An aspect of its history in which Irish republicanism takes justifiable pride is its small but brave contribution to the fight against fascism in Spain in the 1930s. While Fine Gael and the Catholic hierarchy were rabidly supportive of Francisco Franco’s coup against the elected Spanish government, much of the IRA supported the Spanish republic. This backing was not just rhetorical: nearly 250 Irish-born men fought in the International Brigades and almost a third died in action or of wounds.
Many of those who joined the fight were communists or socialists but some came from the ranks of the IRA and its left-wing offshoot, the Republican Congress. Frank Ryan, the acknowledged leader of the Irish contingent, was a former editor of Sinn Féin’s newspaper An Phoblacht.
Today’s Sinn Féin is happy to claim this heritage. The party’s shop sells badges marked No Pasarán: International Brigades and Barry McLoughlin and Emmet O’Connor’s history In Spanish Trenches: The Mind and Deeds of the Irish Who Fought for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War.
Several International Brigade-themed murals have appeared on the walls of west Belfast. Christy Moore’s Viva la Quince Brigada is integrated into the repertoire of Irish rebel songs. Spanish Civil War martyrs like Charlie Donnelly, the young poet and Republican Congress activist who died fighting the fascists at the Battle of Jarama, are embraced within the tradition of republican memorialisation.
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Those who fought in Spain did so for many reasons, but the overarching motivation was the feeling that if fascism was not stopped in Spain it would take over Europe as a whole. This belief was appallingly vindicated. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini used Spain as a testing ground. What was tested was not just their own military technologies but the willpower of the European democracies. Would they stand by a democracy under attack or let it be destroyed?
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They took the second option, of course. They did so under the banner of “non-intervention”. Even while Germany and Italy were intervening directly in Spain (with the Soviet Union giving less effective support to the Spanish republic), most western powers (including Ireland) signed up to a Non-Intervention Agreement and the United States Congress banned the export of weapons to Spain.
The US ambassador to Spain, Claude Bowers, subsequently described the Non-Intervention Agreement as “a shameless sham, cynically dishonest, in that Germany and Italy were constantly sending soldiers, planes, tanks, artillery, and ammunition into Spain without any interference or real protest from the signatories of the pact”.
Hitler drew the correct conclusions from this sham. He annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia, gambling on the known likelihood that the European democracies would wring their hands and do nothing. Non-intervention was the green light for fascist aggression. Those who naively believed that passivity would bring peace in fact opened the way to the most terrible war in human history.
Today’s equivalent to the Spanish Civil War is Russia’s attempt to wipe Ukraine off the map of independent nations. It is an important struggle in its own right. But it is also the testing ground. If Vladimir Putin succeeds in bending Ukraine to his will, if his belief that might makes right triumphs over law, democracy and international order, the path is open to limitless violence. Anyone who abhors war should understand that letting Putin win will lead to wider and perhaps even more catastrophic conflicts.
Since Sinn Féin regards those brave Irish people who chose to intervene in Spain as heroes, one would assume that it has some understanding of the reasons why they were right to sacrifice their lives. But, astonishingly, Ireland’s largest political party is increasingly vehement in its insistence on, of all things, non-intervention. It insists, not just that Ireland should not help Ukraine to survive, but that no one should.
In its manifesto for the 2024 general election Sinn Féin demanded that “all sides must cease the current unlimited supply of weapons into Ukraine which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives”. Notably, it did not call in the manifesto for Putin to withdraw his army – in effect “all sides” does not include the actual invader. As with the Non-Intervention Agreement in the Spanish Civil War, the effective meaning of this demand is that only one side (the one that has international law on its side) be disarmed.
One might have hoped that the historic absurdity of this position would sink in over time. But last week in the European Parliament, both of Sinn Féin’s MEPs, Lynn Boylan and Kathleen Funchion, voted against the approval of the EU’s package of €90 billion loans to Ukraine. Sinn Féin’s stance is that Ireland should join the trio of pro-Russian EU governments – Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia – in refusing to participate in this vital effort to keep Ukraine alive.
A vote to cut off funding to Ukraine is a vote to give Putin his victory. And it is astonishingly naive to believe that such a triumph of thuggery will lead to something called “peace”. Assuring the victory of fascistic violence is not a recipe for tranquillity. It is an invitation to further slaughter.
[ Ireland’s contributions to Ukraine ‘well below’ aid given by smaller EU statesOpens in new window ]
Presumably, though, Sinn Féin is no longer against big imperial countries seeking to annex and dominate their smaller neighbours – there’s 800 years of oppression out the window. Since Sinn Féin has come round to absolute pacifism (even in the face of naked aggression) as its core belief, all those commemorations of the ‘Ra will stop. All those Irish-Americans who gave money to the IRA during the Troubles will now be told off for their breach of the sacred principle of non-intervention. Tiocfaidh ár lá is to be replaced by Turn the Other Cheek.
And one can assume that those No Pasarán badges will be removed from sale at the Sinn Féin shop. The phrase means, of course, They Shall Not Pass. The place in Europe where it is not a right-on slogan but a matter of life and death is Ukraine. Cut out the “Not” and we can all enjoy the sweet self-righteousness of appeasement.
