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.

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.