International Brigade Memorial Trust
IBMT member Lin Rose Clark on her new book about her Brigader grandfather…
Robert (now often known as Bob) Hilliard’s life seemed full of mystifying swerves and paradoxes. His nephew Stephen Hilliard, writing about him in 1984, raised a string of questions about the interaction between his staunchly socialist politics and his time as a Church of Ireland priest. Why, in 1930, had he returned to Ireland and entered the priesthood, only to abandon both a few years later? How had this son of a loyalist, conservatively minded family of Killarney factory owners ended up on the side of workers’ struggles and the anti-fascist cause? Hilliard’s humour and passionate commitment had always charmed those who knew him – yet a cloud of sorrow and anger mingled with the esteem in which he was held. My mother could never understand how her loving, playful father had brought himself to leave his children.
I first learned that I had a grandfather who’d been killed in the Spanish Civil War as a young child. My mother explained to me one evening that he was shot in battle, that he had died a few days later and that he’d been fighting to defend the elected government of Spain. She spoke of him as a hero, yet what stayed with me from that first conversation was her unresolved grief. As I grew older, I discovered that admiration and grief were only two of the many strong emotions my grandfather had inspired.
The cover of 'Swift Blaze of Fire' by Lin Rose Clark.
I didn’t want to write a hagiography – Hilliard was no saint, and this is very much a warts-and-all account. But I did want to pick up the clues he left about his life and beliefs, not only because he was an absorbing character but also because the cause for which he risked and lost his life could hardly be more pressing. Hilliard said in his last postcard to his family: 'Unless fascism is beaten in Spain and in the world it means war and hell for our kids'. Since I completed this book the resurgence of fascism and the need to oppose it has gained a more dreadful urgency with every day that passes.
I began writing this book because I wanted to get to the bottom of all these questions. I soon realised that Hilliard’s story only makes sense if viewed through the lens of the struggles of his times. This is the story of a schoolboy lying in his school dormitory in Cork, a city rocked by strikes and massive street demonstrations, hearing gunfire, screams, street battles – awake perhaps one memorable night in 1917 to hear the IRA open up the school Officer Training Corp’s armoury and steal its weapons. It’s the story of an eloquent young anti-Treaty classics student who turned to boxing during the Irish Civil War, ending up as one of Ireland's first-ever Olympians. Among much else, it tells how he was influenced by his wife’s activism in the cause of the rebel Poplar councillors, by workers’ defeats in the 1920s, by their victories during the Belfast outdoor Relief Workers’ strikes and by the unity shown in the antifascist mobilisations of 1930s London. And of course, this book tells the story of how Hilliard came to fight in Spain.
Singer Christy Moore, in the song Viva La Quinta Brigada, begins his list of fallen Irish brigadistas with Hilliard and ex-Christian Brother Eamon McGrotty, who fought with the Lincoln Battalion, to emphasise the cross-sectarian nature of antifascist struggle. The antifascists who stood firm at Cable Street knew that migrant communities, Jews, non-Jews, communists and other left groups had to stand together. We need this class unity as much today as we did in the 1930s. The best way to celebrate Robert Hilliard and those he fought with in Spain is to stand together against the far right now.
Author and Robert Hilliard's granddaughter Lin Rose Clark.
'Swift Blaze of Fire' by Lin Rose Clark will be published by the Lilliput Press on 3 April 2025 and is available to pre-order now.
