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.