Irish Socialists in the Spanish Civil War

In 1933, Frank Ryan along with George Gilmore and Peader O’Donnell proposed the establishment of a new left-wing republican organisation which would be called the Republican Congress, to the IRA. It was rejected and the three resigned their duties within the Irish Republican Army. Other disaffected members who wanted to achieve their goals through Socialism, began to join the Republican Congress. From the very beginning however, divisions were very evident regarding the preferred method on which the movement should be formed on. The Congress eventually fell apart due to infighting in February 1933 before it ever proved an effective political force. But it did provide the source from which volunteers for the Civil War in Spain were recruited. Frank Ryan organised the first transports of troops from Ireland in December 1936. The first contingent entered the fighting immediately, they were sent to the Cordoba front where they fought alongside the French Ninth and No.1 Company of the British Battalion. However, the Irish were soon transferred to a base in the town of Villaneuva de la Jara forming with the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade. They were involved at engagements at the Battle of Jarama, the 1938 Advance on Gandesa and the Battle of Ebro, the last great Republican offensive of the Spanish Civil War. The Irish Volunteers were repatriated to Ireland in September 1938, when the Republican government disbanded the International Brigades with the intention of securing military aid from other democracies and to pressure fascist troops from Germany and Italy into withdrawing.