OLDHAM’S memorial to its fallen International Brigade heroes has come home at last. After a long exile it is back on display, enjoying pride of place in the town’s newly refurbished civic centre.

This follows a two-year campaign by Graham Briggs, member of the North-West Group International Brigade Memorial Trust (IBMT), to reinstate the stone plaque commemorating six Oldham men killed in the Spanish civil war.

Said Graham: “Although the memorial was originally commissioned by the council in 1986, to mark the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the war, it has enjoyed mixed fortunes since then.”

Founding IBMT member Hilary Jones, whose father Sam suffered four bullet-wounds at Jarama, fighting alongside Oldham’s most famous Brigader, Clem Beckett, recalled that at one time the memorial — beautifully crafted by Holmfirth sculptor Jim Robison — had been relegated to a cellar, where for years it lay covered in dust and cobwebs.

In 2014 it was rescued by Oldham parish church, whose Catalan-speaking priest promised grateful IBMT members that it would be offered sanctuary.

At a rededication ceremony in the civic centre, Canon Daniel Burton, who described himself as “a proud Christian socialist” was thanked for keeping the plaque on display in the church during its exile from the town hall.

Mayor and Mayoress of Oldham, Cllr Eddie Moores and wife Kath presided over the well-attended ceremony. In appreciation of the council’s facilitating return of the memorial, they were presented with a copy of Clem Beckett’s biography.

Speakers reminded guests — who included descendants of Brigader Joe Lees, killed at Brunete — of the sacrifices of International Brigade volunteers fighting for the democratically elected Republican government against a fascist military rising supported by Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy.

Nowhere in Britain was the cry of “No pasaran” taken up more passionately or more determinedly than by the people of Oldham.

But when three of the town’s four surviving Brigaders sought to raise money to relieve the suffering of Spanish civilians, the local paper’s response was to comment on their return from “sunny Spain” sporting “healthy tans” — and to lecture them on the “dubious efficacy of meeting violence with violence.”

It was left to Dolores Ibarruri (La Pasionaria), a minister of the defeated Spanish Republic to pay proper tribute: “For the first time in the history of people’s struggles, there was the spectacle, breath- taking in its grandeur, of the International Brigades. They gave us everything — their youth or their maturity, their science or their experience, their blood and their lives … they aspired to the honour of dying for us.”

As many as 2,500 men from Britain and Ireland fought in the Brigades, suffering heavy casualties, including more than 500 killed in action. At home the Spanish cause was supported by funds raised by working-class communities — medical aid, ambulances and food ships.

Volunteer doctors and nurses cared for the wounded and made giant strides in battlefield surgery.

Next year will see further events promoted by the trust to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish civil war — including the dedication of a new memorial to honour the 30 or so International Brigaders from Salford.