AABI (the Madrid-based Association of Friends of the International Brigades) has confirmed the plans for the 18th annual commemoration of the Battle of Jarama. You can find the full programme of AABI events on its website.

Friday 20 February – Ciudad Universitaria visit
– Route: following in the footsteps of the French Commune de Paris Battalion
– Meeting point: Paseo de Moret, Intercambiador de Moncloa exit
– Start time: 10.30am
– Duration: 1.5 hours approximately
– Tickets: the trip is limited to 50 people. You must register on the AABI website.

OR

Friday 20 February – IBMT Tarancón visit
Several IBMT comrades and others based in Scotland, as well as those from FIBI (Friends of the International Brigades in Ireland), are again planning to take a separate coach from Madrid to Tarancón on Friday morning to take part in the annual commemoration at the memorials in the municipal cemetery.

The commemoration will remember the 39 Scots who fell at Jarama, Tarancón’s civilian victims of the Franco dictatorship, those from the town who fell serving with Spain’s Republican forces and those Internationals and Spanish Republicans who died while being treated in the town’s hospitals.

The event will be hosted by ARMH Cuenca, the local historical memory association. 

Email Mike Arnott at scotland@international-brigades.org.uk for more information.

Saturday 21 February – Jarama march
AABI’s 18thannual Jarama march will commemorate the role of the French Commune de Paris Battalion, part of the 11th Brigade. Expect a sizeable contingent from ACER, the French Friends of the International Brigades.

– 9.00am: Buses will leave Hotel Agumar, Calle Reina Cristina 7. Please show your email confirmation to board a bus.
– 10.15am: March begins.
– Meeting point:  El Alto restaurant carpark.
– 10.15am-11.45am: Guide Miguel Ángel García will trace the steps of the French Commune de Paris Battalion, explaining the key moments of the battle.
– 11.45am: Bus transfer and visit to Arganda bridge. There will also be time to visit the memorial to Brigader Charlie Donnelly in Miralrio Park, Rivas-Vaciamadrid.
– 1.45pm: Transfer to a restaurant in Rivas-Vaciamadrid.
– 2pm-4.30pm: Lunch at Rincon de Martin restaurant.
– 6pm: Arrival back at Hotel Agumar in Madrid.

Tickets must be purchased in advance from the AABI website:
– Jarama bus: €20 (additional €20 pre-sale ticket required – see AABI website for minimum capacity terms)
– Jarama lunch: €25

Those interested in attending are reminded that they will have to make their own travel and accommodation arrangements. A number of those from the IBMT will be staying at the Hostal Persal, Plaza del Ángel 12, Madrid 28012 (www.hostalpersal.com/en/).

For those interested in the AABI events, please monitor the AABI website (www.brigadasinternacionales.org/) for updates. 

For those interested in the alternative Friday trip to Tarancón, email Mike Arnott at scotland@international-brigades.org.uk.

The IBMT is launching a major project to update and enhance the online directory of memorials across Britain and Ireland dedicated to the International Brigades – whether sculptures, plaques or memorial benches and trees. 

Along with a database of volunteers who served in Spain, the directory  enables IBMT members, historians and researchers to search for details of memorials and volunteers. 

We often remind members to send us updated details on the placement and condition of these memorials, as well as any new memorials that have been raised – or old ones that have been removed. 

We are aware that some of the information in the directory is out of date. It is with this in mind that the IBMT is launching the memorials project. The aim will be allow for more accurate searches, more precise location data and better images where necessary. 

The work will be carried out by a volunteer IBMT member, Greg Pasco, an LSE graduate who is a former speech therapist and researcher specialising in autism.

If you have any information, updates or queries about memorials or this project, contact Greg at memorials@international-brigades.org.uk

MPs marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Spanish dictator Franco have praised the ‘vital educational and commemorative work’ of the IBMT in preserving the memory of the volunteers who fought fascism during the Spanish Civil War.

The praise is contained in an Early Day Motion tabled in the House of Commons by Labour’s Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) to coincide with anniversary of the dictator’s death on 20 November.

The EDM’s full text says: ‘That this House notes that 20 November marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco; congratulates the Spanish people, along with their constituent nations in the Basque Country, Catalonia and elsewhere, on the restoration of democratic rule and their ongoing efforts to eradicate the toxic legacy of decades of brutal repression; and applauds the vital educational and commemorative work of the International Brigade Memorial Trust to preserve the memory and spirit of the volunteers from Britain and Ireland who fought fascism during the Spanish Civil War, more than 500 of whom died in Spain.’

Jon Trickett.

Support came immediately from Labour MPs Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside), Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole), Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) and Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) and Democratic Unionist Jim Shannon (Strangford).

More MPs at Westminster are expected to add their names to EDM 2288 in the days to come.

A similarly worded motion has been presented to the Scottish Parliament by Labour MSP Mercedes Villalba (North East Scotland) and is supported by fellow Labour MSPs Katy Clark, Richard Leonard and Paul Sweeney, along with SNP members Clare Adamson, Alasdair Allan, Colin Beattie, Bob Doris, Jamie Hepburn, Bill Kidd, Fulton MacGregor, Stuart McMillan, Kevin Stewart and David Torrance and Independent members Foysol Choudhury  and John Mason.

Motion S6M-19623 tabled at Holyrood notes that 120 Scottish International Brigade volunteers died in Spain. It also praises the work of all those who maintain the memorial in Tarancón to the 39 Scots volunteers who fell at the Battle of Jarama.

Mercedes Villalba.

Why not ask your MP to sign the EDM? Find your MP here.

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]

See more photos here.
[All photos © Kevin Cooper Photoline NUJ unless others attributed]

The Cairde Community Choir sing at the opening ceremony in Belfast City Hall

A minute's silence was observed at the International Brigade memorial in Writer's Square.

Claire Hanna MP, leader of the SDLP, at Writer's Square. She said her great uncle, Richard McAleenan, from Banbridge, County Down, who spent a year in the British Battalion in Spain and was a battalion observer, was a source of inspiration for her family. Pictured left are IBMT Secretary Megan Dobney and (partly hidden) IBMT Chair Jim Jump.

From left, Luke, Jess and Neil O'Riordan, grandchildren of Cork-born Brigader Michael O'Riordan, next to the stained-glass window dedicated to the International Brigades in Belfast City Hall. Luke O'Riordan is the joint IBMT Ireland Secretary with Lynda Walker.

The IBMT merchandise stall was busy all weekend.

Brigader family members, international guests and officers of the Belfast-based International Brigade Commemoration Committee gather for a group photo at City Hall.

Spain's Honorary Vice Consul in Belfast, José Andrés Lázaro Villanueva, after laying a wreath at the Writer's Square memorial.

Gerry Murphy, Assistant General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, speaking in City Hall.

Proudly holding the Connolly Column Banner at Writer's Square is Brenda O'Riordan, daughter of Brigader Michael O'Riordan. Brenda sang a song in Gaelic at the opening ceremony.

A visit to the Straney family grave in Belfast's Milltown Cemetery, on which is inscribed a dedication to Jim Straney, who was killed at Gandesa during the Battle of the Ebro in the summer of 1938. [Photo; Jim Jump]

In the Dockers' Club in Belfast's Sailortown, where there was a social with music on Saturday evening for AGM attendees and supporters. [Photo; Jim Jump]

Sisters Gerry Abrahams (left) and Anne O'Hara speak about their father, Gerry Doran, from Antrim, who was repatriated from Spain after being wounded at Lopera in December 1936.

Liz Shaw, daughter of Joe Boyd, from Cookstown, County Tyrone, who was a member of the Scottish Ambulance Unit in Spain.

Speakers, clockwise from top left: Alan Lloyd (IBMT Archivist), Mike Arnott (IBMT Scotland Secretary), Helen Oclee-Brown (IBMT Executive Officer) and Paul Coles (IBMT Treasurer).

Several greetings were sent to the IBMT’s Annual General Meeting, held in Belfast on 4 October.

As well as those reproduced below, there were messages delivered in person by Nancy Wallach from the New York-based Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, by Ewald Peter Schulz from the German association KFSR (Kämpfer und Freunde del Spanischen Republik 1936-1939) and by Austin Harney, national executive member of the PCS union, on behalf of General Secretary Fran Heathcote.

The following greetings were read out to the meeting.

[Photos © Kevin Cooper Photoline NUJ]

ACER

Members and leaders of ACER, the friends of the French Brigaders who fought in Republican Spain, send you a warm message of support and thanks for your 2025 general meeting in Belfast. 

We rejoice every year to see your wonderful work accomplished for the memory of Brigaders in Republican Spain. It is a great comfort and an example for us to see how we must perpetuate the memory of these admirable fighters for the freedom of the Spanish people. 

In this difficult time for peace and understanding between peoples, the fight of the Brigaders is there to show us how to stand against oppression, obscurantism and intolerance. 

Thanks comrades, and long live the IBMT, great and strong. Long live the Fifteenth Brigade – with fists raised.

Claire Rol-Tanguy
Claude Desmazure
ACER (Amis des Combattants en Espagne Républicaine)
France

AICVAS

Dear comrades of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, on behalf of the Italian Association of Anti-fascist Combatant Volunteers in Spain, we are honoured to send our greetings to the 2025 Annual General Meeting of the IBMT in Belfast. 

Almost 90 years have passed since the Italian volunteers fought shoulder to shoulder with the British and Irish Brigaders in defence of the Spanish Republic. The memory of that unequal struggle has become legend, and those ideals still guide our lives. 

In these times when winds of war are blowing and old and new forms of fascism threaten democracy, we’ll continue to hold with you the flag of the International Brigades, as our volunteers did then. 

We therefore wish you every success for your meeting. We hope to find opportunities for collaboration between our associations in the future and meet you during the events in Spain to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Civil War. 

Our warmest regards. ¡No pasarán!

Italo Poma
President
AICVAS (Associazione Italiana Combattenti Volontari Antifascisti di Spagna)
Italy

A packed meeting room in the Unite offices for the IBMT's AGM on 4 October.

Marx Memorial Library

The Marx Memorial Library & Workers’ School values our partnership with the IBMT in preserving the memory of the Spanish Civil War and all those from these islands who took part in that epic struggle against fascism.

With IBMT support, the library has this year embarked on an ambitious project to digitise our Spanish Civil War archives. Along with our associated educational activities, these archives help all those seeking to understand the significance of the Spanish Civil War. Just as importantly, they also inspire new generations of activists who once again must resist the rise of fascist and militarist ideologies. 

It is in that spirit that we send warmest greetings to the IBMT’s 2025 AGM in Belfast. 

Meirian Jump
Director 
Marx Memorial Library & Workers’ School
London

At the opening ceremony of the AGM weekend at Belfast City Hall on 3 October, Deputy Lord Mayor Paul Doherty with Nancy Wallach (second from left) of ALBA and Lynda Walker (right) and Ciaran Crossey (left) of the Belfast-based International Brigade Commemoration Committee, which hosted the AGM and organised the weekend's programme.

PCE-GB

Greetings on behalf of the Great Britain Branch of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), which we are pleased to announce has recently adopted Felicia Browne's name.

The Exterior Branch of the PCE was originally founded by the comrades who fled Spain during the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship. Our comrades worked in exile, going mostly to France, Germany and Latin America, where they contributed to the  clandestine struggle of their comrades, helped people escape and told the world about what was happening in Spain. Some are still alive. 

The branch today is formed mostly by migrants, who left the country fleeing from precarity and looking for a life worth living at the expense of leaving their families and friends behind. We are a branch of refugees, political exiles and emigrants. So, I’m sure you’ll understand how deeply concerned we are with the expansion of far-right ideology and anti-immigration discourse. 

The living conditions of the working class are worsening. We are not only witnessing a genocide taking place but also are part of it. Pacifists are charged with terrorism and terrorists run free – and all this is happening under a so-called progressive government. This puts us in a difficult situation, here and in Spain, where we are part of the government that was selling arms to the terrorist state of Israel but at the same time was on the streets protesting and boycotting the Vuelta a España cycling race, a major sports event in which Israel was taking part, and now we need to pay the high price for our contradictions. 

The anti-immigration discourse spreads like wildfire through the let-down and frustrated working class that blames foreign fellow workers for their hardship. But we cannot let that happen again. Memes won’t do. Making jokes or ridiculing on social media is not going to do the trick. Far right ideology and fascism you can only stop in the streets. We need to confront them.

The volunteers of the International Brigades knew that it wasn't just Spain's future that was at stake and we need that clarity of mind today more than ever.  

There are many challenges ahead for us. We need to keep working together as we have been doing. That's why the work of the IBMT is so important. We need to keep the memory of the volunteers alive. We need to educate new generations and do justice to all those who paved the way forward with their blood. 

We wish you all the best. Thank you for your work and please remember that you are not alone. In solidarity!

Noelia Sánchez
PCE-GB (Great Britain ‘Felicia Browne’ Branch of the Communist Party of Spain)

Ewalt Peter Schulz of the German KFSR speaking at the AGM.

RMT

RMT is proud to stand with the International Brigade Memorial Trust in honouring the memory of all those who bravely chose to join the International Brigades and fight against Franco, Hitler and Mussolini.

Members of our predecessor unions in the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and the National Union of Seamen (NUS) volunteered alongside thousands of others to fight fascism in Spain. 

Their sacrifice was rooted in the principles of anti-fascism and internationalism, values that remain at the heart of the RMT and the wider trade union movement today.

I hope your AGM is a great success and you keep up your vital work in honouring the spirit of the International Brigades.

Eddie Dempsey
General Secretary
RMT (National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers)

Austin Harney of PCS at the International Brigade memorial in Writer's Square, Belfast, at a commemoration held on 5 October.

Cover: volunteers Nieves Hernández and Maica Gómez tend to the plants in Fuencarral Cemetery in the scorching Madrid sunshine.

Issue 3-2025 of the IBMT digital magazine, ¡No Pasaran!, has been emailed to all paid-up members.

On the cover, volunteers Nieves Hernández and Maica Gómez tend to the plants in Fuencarral Cemetery in the scorching Madrid sunshine. On page 22, the Trust praises the work of volunteers in Madrid and encourages members to care for their local memorials.

Other highlights include an interview with artist Rob MacDonald from Solidarity Park, the last letters of Brigader Harold Laws and Ameya Tripathi's article on Jawaharlal Nehru's connection to the Spanish Civil War.

As ever, there are book reviews and reports from events and projects in Britain and beyond. 

Print issues are available from the IBMT Shop. An annual subscription for three print copies is also available to members (this option includes postage).

Members receive three issues of the digital magazine a year. Stay up to date with your membership by renewing online to ensure you receive the latest digital issue as soon as it is published.

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.

The IBMT's 2025 Annual General Meeting will be held in Belfast on Saturday 4 October as part of a weekend of commemorative and social activities from 3-5 October.

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME

Friday 3 October

5.30pm: Arrive early at Belfast City Hall, Donegal Square North, Belfast BT1 5GS to see the famous stained-glass window dedicated to the International Brigades.

5.45pm: Drinks reception provided by the Belfast City Council.

6.30pm: Opening of AGM weekend, hosted by Deputy Lord Mayor Paul Doherty, with contributions from International Brigade family members and international and trade union speakers and music from ­Cairde Community Choir and Brenda O’Riordan.

8.45pm: Buffet upstairs in the Fountain Lane Bar, 16 Fountain Street, Belfast BT1 5ED (4-minute walk from City Hall). 8.50 per buffet.

Saturday 4 October

10.30am: Meet at City Hall for a bus tour taking in Shankill Road Library to see the International Brigade plaque and posters, Milltown Cemetery to see the gravestone of Jim Straney and the Falls Road to see the murals.

1.15pm: Lunch provided by Unite the Union, 26-34 Antrim Road, Belfast BT15 2AA. The bus tour group will take people there. Otherwise a15-minute bus ride – any bus number 1a/e/f/g/j/etc, but not 1d or 1k – from outside M&S in Donegall Place. Check with driver that it goes via Carlisle Circus. Get off at the first stop after Carlisle Circus at the bottom of the Antrim Road.

2.30pm-4pm: IBMT Annual General Meeting at the Unite office (address above). All welcome, but only IBMT members may speak and vote.

5pm-7pm: Optional visit to Seatons of Sailortown bar, Dock Street, Belfast BT15 1LF. Close to the Dockers Club and 22 minutes away on foot or by bus – any number 1 bus to M&S, Donegall Place and from there a bus number 2j, getting off at Pilot Street.

7pm until late: Dockers Club, Pilot Street, Belfast BT1 3AH for a concert and social.

Sunday 5 October

11am: Gathering at the International Brigade memorial at Writer’s Square, Donegall Street, Belfast BT1 1DL.

11.30am: Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 45-47 Donegall Street, Belfast BT1 2FN for the launch of a booklet on the International Brigade Commemoration Committee, ‘20 Years of Action’, and a light buffet lunch.

1pm: Retire to The John Hewitt pub, 51 Donegall Street, Belfast BT1 2FH, where there is a memorial to the International Brigades.

REGISTRATION AND PAYMENT

Registration and payment are essential because the City Hall, caterers and bus tour need to know numbers. The following charges per person will apply: 

Friday buffet: £8.50
Saturday bus tour: £10 deposit (refundable if not enough people apply)
Saturday lunch: registration needed for numbers
Saturday concert: £4 (unwaged) £8 (waged)
Sunday lunch: registration needed for numbers

If you plan to attend all events, you can pay online via Eventbrite: https://ibmt_agm_2025.eventbrite.co.uk/. The total ticket price is £23.10 (unwaged) and £27.10 (waged), which includes the Eventbrite processing fee.

Please note that if you book an earlier waged/unwaged ticket, you will be contacted.

If you plan to attend only certain events, send your payment direct to the hosts, the Belfast-based International Brigade Commemoration Committee: Ulster Bank Account no. 18745513 / Sort code 98 00 60. You must also email the IBCC to indicate which events from the above list you will be attending. 

AGM BUSINESS

Agenda

Proposals for agenda items under ‘Any Other Business’ must be received in writing by the Secretary (see email below) by 8am on 27 September. A final agenda will be published on the IBMT website soon afterwards.

Provisional agenda
1. Chair’s opening remarks
2. Approval of the minutes of the 2024 AGM
3. Matters arising from the minutes not otherwise on the agenda
4. Executive Committee’s annual report
5. Finance report, including 2024-2025 accounts
6. Election of two scrutineers
7. Election of five Executive Committee members (see below) 
8. Date and place of 2026 AGM
9. Any Other Business (previously notified)
10. Scrutineers’ report of election results
11. Chair’s closing remarks

Notice of nominations

Nominations are invited for candidates to fill five vacancies on the Executive Committee. If necessary, a ballot will be held among members attending the AGM to elect the EC members. Four vacancies arise because Mike Arnott, Megan Dobney, Jim Jump and David McKnight will have completed their terms of office by the AGM and they will therefore step down and an election, in which they are permitted to stand, along with other IBMT members, will take place. A fifth vacancy has been carried over from last year. All IBMT members may nominate fellow members to serve on the EC. Nominations must be made in writing and received by the Secretary by 8am on 20 September. The names of the candidates will be published on the IBMT website in advance of the AGM. 

Send nominations and proposed agenda items by email (these will be acknowledged) to: secretary@international-brigades.org.uk or by post to: IBMT Secretary, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU.

Nominations accepted

The following members have been nominated in accordance with the above procedure and have accepted nomination to serve on the Executive Committee. Their names will now go forward to the AGM.
Mike Arnott
Megan Dobney
Jim Jump
Denis Lenihan
David McKnight

Above: Stained-glass window in Belfast City Hall. Top: International Brigade memorial in Writers Square.

Hats off in this hot summer weather to a group of Spaniards who are looking after the memorial garden for the International Brigades at Fuencarral Cemetery in Madrid.

Regularly each week they visit the cemetery to keep alive the flowers around a memorial wall dedicated to the international volunteers.

Among the plaques is one for the 15th Brigade, which included the British Battalion and battalions of American and Canadian volunteers. It was unveiled in 2009 by British ambassador Denise Holt, with funding shared between the IBMT and the US-based Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

The need to tend the plants in Madrid’s infernal summer temperatures is underlined by Álvaro Angosto, one of the team of volunteer gardeners. ‘We try to water them a couple of times a week,’ he says. ‘A large water drum has also been installed to ensure continuous irrigation.’

From left: Nieves Hernández, Paula Cabildo, Maica Gómez, Helios Lizcano and Álvaro Angosto. Three other volunteers not pictured are Sofía Amechqar, Isabel d'Olhaberriague and Enrique Ruiz.

He adds: ‘And when money is needed for replanting, it’s really heartening that so many people pitch in.’

Other plaques on the memorial wall remember the French, Italian, Jewish and Yugoslav International Brigaders. There is also a memorial to the Soviet aviators who died in the Spanish Civil War.

Some 450 Brigaders, including several Britons, were buried in the cemetery. Following Franco’s victory their bodies were exhumed and dumped nearby in 1941.

Searches for the site of the mass grave have been conducted this year, so far without success. They have been organised in the face of controversial plans by Madrid City Council to build a waste facility adjacent to the cemetery.

Helios Lizcano makes adjustments to the irrigation tank.

Hundreds gathered at the International Brigade memorial on London’s Southbank on 5 July for the annual commemoration of the 2,500 volunteers from Britain and Ireland who took part in the fight in Spain against fascism from 1936-39.

Speakers included Gawain Little, General Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions, and Meirian Jump, Director of the Marx Memorial Library in London – and a granddaughter of one the British volunteers.

IBMT Executive Officer Helen Oclee-Brown opens proceedings next to the International Brigade memorial in Jubilee Gardens, London Southbank.

There was music from Maddy Carty, and wreaths were laid from various organisations and individuals, including the Spanish embassy in London, the Basque Children’s Association UK, IB Cymru, Oxford International Brigade Memorial Committee, train drivers’ union Aslef, Marx Memorial Library, Communist Party of Britain and the London branch of the PCE Spanish Communist Party.

Gawain Little praised the heroism and sacrifice of the volunteers, along with the ambitions of that generation of activists to create a world without exploitation and class divisions.

Those who went to Spain were there to push back the tide of fascism that would soon engulf much of Europe, he said. 'They were there to defend Spanish democracy and the young Republic. But most of all they were there because of an ideal, a grand vision, a belief that the working class, united across borders, could together build something incredible – a society fit for our children and grandchildren.'

Maddy Carty.

Meirian Jump described the Marx Memorial Library’s current project to digitise its Spanish Civil War archive – the largest in the country – and eventually make the collection freely available online. There were also plans to redevelop the library itself to create space for, among other things, exhibits about the volunteers who went to Spain.

On a personal note, she told the gathering that, aged just six months, she had been present at the unveiling of the Southbank memorial along with her twin sister Clara.

Gawain Little.

Her grandfather, Brigader Jimmy Jump, had been the secretary of the appeal committee that raised the memorial and wrote a poem about the occasion.

Part of the poem said: ’When I am gone / and you are grown / here is something to boast about / to make you feel proud / something to shout out loud. / You will not recall this day / you do not remember it now / but when you are grown / when you have children of your own / you may bring them here to play and / pointing to the date carved in stone / will say / ‘My sister and I were here that day.’

Meirian Jump.

She went on: 'And so here I am—almost 40 years later—with my own child, my wonderful four-year-old son, Victor Alan Jump.’

Jump praised the vital role played by the IBMT in ensuring we continue to speak to our children—through educational resources, memorial events, conferences, and publications.
She added: ’We know history is not neutral. It is a battleground—a contested space. The terms "fascism" and “appeasement” are often cynically deployed today to justify foreign wars, and the legacy of the Brigaders is distorted by Cold War and anti-communist narratives.

Antonio Casado Rigalt lays a wreath for the Spanish embassy.

Mick Whelan, General Secretary of the train drivers' union Aslef after laying a wreath. IBMT Secretary Megan Dobney and President Marlene Sidaway (partly hidden by memorial) clap and look on.

‘But this is our history. And we must hold onto it. Understanding the past is essential if we are to change the future. History is a weapon in our hands.’

In his address, IBMT Chair Jim Jump welcomed Antonio Casado Rigalt, Political Counsellor at the Spanish embassy. He said the Trust applauded what the Spanish government was doing to help the cause of historical memory in order to heal the wounds of repression and restore posthumous justice to those whose only crime had been to support democracy.

‘There is, however, unfinished business for us in Spain,’ he added, in the form of up to 500 bodies of British and Irish International Brigaders in unknown and unmarked graves across the country.

He went on: ‘I’m happy to say we’re working well with the Catalan government in their efforts to locate and identify – with the help of family DNA – all those International Brigaders who fell in the Battle of the Ebro – more than 90 of them from the British Battalion.’

Jim Jump.

That should be a model for the rest of Spain, Jump added. Sadly it wasn’t. ‘We have a continuing stand-off with Madrid City Council over plans to build a waste facility on or near a mass grave of 450 International Brigaders, several of them British, at Fuencarral cemetery.

‘In other regions of Spain, under the influence of the ultra rightwing Vox party, Francoism is being excused and rehabilitated, and memory laws are being torn up.’

Thelma Ruby, aged 100, widow of Canadian volunteer Peter Frye, acknowledges the applause for her.

The IBMT would counter these challenges – along with rising ‘sinister trappings’ of fascism across the world, such as racism, ethno-nationalism, bans and censorship, militarism, the slaughter of civilians and genocide, by keeping alive the inspirational story of the International Brigades.

‘Their story, ‘ he declared, ‘is one of anti-fascism, of international solidarity and of men and women whose blood, in the words of Spanish poet Rafael Alberti, could sing across frontiers.

Singing 'The Internationale', from left: Stuart Walsh, Manuel Moreno and Colin Carritt.

All photos: © Andrew Wiard. More photos viewable here.

History school teachers are being told about the IBMT’s new online teaching resources on the International Brigades.

The June issue of Teaching History carries a feature on how to teach Year 9 school students about the ‘ordinary people’ who fought in the Spanish Civil War. 

The article is written by Professor Peter Anderson of Leeds University and Alex Clifford, who teaches at Newcastle High School for Girls. Both have overseen the production of the teaching tools for Key Stage 3 pupils that can be downloaded from the IBMT website.

The teaching packages contain lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations, knowledge organisers, marking schemes and reading suggestions. They cover two topics:

– Why did so many people volunteer to fight in the Spanish Civil War?

– Women and the Spanish Civil War.

The module on women has been produced by David Grant, a Leeds University doctoral student.

To view or download the resources, go to https://international-brigades.org.uk/category/for-teachers/. Other teaching and learning tools are also available on the site’s Education page.

Welcoming the article in Teaching History, IBMT Chair Jim Jump said the IBMT Schools Project is one of the Trust’s key priorities. ‘The aim now is to get the message out to the history teaching profession that these resources are available.’

He went on: ‘We’re also telling teachers that they can find out about the volunteers from their area or town who went to Spain by searching the Volunteers page of our website.’

He added: ‘In the longer term we want to build on what has already been achieved and reach out to other age groups in schools.’

Teaching History is the secondary education journal of the Historical Association and is widely read by history teachers.

The IBMT Schools Project was launched four years ago with the aim of helping teachers bring the story of the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil war into the classroom – something that the Trust felt was absent from most textbooks. It has received funding from the Lipman-Miliband Trust.