Support For The Brigade
Support for Irish involvement was based primarily on the Catholic ethos of most Irish people, as distinct from their opinion on Spanish politics per se. Many Irish Independent newspaper editorials endorsed the idea, and on 10 August 1936 it published a letter from O'Duffy seeking assistance for his "anti-Red Crusade". The Catholic Church was naturally on side. Many local government County Councils passed resolutions in support, starting with Clonmel on 21 August. While the Irish leader de Valera remained strictly neutral, in line with the multi-national Non-Intervention Committee, his publicist Aodh de Blacam wrote "For God and Spain".
This support was mirrored outside the Irish Free State. In the USA the largely Catholic Irish American community was in a minority that supported Franco and the rebels, but a proposal in the US Congress to allow sales of arms to the Spanish Republic was opposed successfully by a campaign led by the Catholic Joseph Kennedy. In Northern Ireland, support was so strong in the Catholic minority that it largely abandoned the Northern Ireland Labour Party, whose leader Harry Midgley supported the Spanish Republic (Midgley was greeted at one party meeting with chants of "we want Franco").
Read more about this topic: Irish Brigade (Spanish Civil War)
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