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.

JIM JUMP looks forward to the International Brigade Memorial Trust AGM taking place in Belfast later this week where the spirit of solidarity will be rekindled.

The fight against Franco and the rising tide of European fascism united progressive forces from all communities in Belfast. Sectarian and other divisions were cast aside and some 50 volunteers from the city took up arms during the Spanish civil war of 1936-39. Twelve of them made the ultimate sacrifice.

The volunteers are celebrated today on the Shankill Road, where the library hosts a plaque to the nine local men who died in Spain, as well as on the Falls Road, where a mural remembers the Irish republicans who fought Franco. 

Their shared example of anti-fascism and international solidarity will be remembered in a weekend of activities from October 3-5, organised by the locally based International Brigade Commemoration Committee (IBCC). The occasion is the annual general meeting of the International Brigade Memorial Trust (IBMT).

One of the highlights of the weekend will be a visit to the magnificent stained glass window dedicated to the International Brigades in Belfast City Hall. Designers Alpha Glass of Derry deliberately set out to depict the way that the cause of the Spanish Republic brought people together from differing traditions in the city.

Stained-glass window in Belfast City Hall.

Significantly, when the proposal for the window was put to city councillors in 2013, it was supported by all political parties. The unanimously carried motion declared: “This council agrees to the installation of a stained glass window in the City Hall to commemorate the sons of our city who fought in support of the democratically elected government of Spain against the forces of fascism.”

Also on the weekend’s programme is an act of remembrance at the International Brigade memorial in Writer’s Square, which was raised by the Belfast and District Trades Union Council (BDTUC), the IBCC and other union and community groups. It was unveiled in 2007 — the last time the IBMT held its AGM in the city — by Dublin-born International Brigade veteran Bob Doyle. With him were his comrades in arms Jack Edwards and Jack Jones.

The year before, Doyle unveiled a memorial plaque across the road in the John Hewitt pub, owned by the Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre and named after a prominent local socialist and poet. 

Speaking then with the same passion that had taken him to Spain 70 years earlier, he said he was not there to recall a heroically fought war, but “to make you boil with anger.” He went on: “The same US corporations that supplied the fascists with oil in Spain are today pilfering the oil of the Iraqi people. 

“The British government that lied to the people while secretly giving financial credits and hypocritically allowing arms to be smuggled to Spanish fascists is the same government that lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and led the British people into a war they did not want.”

Doyle was one of 250 volunteers from Ireland who served on the side of the Spanish Republic, about 80 of them from the Six Counties. One in four of the volunteers from the North was killed, and another, Jim Haughey of the Royal Canadian air force, originally from Lurgan, was killed when he continued the anti-fascist fight in the second world war.

At the time of the conflict in Spain, Ireland was still in political turmoil following its war of independence and civil war. In the pulpits and the halls of power there were influential reactionary forces that supported Franco. 

More than 600 young Irishmen were recruited by the country’s fascist party, the NCP, to fight in Spain; demoralised and poorly led, the Irish Brigade, as they were known, soon returned home, having seen barely any front-line action. 

By contrast Irish International Brigaders took part in all the great battles of the war, often in leading roles. Irish republican Frank Ryan, from Limerick, led the daring counter-attack at the Battle of Jarama early in 1937 that saved Madrid. Among the fatal casualties in that same battle was Robert Hilliard a communist and former Church of Ireland minster from Killarney.

Irish history and politics did occasionally surface. Before the fighting at Jarama, a group of the Irish decided to transfer to the US Lincoln Battalion rather than take orders from a former Black and Tans officer in the British Battalion. And the Irish contingent firmly quashed any notion of naming the British Battalion after Cromwell.

Lynda Walker of the IBCC acknowledges that today’s Belfast still suffers from aspects of bigotry — and that is why it’s so important to commemorate the anti-fascist struggle in Spain.

“This was a war fought by people who were trade union, community and political activists,” she says. “They came from communist, labour and socialist backgrounds. They were from the Protestant and Catholic sections of the working class and they understood the nature of fascism and the threat it posed for humanity.”

The same cross-community spirit prevailed among the women who supported the Aid Spain movement. Betty Sinclair, secretary of the BDTUC and Communist Party activist, was a key figure in the women’s committee of the Spanish Relief Fund. 

The committee collected money and clothing for bombed-out Spanish civilians. By March 1937 they were able to report that two consignments of knitted goods and clothes had already been sent out.

Sinclair is one of those recognised in the citation on the plaque by the window in Belfast City Hall for the part played at home, raising awareness to support the cause of Spain and funding medics and ambulances that went to Spain early in 1939. Others mentioned are Alderman Harry Midgley, Sam Haslett and Sadie Menzies.

It is their example, and the sacrifice of the volunteers, that will be in the minds of everyone taking part in the IBCC-IBMT’s forthcoming weekend. We’ll be inspired by them — while pressing ahead with progressive campaigns and causes they would have supported. 

These are the sentiments in the lines from a poem by Aileen Palmer, an Australian medical worker in the International Brigades, on the Belfast plaque: 
“Having given all they had to give
To save from blood and fire and dust
At least a hope that we must trust
We must remember them — and live.”

For more information about the Belfast weekend, see www.international-brigades.org.uk/news-and-blog/agm-2025.

This article was first published in the Morning Star on 29 September 2025.

From left, International Brigaders Jack Jones, Bob Doyle and Jack Edwards at the unveiling of the International Brigade memorial in Writer's Square, Belfast, in 2007.

August talk pulls in the crowds at the Shankill Road Library…

On 1 August, a 70-strong audience attended the Féile Lecture 2025, organised by the IBMT-affiliated International Brigade Commemoration Committee (IBCC).

The speaker this year was renowned historian Dr Brian Hanley, who spoke on the topic 'Blueshirts, and Blackshirts: fascism in Ireland north and south'.

Brian Hanley delivering his lecture.

Féile An Phobail is Ireland's biggest community arts festival. Running from 26 July until 10 August, it is the flagship event of a programme of inclusive arts, cultural and community-based activities throughout the year.

Jackie Redpath, CEO at Greater Shankill Partnership, chaired the event.

The Shankill Road Library was a fitting venue: it is home to a plaque dedicated to the seven Shankill men who died in Spain, which we will be visiting in October as part of the IBMT's programme of social and commemorative events.

Standing room only at the Feile Lecture 2025.

All photos: Paddy Mackel

---

To find out more about the IBMT AGM, see the provisional programme. To book tickets, go to Eventbrite. The AGM is being organised by the Belfast-based International Brigade Commemoration Committee (IBCC).

We are pleased to announce that the local International Brigade Commemoration Committee (IBCC) organisation is hosting the Annual General Meeting weekend for the IBMT from 3-5 October 2025 in Belfast. 

The IBMT represents relatives and supporters of those International Brigaders from Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales who fought against fascism in Spain 1936-39. 

We are inviting relatives of Brigaders and individuals and organisations who have previously supported the IBCC, either by attending, speaking or performing at events or by giving financial support, to come along to the IBMT AGM and events.

We are preparing a programme for the weekend which will begin with the opening event in Belfast City Hall on Friday evening on 3 October.

We are planning a bus tour of Belfast murals on Saturday 4 October in the morning, taking in an exhibition of IBCC posters in the Shankill Road Library.

The AGM itself will be held in the afternoon in the Unite offices, 26-34 Antrim Road, Belfast BT15 2AA.

The Dockers Club, 57 Pilot Street, Belfast BT1 3AH is booked for a social later that evening. A number of people have agreed to sing for us.

Stained glass window in Belfast City Hall honouring local International Brigade volunteers.

Most of these events will be on Eventbrite from early August as we will need to know numbers etc.

When the IBMT held its first AGM in Belfast in 2007, the Belfast & District Trades Union Council, along with others, was instrumental in the placing of the memorial in Writers Square. It was unveiled by Brigaders Bob Doyle, Jackie Edwards and Jack Jones and sponsored by the IBCC. Sadly, these Brigaders are no longer with us, but we hope that their relatives, friends and supporters will be.

Unfortunately, we cannot offer to pay for accommodation or travel. There are  Premier Inn hotels in the city centre in Waring Street and Alfred Street (avoid the hotel in the Titanic Quarter unless you are driving), an Ibis Hotel in Castle Street, plus other city centre options.

We approached the Ramada Hotel (20 Talbot Street, Belfast BT1 2LD). They are offering a 20 per cent discount; some of the other hotels might be cheaper.

We hope to have the AGM weekend programme ready towards the end of August.

For further information, text 07751951785 or email lyndaernest@btinternet.com

In friendship and solidarity,

Lynda Walker & Luke O’ Riordan: IBMT Joint Secretaries for Ireland
Ciaran Crossey: Chairperson IBCC
Ernest Walker, Secretary IBCC

Foreground from left: Brigaders Jack Jones, Bob Doyle and Jackie Edwards at the unveiling of the International Brigade memorial in Writers Square in 2007.

Lynda Walker reports… 

The IBMT-affiliated International Brigade Commemoration Committee held its annual general meeting in the Falls Road Library on Saturday 24 February, the anniversary of the Battle of Jarama.

In addition to the secretary’s report, financial report and election of the committee, two guest speakers were invited to the event. 

As chair of the meeting, Adam Murray welcomed the audience and introduced Gerry Grainger, a member of the central executive committee of the Workers Party with responsibility for international relations. Gerry spoke in depth about Paddy McAllister, who was born in 1909 and came from Lincoln Street on the Falls Road. 

Like many young Irish men and women, he joined the IRA in 1927. Unemployment at home forced him to emigrate to Canada in 1928. 

In 1937 Paddy left Canada and went to Spain to support the democratic Republic. He was in the number No. 4 Company, Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion and was present at a number of offensives. He was wounded at the Ebro and returned to Belfast in 1938. 

Gerry Grainger.

Gerry spoke about his contribution to progressive politics in later life, when he joined the Workers Party. Gerry also read out the names of the other Brigaders from the Falls Road area.

They were:
James Domegan, Leeson Street
Hugh (Pat) Dooley, Balkan Street
Pat Hall, Malcolmson Street
Paddy McAllister, Lincoln Street
James J McKeefrey, Alexander Street West
Matthew McLaughlin, Leeson Street: killed in action, March 1938
Dick O'Neill, Cullingtree Road: KIA February 1937
James Shortall, Springfield Road
Jim Stranney, McDonald Street, KIA, July 1938
FJ Tierney, Institution Place.

Adam Murray then introduced Neil Micheal O’Riordan, son of the late Manus and Annette O’Riordan, who had three children: Jess, Neil and Luke, who is currently the representative for Ireland in the IBMT. 

Their grandfather Micheal fought in Spain and wrote the book ‘Connolly Column’, where Christy Moore got the words for ‘Viva la Quince Brigada’. Micheal was also a founder member of the IBCC in 2006, in the Linen Hall Library in Belfast. 

Neil O'Riordan is the chief sports writer for The Irish Sun, with a focus on local sports news and features in Dublin. He was named Popular Sports Writer of the Year in 2020 and again in 2023.

Addressing the Belfast-based group’s AGM, Neil paid tribute to Manus O’Riordan, which was both personal and political, presenting an interesting insight into his life. He recalled how his father worked in Dublin with the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, where he met Annette. He remained as a researcher working with the ITGWU, which merged with the Federated Workers’ Union of Ireland to become SIPTU – the Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union. He noted that as a researcher Manus was thorough and that if you were in Manus’s company he would very quickly pick you up on details that were incorrect. 

Neil O'Riordan lays a wreath at the International Brigade memorial in Belfast's Writers Square.

Manus played a leading role in the activities of the International Brigade organisations at home and abroad. He was the representative for Ireland on the International Brigade Memorial Trust’s executive committee, and was involved with the Friends of the International Brigade in Ireland (FIBI). He was also a supporter of the IBCC, attending and speaking at a number of meetings in Belfast. His last contribution before the pandemic in 2019, was to the Shankill Winter Festival, where he spoke alongside Nancy Wallach, his partner in later life, about the role of the Irish Brigaders, in particular his father. Manus died on 27 September in 2021, the day after he attended a FIBI event in O’Meath.

The audience participated in discussion about both men and the International Brigades, and it was not lost on the audience that there was a parallel between what happened in Spain and what is happening in Palestine today.

Both contributions will be reproduced in full and will be published in a booklet. This will also include the August Féile talk by Ewald P Schulz about the Thälmann Battalion.