often first to face persecution.
Our General Secretary at the time, John Marchbank, attacked Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, accusing him of being a violent racist. He was sued by Mosley. Although Mosley won the case, the court’s award was one farthing, a quarter of a penny. It was a humiliation, showing that, although the BUF leader technically won his case, it was John Marchbank and his defence of our movement and his exposure of the true nature of fascism that had really won the day.
That spirit was shown again later that year at Cable Street in October 1936. Many leading figures in our movement, including Jim Prendergast, who later served on the NUR executive committee, who had fought the Blueshirts in Dublin and who organised the King's Cross rail workers’ anti-fascist group, marched our members to join the Jewish, the Irish and the East End community, along with the communists, to defeat the fascists at Cable Street.
They recognised this wasn't enough, which is why, under the motto ‘They Shall Not Pass’, they went to Spain as part of 2,500 from Britain and Ireland and the many tens of thousands from around the world.
I want to name some of them. There was Ginger McElroy, who was a railway worker from Wishaw. He was killed at Jarama in 1937. There was Alwyn Skinner, who was a railway worker from Neath in South Wales. He was killed at the Ebro. There was John Alexander, a railway worker from our Dundee branch. He was killed at Brunete.
They weren’t professional soldiers. Indeed, Jim Prendergast was wounded very badly at Jarama after running out of bullets in that battle. They were ordinary working people who understood the threat of fascism and understood the importance of defending democracy.
I also want to remember members in our seafaring section, the blockade runners who broke the fascist blockade. One of these ships, the Seven Seas Spray, sailed into Bilbao under complete darkness with every light on the ship turned out in the middle of the night. And the docks were lined with the people of Bilbao who were cheering: ‘Long live the British sailors! Long live freedom!.’ After Bilbao fell, British crews helped to get around 10,000 refugees out of northern Spain and delivered them to safety in France.
The lessons they learned and the lessons they teach us is that, when governments and our establishment can't see the way, it's our class and our own people we have to rely upon. Although threats change and it's a different picture today, our principles have to remain the same.
We remember the International Brigades as an inspiration to our generation, but, more than that, they place on us a historic duty to carry on that fight. Their inspiration to us is their stand against fascism, against racism and against hatred and in favour of peace, socialism and solidarity. This is what inspires all of us today.
But the responsibility that they have placed on us is even more powerful because we see again in the world genocide. We see war, imperialist war. It's worth remembering who Franco was. His was the Army of Africa, returning home to Spain. What is fascism if it's not colonialism brought home?
So, when we see in the world around us the wars that are going on, we have a duty to oppose them because they will come home. We see our civil liberties being trampled on here in this country. When we see our young people being given lengthy custodial sentences under terrorism legislation for standing against genocide and when we see our retired people being thrown in police vans for holding signs saying they oppose genocide, we have to recognise that our rights and our freedoms, indeed our trade union freedoms, are not given to us, but they're won through bitter fights. We only keep them as long as we stand together and fight for them.
So we remember Ginger McElroy and Alwyn Skinner and John Alexander and our seafarers. We remember Jim Prendergast and all of the volunteers. That generation showed us that solidarity is stronger than division, that hope is stronger than fear, that courage is something that can unite us.
But their inspiration is only one thing. They have also placed a duty upon us. They carried the banner so we could pick it up and carry it on to the next generation. We remember the International Brigades, but we also redouble our commitment to the fight before us today against fascism, against division, for peace, for solidarity and for socialism. No pasarán!
Eddie Dempsey photos are © of Andrew Wiard. More of his photos can be viewed here.
Music was provided by Maddy Carty, who sang two of her songs as well as 'Valley of Jarama' and 'The Internationale'.
More than 200 people attended the commemoration.
Flowers were laid by several organisations, including the Spanish embassy, Basque Children of '37 Association, Marx Memorial Library, Communist Party of Britain, PCE-GB Spanish Communist Party, Doncaster Trades Council, International Brigade memorial groups from Oxford, the North-West, Scotland and Wales, plus many family members.
There's still time to support Scottish member Nathan Hennebry…
IBMT member Nathan Hennebry is taking part in this year's Kiltwalk to raise funds for the Trust. He'll be tackling the 23-mile Mighty Stride through the streets of Glasgow on 26 April.
Nathan has already reached his £1,000 target. But with every penny going to the IBMT, please sponsor him to push his total even higher and support the Trust's vital educational and commemorative work.
Kiltwalk is Scotland’s largest mass-participation walking event, with over 216,000 people taking part since 2016.
Spanish dictator Francisco Franco died 50 years ago today [20 November]. Jim Jump looks back at his blood-soaked rule and toxic legacy on Spain today.
‘Spaniards, Franco has died,’ came the announcement 50 years ago on Spanish TV. If there was any truth to the widely-held story that Barcelona immediately ran out of cava, the corks would have been popping behind closed doors. Most Spaniards held their breath on 20 November 1975, fearful of what might happen next.
After nearly four decades of brutal dictatorship, reactionary forces dominated the country’s institutions and the generalísimo himself had boasted that everything was being left ‘well tied up’.
Confounding expectations, however, King Juan Carlos appointed a government that steered Spain towards free elections in 1977, the first since the Spanish Republic. In 1981 he helped face down a botched coup attempt by diehard army and civil guard units, who briefly seized the Cortes, the Spanish parliament. In the following year the PSOE socialists – the dominant party in the Republic’s Popular Front government – won the general election.
Today Juan Carlos, who abdicated in favour of son Filipe in 2014, is again at the centre of controversy. His autobiography praises Franco’s ‘intelligence and political sense’. But it says nothing in 500 pages about the victims of Franco, nor the scars that the Spanish Civil War have left on Spanish society.
Publication of the memoir comes at a time of heightened political tensions in Spain. Far-right Vox is surging in the polls. In half a dozen autonomous regions the party props up right-wing administrations fronted by the more mainstream Popular Party (PP) – which is itself a haven for Franco apologists. The approaching anniversary of the dictator’s death has also seen anti-immigrant fascist groups on the streets of Madrid giving Nazi salutes, singing Francoist anthems and waving SS-inspired flags.
Though many have applauded Juan Carlos’s role in Spain’s transition to democracy, they often overlook the tide of popular agitation that was also forcing his hand. Hailed as a triumph of peaceful top-down politics, the transición was far from bloodless. Hundreds died in political violence, including terrorist attacks by a shadowy far-left group, Grapo, that is now known to have been heavily penetrated by Francoist secret police.
Hearses with the bodies of communist lawyers killed by fascists in 1977 pass through crowds in Madrid.
Wiki Commons
Among the worst atrocities was the assassination in 1977 of five communist lawyers by fascist gunmen in Madrid’s Atocha Street. More than 100,000 people attended their funeral – one of the first mass demonstrations since the Caudillo’s death. This was followed by strikes and displays of solidarity across the country. A few weeks later the PCE communist party was legalised.
The blood on Franco’s hands never dried. After launching the military uprising that sparked the country’s civil war in 1936, he climbed to power over the dead bodies of more than 150,000 summarily-executed Republicans, leftists and trade unionists. Their toll easily outnumbered the victims of revenge attacks against supporters of the coup.
Victory in 1939 was secured courtesy of troops, aircraft and weapons sent by Hitler and Mussolini. When their planes mercilessly bombed Guernica, Barcelona and Madrid, the world was shocked. But in characteristic Perfidious Albion fashion, the British government chose to appease the fascist dictators by covertly favouring Franco with an arms embargo on the Republic – all under the guise of ‘non-intervention’.
Even when the war ended, the systematic torture and killings continued in Franco’s vast network of penal camps. In 1940 in Madrid alone there were 30 prisons housing 100,000 Republican prisoners, a quarter of them on death row. And so it went on, year after year, with the terminally ill Franco signing the last five death warrants as he was about to climb into his death-bed.
In Britain, veterans of the International Brigades, who had fought so bravely during the civil war, kept up their struggle in other ways. The International Brigade Association helped organise frequent protests and embassy pickets. The IBA worked with socialist lawyers to send observers to trials of political prisoners along with food for their families. Others went further. Dublin-born Brigader Bob Doyle, for example, used family trips to Spain to take money to the the anti-Franco underground and on one occasion scattered leaflets on a Madrid bus and among football crowds before making a swift getaway.
There had been a glimmer of hope at the end of the Second World War that Franco’s regime, by then an international pariah, might be toppled. But the US cavalry rode to the rescue, finding in Franco a dependable anti-communist stooge during the Cold War. Generous long-term loans began in 1950 and three years later the US was handed air and naval bases in exchange for more economic and military aid.
Spain today is a vibrant, open society, though one with all the familiar social problems of advanced Western liberal democracies. Scratch the surface, however, and historic divisions open up and old attitudes forged by 40 years of censorship and dictatorship lies re-emerge.
It wasn’t until the start of this century – a full quarter century after Franco’s death – that the unofficial pact of silence that accompanied the return to democracy was broken. Younger people began asking what had happened to their grandparents during the war, why they didn’t have a grave and why no-one dared speak about it. Soon they found out the awful truth that Spain is a country covered with mass graves of Republicans. There were – and still are – thousands of them – including ones with remains of International Brigaders whose bodies were dug up and dumped after Franco won the war.
The man who initiated the first exhumation was Emilio Silva. He was trying to find the remains of his grandfather in the village of Priaranza del Bierzo in north west Spain. But in the process he launched a social movement of Spaniards demanding to know the truth about the past. ‘What I wanted was to bury him with my grandmother and go back to my life as a journalist,’ Silva recalled in a recent interview. ‘I thought I was going to return to how things were before finding the mass grave, but everything became unstoppable.’
Many thousands of murdered Republicans have since been given proper burials, though it is estimated that the remains of more than 100,000 of Spain’s ‘disappeared’ still lie unidentified in the Spanish earth.
Anniversary cover of Spain’s satirical magazine El Jueves is headlined ‘Happy 50 years without Franco’ and shows the dictator holding the leads of Vox leader Santiago Abascal and the Popular Party’s rightwing head of the Madrid community, Isabel Ayuso.
Propelled by this mass movement for the recovery of historical memory, the PSOE-led governments of José Luis Zapatero and current prime minister Pedro Sánchez have made worthy efforts to help Spain come to terms with the crimes of Francoism. Memory laws have acknowledged old injustices and addressed the issue of mass graves. Streets glorifying fascists have been renamed. Franco’s body was removed from the grotesque mausoleum he built for himself with Republican slave labour north west of Madrid. Exiles, International Brigaders and their descendants have been welcomed as Spanish citizens.
Unsurprisingly Vox and the PP have resisted all these moves, with regional authorities led by them rolling back memory laws and refusing to identify and protect mass graves. Yet, as one historian has pointed out, Spain is the only country in western Europe where it is possible to randomly dig a hole in the ground and run the risk of unearthing human remains. Meanwhile those who call for an end to this scandal are accused of stirring up old hatreds.
Bill Alexander, former commander of the British Battalion in Spain, noted proudly after the country’s return to democracy that anti-Francoists in Britain had ensured that Franco and his underlings were never accepted by the British people. Their campaigning had ‘remembered the heroic struggles of the Spanish people and recognised that only the end of Francoism could bring freedom’. Sadly, the toxic legacy left by Franco has still not been properly expunged and Bill’s words remain true to this day.
Jim Jump is the IBMT Chair. This article also appears in today's Morning Star (20 November 2025): https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/struggle-against-francos-legacy-continues
Words spoken by joint Ireland Secretary Luke O'Riordan at Belfast City Hall on 3 October 2025 during the IBMT AGM weekend…
It is a great honour to be asked to say a few words among friends and comrades this evening as we gather to remember the bravery of the International Brigades.
Many of you will have known my grandad Michael, or Mick, and many more of you will have known my dad, Manus.
Michael O'Riordan in 1936.
As well as being incredibly proud of the conviction and courage shown by my grandfather Mick as a mere 20-year-old young man to fight for what is right, I am likewise incredibly proud of our dad, Manus, for the role he played in carrying that flame for many decades until his passing four years ago.
Manus O'Riordan proudly holding the Connolly Column banner.
We are indebted to the work of people such as my father and so many of you here in preserving, researching and bringing to life the stories of all those brave volunteers from Ireland, Britain and further afield, who fought for what they knew was right.
I think back to the AGM of the IBMT here in Belfast in 2007. It was the first such meeting I had attended since the passing of our grandad a year and a half previously.
As a 19-year-old who was very close and immensely fond of him, there was an extra layer of nostalgia to the occasion.
Another layer was added later that evening at the social event in the Europa Hotel, where Tommy Sands was among the performers.
For it was his song Your Daughters And Your Sons, which for me encapsulates why the work of the International Brigades Memorial Trust is so important.
I’ll quote a verse of that song:
They tortured you in Belfast and they taunted you in Spain
and in that Warsaw ghetto they tied you up in chains.
In Vietnam and Chile they came with tanks and guns,
It's there you sowed the seed of Peace in your daughters and your sons.
It is a song that draws upon the many global injustices of the 20th century, passed on to the next generation, that highlights the value in sowing the seeds of freedom, justice, equality and peace to the next generation.
And that is exactly what the International Brigades Memorial Trust does.
In keeping alive the memory of the International Brigades, it sows those seeds for future generations.
Unlike my grandfather, I am not a great public speaker and unlike my father, I am neither a historian nor a researcher.
Luke O'Riordan (left) with siblings Jess and Neil next to the stained-glass window dedicated to the International Brigades in Belfast City Hall.
So, instead, I will take a moment to remember how growing up as the grandson of someone like Michael O’Riordan, and how both he and my parents, Manus and Annette, sowed those seeds for me, Jess and Neil.
For anyone who knew our grandfather, you will know he had a bit of a presence about him.
Holding court in Connolly Books, he might size you up as to whether he wanted to engage with you or not. But if he did, he was very generous with his time and his insights.
And as a grandfather, he was loving and kind, and always had great time for all of his grandchildren, and for other children and young people as well, as his lifetime of activism and want for a better world never faltered.
Memories of grandad speaking about his time in the International Brigade, and his views on politics and the world more generally, are seared into the memory of my childhood.
I will forever be grateful to my parents for bringing me to Spain in 1996, the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and the biggest-ever reunion of Brigadistas in Spain.
The experience of walking through the streets of places such as Barcelona, Madrid and Guernica, and visiting battle sites such as Jarama alongside our grandad and his comrades from all over Europe are memories I cherish and will never forget.
Even though I was only 8 years of age, it imparted on me the great sacrifice so many of these men made.
Equally impactful on that trip were the throngs of Spaniards and Catalonians who rushed to greet and embrace the Brigadistas on the streets.
They had been silenced for decades under the brutality of Fascism, their stories left untold. But those who survived still remembered, and their sheer emotion showed that they were still forever grateful.
Not long after that trip to Spain in 1996, my grandad addressed my primary school, kids aged 5 up to the age of 12, and spoke for a couple of hours about his experiences, his audience enthralled.
American Brigader Louis 'Lou' H Gordon. Photo: ALBA
Not long after, our grandad’s comrade, Lou Gordon, a Lincoln Brigade veteran from New York, came to stay with us in our family home.
He also came to my school, and told those same children that if the world had realised what was happening in Spain in the 1930s, then he might not have had to be one of the people who had to liberate Dachau concentration camp seven or eight years later.
These might seem like trivial anecdotes, but for me they are not.
Remembering and commemorating the International Brigades in one function of occasions like that one we are having this weekend.
But an even more important function is educating, engaging and inspiring future generations.
Because the world is, once again, in a dark place.
The myth of Western values has, once again, been shattered.
Never again is now. This week alone, as world leaders bury their heads in the sand or turn the other way, it took normal, everyday men and women to take a stand by setting sail on a flotilla to attempt to break the siege of Gaza and bring aid to a starving population.
So when we gather at events like these to commemorate the International Brigades…
In the words of Christy Moore: Let us all remember them tonight.
But as well as that, in the words of Tommy Sands: Sow the seeds of freedom in your daughters and your sons.
Ireland’s singing and songwriting legend Christy Moore has sent this message, including a rendition of ‘Viva la Quince Brigada’, to the IBMT’s 2025 Annual General Meeting in Belfast. The AGM was held over the weekend of 3-5 October.
Moore is an IBMT Patron and has done much to spread the story of the Irish volunteers who fought fascism and defended the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War.
Marking the 40th anniversary of the unveiling of the International Brigade memorial in London’s Jubilee Gardens, IBMT Chair Jim Jump looks back at the drama behind its installation…
Linger by the International Brigade memorial on London’s Southbank and you’ll soon notice tourists stopping to find out what this imposing piece of public art is all about. Standing four metres high, it’s the only sculpture or memorial in Jubilee Gardens, a green oasis facing onto the Thames and squeezed between the London Eye and the Royal Festival Hall.
The memorial today with its inscription inspired by Cecil Day Lewis's poem 'The Volunteer'.
As these curious tourists read the inscriptions, some, especially Spaniards, are clearly surprised. How come a memorial of this sort, dedicated to a cause still considered controversial in some official and rightwing circles, should be located on a prime site in the heart of the capital?
It’s a good question. Little do most people know the politics and cliff-hanging drama that led up to its unveiling 40 years ago on 5 October 1985.
The impetus for a national memorial emerged in the years following Franco’s death in 1975 and the process of restoring democracy in Spain.
Through the International Brigade Association, the veterans had, until Spain’s often fraught transición, concentrated on campaigning against the country’s brutal dictatorship and on behalf of its many political prisoners.
Now, with the approach of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1986, they could devote efforts to a national memorial to their more than 500 fallen comrades and to all those anti-fascist volunteers who had, as the memorial in Jubilee Gardens states, ‘left these shores’ to go to Spain. These were carefully chosen words to include all the Irish, Cypriots and those from the dominions and colonies who didn’t count themselves as ‘British’.
Supporters in Scotland had already led the way. In August 1980, Glasgow City Council raised the landmark Pasionaria memorial to the International Brigades. Created by Liverpool sculptor Arthur Dooley, the figure of legendary Spanish Republican leader Dolores Ibárruri faces south across the Clyde, arms outstretched.
Something equally as impressive was needed nationally. And in the leftwing Labour-run Greater London Council, the Brigaders found friends, notably leader ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone, chair Illtyd Harrington and arts committee chair Tony Banks. The GLC agreed to provide a site for the memorial in Jubilee Gardens, which it owned and was located next to its headquarters in County Hall.
The International Brigade Memorial Appeal (IBMA) was set up and began raising the necessary funds, including an £18,800 grant from the GLC.
Six leading sculptors were asked to submit ideas for the memorial, and in December 1984, the commission was awarded to Ian Walters, creator of, among other works, the bust of Nelson Mandela on London Southbank and the statue of Harold Wilson in Huddersfield.
Sculptor Ian Walters (left), with his maquette for the memorial, and (from right) Brigaders Bill Alexander (International Brigade Memorial Appeal chair) and Jimmy Jump (IBMA Secretary).
Meanwhile, Red Ken was becoming a thorn in the side of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The GLC hoisted, for example, a massive banner on top of County Hall, clearly visible across the river from the Houses of Parliament, with a running total of the growing number of unemployed in London.
Thatcher was not amused, and she characteristically went for the political nuclear option, announcing in 1983 that she would abolish the GLC. Two years later, royal assent was given to the Local Government Act, which on 31 March 1986 dissolved the GLC and its powers were distributed to the London boroughs.
County Hall was to be sold off – it’s now a leisure hub for attractions such as the Sea Life London Aquarium and London Dungeon – and Jubilee Gardens was eventually handed over to a specially-formed charitable trust.
Thatcher’s attack on the GLC galvanised campaigners. At the meeting of the IBMA on 8 January 1985, appeal chair Bill Alexander said it was now ‘essential to hold the unveiling ceremony while the GLC is still in control’. Illtyd Harrington urged it to be held ‘the sooner the better’, the meeting heard.
Committee members of the International Brigade Memorial Appeal inspect the unfinished sculpture in Ian Walters’s studio in Battersea. From left are Brigaders Robert Walker (partly hidden) and Joe Monks, Betty Birch, Solly Kaye and Ann Mildwater.
With the clock ticking, plans for an unveiling on 19 July 1986 were scrapped, and Ian Walters was told to speed things up for the new deadline in October 1985.
The new deadline was met, though even after the unveiling, uncertainty still hung over the memorial’s future.
‘It is intended to hold a public event at the memorial on 19 July 1986, 50th anniversary of the fascist revolt,’ wrote Bill Alexander in the International Brigade Association’s newsletter.
‘But the GLC, whose many-sided and generous support made the memorial possible, will have been replaced by a government-appointed quango who will control the Southbank,’ he said. ‘The character and form of the event cannot therefore yet be decided.’
5 October 1985: Michael Foot MP with his hand on the memorial shortly after he unveiled it. From his left to right are: Norman Willis (TUC General Secretary), Brigader Jack Jones, Tony Banks and Communist Party General Secretary Gordon McLennan. With her hand on the plinth is Dame Janet Vaughan and, next to her, Bill Alexander.
Thankfully, not only did the 1986 event go ahead, but a commemoration has taken place in July ever since. And, with excellent relations with the Jubilee Gardens Trust, the IBMT is confident that the volunteers will continue to be remembered at the memorial for many years to come.
