Connolly Column - in Spain

In Spain

In December 1936, led by former IRA officer Frank Ryan, eighty volunteers arrived in Spain. The majority came from the Irish Free State but there were also a group of socialists from Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland. Those who went included Michael O'Riordan, Charles Donnelly, Eddie O'Flaherty, Paul Burns, Jackie Hunt, Bill Henry, Eamon McGrotty, Bill Beattie, Paddy McLaughlin, Bill Henry, Peter O'Connor, Peter Power, Johnny Power, Liam Tumilson, Jim Stranney, Willie O'Hanlon, Ben Murray and Fred McMahon. Many were members of the Communist Party of Ireland.

After travelling through southern France by train to Perpignan, they went to the training at Albacete in Spain run by André Marty. Some Irish volunteers refused to serve in the British Battalion due to their Irish Republican convictions. Indeed Frank Ryan on one occasion threatened to shoot an English volunteer when he found out that he had served in the Black and Tans in the Irish War of Independence. As a result of these tensions, some of the Irish left the British to join the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade. These volunteers are the Irishmen usually referred to as the Connolly Column, although they were not a formal unit and other Irish volunteers fought in other units of the Brigades. The Connolly Column suffered heavy losses at the battle of Jarama, near Madrid in (February 1937). Charlie Donnelly, Eamon McGrotty, Bill Henry, Liam Tumilson and Bill Beattie were all killed during this battle.

Frank Ryan was badly wounded at Jarama in February 1937 and returned to Ireland to recuperate. On his return to Spain he was appointed adjutant to the Republican General José Miaja. Ryan was captured during the Aragón offensive on 1 April 1938 and was held at the Miranda del Ebro detention camp. He was sentenced to death but after representations from Éamon de Valera his sentence was commuted to thirty years hard labour. Irish Volunteers also took part in the Battle of Ebro in July 1938, the last, doomed, Republican offensive of the war.

The surviving Irish volunteers were repatriated to Ireland after September 1938, when the Republican government disbanded the International Brigades in the vain hope of securing military aid from other democracies and of getting the fascist troops from Italy and Germany to withdraw. Michael O'Riordan went on to become General Secretary of the Communist Party of Ireland in 1970.

Though a small unit, sources differ on the numbers involved. The Brigade's British and Irish roll of honour lists 36 Irishmen killed in Spain in the war. O'Riordan listed 145 men, and "..of that number 61 never came back".