The Spanish Civil War, Irish Newspapers, Journals, and Periodicals – a Thematic Examination, 1936-39
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The Spanish Civil War, Irish newspapers, journals, and periodicals – A Thematic Examination, 1936-39 William Burton Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and the Social Sciences, Ulster University Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2019 I confirm that the word count of this thesis is less than 100,000 Contents Declaration i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Abbreviations iv Introduction 5 Chapter One At the of gates of Madrid: Public Opinion and the Battle for Madrid 55 Easy Victory or Heroic Resistance – Ideological Differences 58 Soviet resupply to the Madrid Government 71 A dearth of dispatches from the front 77 Chapter Two ‘Hypothetical bombing of a small town’ Fact and Fiction in Irish Newspapers 90 The Provincial Press – Donegal 99 Radical and Religious 104 Northern Ireland 110 Chapter Three ‘Have the children of Bilbao fallen into the hands of friends or foes?’ The coverage of Basque refugees in Ireland 127 The Basque Front 128 Echoes of the 1913 Lockout in 1937 130 Chapter Four ‘Ireland can be saved if we act now’ Readers’ Letters and the Spanish Civil War 154 Ends of the Spectrum - Unique Letters 158 Penning anguish with Partition 162 A Unifying Moment? – The Formation of the Irish Brigade 164 Peadar O’Donnell - A Catalyst for Debate 168 Wariness of British Imperialism 178 Chapter Five ‘May the Lord save us from our universities and protect us from our professors’ Student Publications, Professors and the Spanish Civil War 188 Irish universities and activism in the 1930s 189 Dublin 191 Belfast 201 Cork 204 Chapter Six The ‘vulnerable’ parish: Donegal and the Spanish Civil War 212 Politics in Donegal before the Spanish Civil War 213 ‘Dangerous literature viruses’: Concerns over communism 215 Derry People and the Tirconaill News 217 Donegal Vindicator 223 Donegal Democrat 230 Chapter Seven ‘Up the Republic!’ Propaganda during the Spanish Civil War 241 ‘Remember Ballyseedy’ – Echoes of the Irish Civil War 245 ‘Sister Country’ – Irish parallels 254 The Looming Fight in Ireland 261 ‘Heathen Moors’ – Discrediting Franco’s Christian Credentials 264 Father Ramón Laborda – Countering propaganda 267 The Legacy of Partition 271 Conclusion 278 Bibliography 293 i Declaration "I hereby declare that for 2 years following the date on which the thesis is deposited in Research Student Administration of Ulster University, the thesis shall remain confidential with access or copying prohibited. Following expiry of this period I permit 1. the Librarian of the University to allow the thesis to be copied in whole or in part without reference to me on the understanding that such authority applies to the provision of single copies made for study purposes or for inclusion within the stock of another library. 2. the thesis to be made available through the Ulster Institutional Repository and/or EThoS under the terms of the Ulster eTheses Deposit Agreement which I have signed.* IT IS A CONDITION OF USE OF THIS THESIS THAT ANYONE WHO CONSULTS IT MUST RECOGNISE THAT THE COPYRIGHT RESTS WITH THE UNIVERSITY AND THEN SUBSEQUENTLY TO THE AUTHOR ON THE EXPIRY OF THIS PERIOD AND THAT NO QUOTATION FROM THE THESIS AND NO INFORMATION DERIVED FROM IT MAY BE PUBLISHED UNLESS THE SOURCE IS PROPERLY ACKNOWLEDGED." ii Acknowledgments Many people have helped me greatly with the research and writing of this thesis. My sincere thanks must go primarily to Dr Emmet O’Connor who has helped me at every stage of the project and also to my second supervisor, Professor Ian Thatcher. Their attention to detail and excellent communications have been of great assistance. The staff at Magee library, especially Rose Norris, were excellent and facilitated all my requests through the years. I received help from libraries across Ireland, including Letterkenny Central Library, Derry City Library and the National Library of Ireland. I would also like to thank other PhD students from MQ205 at the Magee campus from the September 2014 intake. Hilary, Sinéad and Mícheál were supportive and a source of constant encouragement. iii Abstract This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by examining Irish reportage of the Spanish Civil War thematically. The chosen themes have previously not been studied in a sustained scholarly manner: Guernica, Basque refugees, readers' letters, the siege of Madrid, Donegal and propaganda. This approach has reaped two particular rewards. First, it reveals a new level of detail about Irish reportage, particularly in the provincial publications. There are sources here utilised that have been largely overlooked. Second, it calls for a re-evaluation of the current understanding of Irish newspaper coverage as limited to two interpretations of the Spanish Civil War, namely as a necessary war against Fascism and/or as a war against Catholicism. As argued here, there was greater complexity than this. The thematic approach explores how the reporting of the conflict was viewed through the prism of Irish history of the past few centuries to the more contemporary. Most notably, the often problematic relationship with the United Kingdom supplied a myriad of cultural, historical and political references to frame the conflict in Spain for an Irish audience. iv List of Abbreviations ACA Army Comrades Association CPI Communist Party of Ireland EEC European Economic Community IRA Irish Republican Army KPJ Communist Party of Yugoslavia MP Member of Parliament NILP Northern Ireland Labour Party NUR National Union of Railwaymen OCR Optical character recognition RAF Royal Air Force RCP Portuguese Radio Club UCC University College Cork UCD University College Dublin UK United Kingdom US United States 5 Introduction The Spanish Civil War which began on 17 July 1936 marked the start of a three-year conflict. Elements within the Spanish military had staged a coup to replace the second Spanish Republic. Spain had a history of coups and by the general election of February 1936 tensions were high. The war in Spain had a powerful impact on Ireland. The Spanish conflict highlighted that Irish society had not dealt with its own civil war fourteen years previously. In 1936, the Irish state was still at an embryonic stage, having only emerged from conflict with Britain after the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The Anglo-Irish Treaty ‘facilitated the renewal of left and right organizations and the re-amplification of left-right political discourse.’1 Ireland was commonly perceived to have an affinity with Spain due to a shared religion, a conservative society, and a history peppered with rebellion. The Spanish conflict brought about a battle of ideologies between the Republican Congress, the Communist Party of Ireland, socialists, and liberals, on the one side, and Fine Gael, the Christian Front, and the remnant of Eoin O’Duffy’s Blueshirt movement, which would go on to compose the Irish Brigade, on the other. The press was also divided on ideological lines. Rationale The themes explored in this thesis all reference events from Ireland’s past in the reporting of the Spanish Civil War. Colonialism, conquest, famine and proselytism were invoked by Irish publications throughout the Spanish Civil 1 Mark O’Brien, ‘“In War-Torn Spain”: The Politics of Irish Press Coverage of the Spanish Civil War’, Media, War & Conflict 10, no. 3 (2017): 345-358. p. 346. 6 War in order to draw comparisons between events in Spain and Ireland. Partition, the War of Independence, the Irish Civil War, past British wars and Irish rebellions were also referenced. The themes analysed in each chapter have received little scholarly attention. Herein lies the rationale for researching a thematic analysis of nationalist, Unionist, radical and religious publications. The three Dublin daily newspapers, the Irish Independent, the Irish Times, and the Irish Press, feature heavily in this thesis. The Independent, a cheer-leader for Franco’s insurgency and unapologetic champion of Catholic values, immediately backed the insurgency in Spain. The Irish Times, formerly a bastion of southern Unionism, has been described as one of the most objective newspapers that covered the Spanish Civil War.2 The Irish Press was owned by Éamon de Valera and toed the government line on the conflict. The Irish Press backed non-intervention and ridiculed O’Duffy’s Irish Brigade from the outset. Nationalists in Northern Ireland were ‘embittered’ by the lack of concern for the Catholic Church shown by Protestants.3 The Derry Journal and the Londonderry Sentinel published accounts of the conflict and editorials at odds with each other. The Journal was akin to the Independent in its strident Catholicism and republished articles from the Cross.4 The Sentinel backed the British government’s policy of non-intervention and compared the propaganda in the Free State for the insurgency in Spain to the nationalist hostility Ulster Loyalists had faced in the past from the Dublin press during the Irish Civil War 2 Bowyer, Bell, ‘Ireland and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939’, Studia Hibernica No.9 (1969): 137–63. p. 140. 3 Ibid., p. 140. 4 Derry Journal, 11 June 1937. 7 and the War of Independence.5 The same relationship was present in Belfast between the Belfast Telegraph and the Irish News. The Belfast Telegraph backed Britain and the Irish News hailed Franco’s insurgency. The provincial press reporting, which relied solely on readers’ accounts and agency reports on the conflict, reveals that rural Ireland was aware of the issues in Spain. The reportage shows a pattern that consistently sought to draw a link between the events in Spain and Ireland’s troubled history with Britain. The events in Guernica were not reported until three weeks after they occurred. When the Basque children were to be evacuated from Spain to the UK, the Donegal newspapers cited the experiences of Boer families during the Boer War as evidence as to why Britain should not be trusted with children.