Collectively known today as the ‘Connolly Column,’ scores of Irish volunteers, including a number from the U.S., went to fight fascism in Spain where they took enormous casualties. Then as now false claims to the legitimacy of the Irish struggle was invoked by the Right as pro-fascist volunteers also left from Ireland (though saw very little actual combat). Actions repudiated by the deeds, and lives, of genuine Irish Republicans who were killed in their dozens. With pronouncements from I.R.A. leader and, Commander in Spain, Frank Ryan as well at the anti-fascist Republican priest Michael O’Flanagan.

‘Patriot Priest Compares Spanish Fascists To Black-and-Tans; Leaders of IRA Speak’ from Western Worker. Vol. 6 No. 8. January 25, 1937.

IRISH PEOPLE REPUDIATE O’DUFFY FASCIST BRIGADE TO AID FRANCO IN SPAIN

Patriot Priest Compares Spanish Fascists To Black-and-Tans; Leaders of Dublin Brigade, IRA, and Republicans Speak

DUBLIN. Ireland is not Fascist–the Irish people repudiate the ‘Duffy Fascist, volunteer brigade that went to help Franco in Spain.

Proof of the feelings of the real leaders of the Irish people is given in a series of articles, speeches and statements by leaders of the Church, of the old Irish Republican Army, and of the Labor and National movements.

Those who have spoken out Include the Patriot Priest. Rev. Michael O’Flanagan, Frank Ryan, Left Wing Republican leader, and Thomas P. Irwin, of the old Dublin Brigade, I.R.A.

The Worker, of Dublin, recently reported their statements as follows:

In the course of a powerful indictment of Fascism at a great meeting in the Engineers’ Hall, Dublin, the Rev. Michael O’Flanagan, the distinguished patriot priest, said:

“The fight in Spain is a fight of the rich privileged classes against the rank and file of the poor, oppressed people of Spain.

“The cause being fought for in Spain is nearer us than is realized. The Foreign Legion and Moorish troops are to Spain what the Black and Tans were to Ireland. The Spaniards didn’t send any people to join the Black and Tans here and they didn’t make collections in their churches to help the Black and Tans in Ireland.

“The government of Spain was elected by the votes of the people, and on the other side is a body of rebels, mostly the old army.

“They are just the same type as our own General Gough and Carsons at home. The people who are calling the Spanish rebels ‘patriots’ have proved to be very bad judges of patriots in Ireland.

“When we had real patriots fighting in Dublin they were called looters and it was said they were in the pay of Germany. We had an editorial in one newspaper (an allusion to Murphy’s Independent) asking for the death of two of the noblest patriots in the history of Ireland, James Connolly and Sean McDermott.

“It is in the Red Republic of Russia that nationalities similar to the Basques have got their fullest freedom.

“We have had the experience,” Father O’Flanagan continued, of men being refused the rights of their church because they were real patriots. Even clergymen who were true to their country, such as Father Murphy in ’98, were spurned by the ecclesiastics of their time, who were hand and glove with the British government. Now we have monuments erected to these patriot priests. I hope the Irish people will see through the hypocrisy and sham of their enemies and rally to the cause of truth and justice.” (Loud applause greeted the conclusion of Father O’Flanagan’s speech.

Interviewed by a Dublin Worker representative before his departure for Spain to take command of the Irish section of the International Column, now commanded by General Kleber, Frank Ryan, the outstanding Left Wing Republican leader, said:

“The Irish contingent is a demonstration of revolutionary Ireland’s solidarity with the gallant Spanish workers and peasants in their fight for freedom against Fascism. It aims to redeem Irish honor, besmirched by the intervention of Irish Fascism on the side of the Spanish Fascist rebels.

“It is to aid the revolutionary movements in Ireland to defeat the Fascist menace at home, and finally and not the least, to establish the closest fraternal bonds of kinship between the Republican democracies of Ireland and Spain.”

This is the reply of the Irish workers from Belfast to Cork to the shame brought on Ireland’s name before the world by O’Duffy, Belton and the “Independent,” and their intervention on the side of Franco, with his Foreign Legionnaires and Moors.

Frank Ryan had a distinguished career in the Irish Independence struggle, both in the Black and Tan and Post-Treaty periods. He was a member of the IRA. Executive for years, editor of “An Phoblacht,” the victim of innumerable jailings under the Cosgrave regime-the last under the notorious Coercion Act. Ryan has for several years been one of the most consistent champions of the United Front in Ireland, the union of Republican and Labor movements in the fight against imperialism and Fascism.

With him are outstanding figures in the Communist Party, the Republican and working class movements. Among these are Kit Conway, of Tipperary; Jack Nalty, P. Duff, Donald O’Reilly, Seumas Cummins from Dublin, Frank Edwards of Waterford; all active revolutionaries in the National and Labor movements.

The following letter was published in the daily press from Mr. Thomas P. Irwin on behalf of the Old Dublin Brigade, Irish Republican Army:

I.R.A. Exposes Fraud

“A report appeared in the Irish Independent of December 1 of a function held in the Hotel St. George by a body calling themselves the Old Dublin Brigade Flying Squad, I.R.A. Mr. J. Dolan proposed, and Mr. J. Foy seconded, a resolution pledging their moral support to the youth of the country who had gone to Spain, and generally supporting General O’Duffy in his sacrifices to the cause of General Franco.

“The Dublin Brigade Old I.R.A. Executive Committee repudiates in the strongest possible terms the action of Messrs. Dolan, Foy and Coughlan in affording their support to General O’Puffy, when they speak as if representing the Old Dublin Brigade; and, furthermore, they wish it to be known that that particular group has no connection with the Old Dublin Brigade I.R.A., and that some of them have never had any connection with the A.S.U. of the Dublin Brigade I.R.A.”

Western Worker was the publication of the Communist Party in the western United States, focused on the Pacific Coast, from 1933 until 1937. Originally published twice monthly in San Francisco, it grew to a weekly, then a twice-weekly and then merged with the Party’s Daily Worker on the West Coast to form the People’s Daily World which published until 1957. Its issues contain a wealth of information on Communist activity and cultural events in the west of those years.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/westernworker/1937/v6-n01-08-jan-1937.pdf