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Journalism is a bit of a slog on occasion but it can also provide experiences that leave you feeling quite privileged. One that made a strong impact on me personally was listening to the socialist anthem The Internationale played, rather unusually, on the Irish war-pipes at a very special event on Achill Island in the autumn of 1986.
The musician was Larry O’Dowd from Ballymote, Co Sligo, and the occasion a commemoration of Tommy Patten, a local man who served with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and died defending Madrid from the fascists in December 1936, on the eve of his 26th birthday.
A native Irish-speaker, Patten was also a true internationalist. When he was heading off to war, his brother, Owen (who was also present at the commemoration) urged him to watch out for enemy bullets, and Tommy replied: “The bullet that will get me won’t get a Spanish worker.”
There were four Brigade veterans among the 400-strong gathering at the Achill village of Dooega: Bob Doyle, Joe Monks, Peter O’Connor and then-chairman of the Communist Party of Ireland, Michael O’Riordan. O’Connor read out the names of Irish Brigadistas who lost their lives in the conflict: they had Catholic and Protestant backgrounds and came from north and south.
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There was another remarkable moment that day, when the battles in which they fell were listed and we heard place-names like Jarama, Brunete and Belchite echoing across the waters of the Atlantic off the Mayo coast.
The attendance also included the chairman of the Labour Party at the time, Senator Michael D Higgins (he has had other titles since then) and several leading trade unionists. Alderman (later TD) Declan Bree from Sligo read out the stirring words of November 1st, 1938, from Dolores Ibarruri, otherwise known as La Pasionaria, on the standing-down of the International Brigades: “You are history, you are legend”.
Two years after that Achill ceremony, I had the further privilege of observing the 50th anniversary of the disbandment of the Brigades in Barcelona.
Three days of commemoration began on October 28th, 1988, to mark the last parade of the volunteers through the city. This was living history: one of the leading figures I met was Steve Nelson, who had been a political commissar with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
Since I had grown up during the Cold War between the Soviet bloc and the capitalist west, the word “commissar” had considerable resonance for me, suggesting as it did a stern individual who imposed ideological conformity.
When Conrad Singer took his first holiday to Majorca, he discovered that his neighbour had been chauffeur to Adolf Hitler
In fact, Nelson turned out to be a very amiable and relaxed person who had broken with the Communist Party after Nikita Khruschev’s revelations about Stalin in 1956.
He had once witnessed Stalin giving a speech and, unaware of the dictator’s “back-story”, was quite impressed with what seemed a common-sense, down-to-earth approach.
In Spain, Nelson had served alongside the Irish radical activist Frank
Ryan whose sense of humour greatly appealed to him. He was unaware of Ryan’s subsequent history and was saddened to hear how his Irish friend, although released from jail by the victorious Franco regime, could not get home to Ireland and ended up spending his final years in exile in Nazi Germany, where he died in 1944 aged only 41 years.
Another interesting character I met was Conrad Singer, who was born in Romania and joined the army there before leaving for Barcelona in 1937 to enlist in the International Brigades.
He showed me a clutch of medals received because of his military service, which later included the British Army and the French Foreign Legion. However, his time in Spain was the most memorable for him because, as he said to me: “It was a page of glory.”
When his military days came to an end, Singer settled down in Britain and built a successful career in business. He used some of his earnings as an entrepreneur to purchase an apartment in Majorca. But when he took his first holiday there, he discovered that his neighbour had been chauffeur to Adolf Hitler.
The last of around 60 Irish Brigadistas to die in action was Jack Nalty (36), in the Battle of the Ebro. A native of Ballygar, Co Galway, he grew up in Dublin’s dockland. On September 23rd, the 80th anniversary of his death, a memorial plaque was unveiled at East Road where he had lived. It was erected by the East Wall History Group, which pointed out that Nalty was also a leading athlete and his prowess was apparently praised by Gen Eoin O’Duffy who also went to fight in Spain – but for the other side.