Sixty-five years ago tomorrow General Eoin O'Duffy set off for Spain, where he was to lead some 700 Irishmen to fight on the side of Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. It is probably true to say that for a long time - perhaps still - that action and the men who participated in it were at best sources of embarrassment, or at worst subjects of execration.
When he was researching his book The Irish and the Spanish Civil War, Robert Stradling visited Glasnevin Cemetery to see O'Duffy's grave. He was struck by the contrast between it and the grave of Frank Ryan, who led about 200 Irishmen to fight on the opposite side in the Spanish conflict. Although only a few metres separated the two graves, Ryan's was often decorated with fresh flowers, while O'Duffy's was overgrown with bushes and extremely difficult to find.
Similarities
The two men had a lot in common. They were both devout Catholics, both fought in the Irish War of Independence and both supported Nazi Germany in the second World War; and they both died in 1944. But the contrasting condition of their graves was symptomatic of the way they are remembered in Ireland. (O'Duffy's resting-place was to some extent restored as a result of Stradling's efforts.)
Neither in 1992, the centenary of his birth, nor in 1994, the 50th anniversary of his death, was O'Duffy in any way publicly commemorated. I must put my own hands up in this regard. My book on Fine Gael, published in 1993, contains biographical sketches of the party's leaders, ministers and junior ministers since 1923 but I omitted O'Duffy, although he led the party for most of the first year of its existence.
The reason for the omission was not as sinister as Stradling ascribed to me (that I wished to airbrush O'Duffy out of Fine Gael and indeed Irish history). It was really down to a question of space in the end; the publisher decided what the length of the book should be (he felt it was too long as it was) and I knew a biographical sketch of O'Duffy would have to be substantial if it were to do justice to his involvement in 20th-century Irish history. But I afterwards regretted the omission. Any book on Fine Gael should have the main details of O'Duffy's life, whatever one may feel about his politics in the 1930s.
If I were to have gone to fight in the Spanish Civil War, it would have been on the opposite side to O'Duffy and his men, but that is not to question in any way the idealism which inspired him and them to go.
Ireland was a predominantly Catholic country at the time; Franco was seen to be on the side of Catholicism; therefore Ireland was mainly pro-Franco. Reports in the press and on cinema newsreels of atrocities against priests and nuns and the destruction of churches added to the support for Franco.
Shoot the reds
In Cathal O'Shannon's excellent television documentary Even the Olives are Bleeding, two Irish nuns in a Lisbon convent recalled Irish volunteers for Franco en route to Spain telling them: "We've come to fight for Spain and religion and we remember all we have suffered in the persecutions . . . In the past the Spaniards helped us . . . and were defeated by the English, but we will have our revenge now . . . We're going to shoot every damn red in Spain . . . Spain has always been a Catholic country like Ireland.
"We are for religion and we don't want the reds to conquer Spain."
Here, captured succinctly and vividly, are the motives that inspired volunteers for what became the Irish Brigade or XV Bandera of Franco's Tercio or Foreign Legion. They went to fight for their faith and against communism, and to repay a historical debt.
No monument
Those of them who died in Spain were remembered by many of their comrades and are still remembered by their families. But their bodies lie in Spanish soil, never to be returned and maybe never to be identified with certainty. No monument to them exists in their native country. Indifference, embarrassment, even shame were to be the lot of the survivors of O'Duffy's Brigade as the years passed.
A Brigade Association was set up to further the interests of the veterans and maintain communication among them. But internal divisions led to its disappearance. At O'Duffy's funeral in 1944, only about 20 veterans attended.
A good number of the men who had gone to fight for Franco joined the British army during the second World War. Far from being fascists, of which they were - and are - often accused, their idea of freedom was neither selfish nor exclusive.
As Robert Stradling remarked: "Some responded naturally to the plight of the British people in 1940; others strongly felt (as had their forefathers in 1914) that Catholic peoples like those of Poland and Belgium deserved defending against German barbarism."
Some of them gave their lives in the great war against fascism. May they rest in the peace of history.