International Brigade Memorial Trust
Words spoken by IBMT Chair Jim Jump in Belfast City Hall on 3 October at the start of the Trust’s Annual General Meeting weekend…
The great Spanish poet of the 1930s, Rafael Alberti, said the International Brigades had blood that could sing across frontiers.
Where better than in Belfast and in Ireland to celebrate that spirit that says that some things are more important than the frontiers, borders and boundaries that can divide us?
The Spanish Republican leader Dolores Ibárruri – better known as La Pasionaria – captured that same spirit in her farewell message to the Brigades:
Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Republicans – men of different colours, differing ideology, antagonistic religions – yet all profoundly loving liberty and justice. They came and offered themselves to us unconditionally. They gave us everything – their youth or their maturity; their science or their experience; their blood and their lives; their hopes and aspirations – and they asked us for nothing.
About 250 Irish men and women joined the International Brigades to fight fascism in Spain, mostly as soldiers, but also as sailors or medics. One in four of them was killed.
There were three nurses. Let’s name them:
Mary Elmes, from Cork, where there is a bridge named after her,
Ruth Ormsby, from Dronmore West, Sligo, who tragically died in Spain,
Aileen Sparling, from Roscrea, Tipperary.
Around 50 volunteers came from Belfast, plus another 30 or so from the North. Men like:
Albert Fulton, a plumber, who went to Australia to work on the railways in Queensland. Arriving in Spain he gave an address in Belfast in Alexandria Park Avenue. He fought and was wounded in the Battle of the Ebro, in the machine-gun company of the British Battalion of the 15th Brigade. This was the legendary Quince Brigada, which also contained the American and Canadian battalions.
Frank Edwards, from Antrim, a schoolteacher and member of the Irish Republican Congress, who fought in the English-speaking company of a French battalion. He was wounded near Madrid, but was soon back in action in Extremadura, leading a company in the 20th International Battalion.
Henry McGrath, from Tobergill Street, off the Shankill Road. A merchant seaman, he first served on a Spanish Republican warship, then joined the British Battalion and fought at the Ebro. He was killed near Corbera on the last day the battalion saw action, 23 September 1938.
Jim Jump: Some things are more important than the borders that divide us.
One of his comrades in that battle was Jim Straney, from John Street, off Divis Street. Another IRC member, he was working in a factory in Birmingham when the Spanish Civil War broke out. He fought in 15th Brigade’s Anti-Tank Battery in Aragón. Then he joined the British Battalion and was killed near Gandesa on 31 July 1938.
One last name, this time not from Belfast or the North, but I want to mention him for personal reasons: Jack Nalty, from Ballygar in Galway, an oil depot foreman and IRC member. He was my father’s commanding officer in the machine-gun company at the Ebro. Jack was a fine leader of men and popular among them. He was killed, like Henry McGrath, near Corbera on 23 September 1938 and received a posthumous citation for bravery.
Let us remember these men and women. Let us remember them all.
Finally, we should not forget that the Spanish Republic was a ray of hope in those dark years of the 1930s – a progressive government elected to power while other countries in Europe were falling under the fascist yoke.
‘At last a star for desperate men’, wrote an English poet who was one of the men who travelled to Spain to join the Brigades.
Look around today. We see 1930s-style social deprivation and inequality. Militarism and religious and ethno-nationalism are on the rise. Hospitals, women and children are being mercilessly bombed and killed in their thousands. And the drumbeats of world war grow louder.
This would all sound depressingly familiar to the volunteers of the International Brigades. And this is why, in the IBMT, we do all we can, in schools, trade unions, political parties and the wider community, to make sure the example and inspiration of the International Brigades will never be forgotten and will be passed on to future generations.
¡Viva la Quince Brigada! ¡No pasarán!
[Photos © Kevin Cooper Photoline NUJ]
