Dublin - Event Notice
Thursday January 01 1970

Benefit night to fund an Irish International Brigade monument in Madrid

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | event notice

Thursday January 14, 2010 16:25

by anarchaeologist - Friends of Charlie Donnelly

eddietyrone at gmail dot com

087 2712864

Music, drink and auld chat at the Teachers' Club

This year the annual commemoration at Jarama will also see the completion of a project initiated in 2007 by the Friends of Charlie Donnelly with the help of AABI. The intention has been to pay tribute to this young Irish poet who died on 27 February 1937 in the last action of the Battle of the Jarama.

We're holding a fund-raiser to help pay for the transportation of the stone from Tyrone to Madrid and all are welcome.

The idea to erect two monuments to Charlie, one in his Dungannon birthplace and the other close to where he died at Jarama, was arrived at by the Friends of Charlie Donnelly, who erected a temporary memorial at the site in 2008. The city council of Rivas-Vaciamadrid has now provided a site and has collaborated in making the whole thing happen.

The stone itself has been taken from a quarry in Tyrone and will form the centrepiece of the monument, located on the southeastern outskirts of Madrid, close to where the battle took place. The inauguration of the Memorial will take place on Saturday 27 February at 11:00 in the Park of Miralrío de Rivas-Vaciamadrid.

Sponsor the stone!
The monument will consist of a large engraved stone taken from near Charlie’s
birthplace in County Tyrone. It will be set in a cairn of stones, 32 of which will be brought from Ireland and the rest from the Jarama battlefield. The monument will not only commemorate Charlie Donnelly but all the Irish Brigade volunteers who died as well as paying tribute to all those killed in Spain in defence of freedom.

The Friends of Charlie Donnelly hope to finance the stone's engraving and its transport to Madrid by asking people to ‘sponsor a stone’. We will be truly grateful for any support that can be offered.

If you would like to help or ‘sponsor a stone’ please contact Eddie O’Neill on 087 2712864 or by email eddietyrone@gmail.com

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Comments (2 of 2)

I should've mentioned...

Fri Jan 15, 2010 16:31

there's an €8 entry charge. It is a fund-raiser after all!
Donnelly's best known poem is probably The Tolerance of Crows, however just before he died he picked a bunch of olives from the ground and said 'even the olives are bleeding', which became the title of a Jacobs Award winning RTÉ documentary on the Spanish Civil War in 1976.
A memorial to Donnelly was erected in UCD in 2008 and the Labour Youth branch in the college is named in his honour.

The Tolerance of Crows
Death comes in quantity from solved
Problems on maps, well-ordered dispositions,
Angles of elevation and direction;

Comes innocent from tools children might
Love, retaining under pillows
Innocently impales on any flesh.

And with flesh falls apart the mind
That trails thought from the mind that cuts
Thought clearly for a waiting purpose.

Progress of poison in the nerves and
Discipline’s collapse is halted.
Body awaits the tolerance of crows.
Charles Donnelly (1914-1937)

Lessons from history

by The Digger

Fri Jan 15, 2010 21:25

The erection of a monument to Charlie Donnelly and all the other Irish International Brigaders who gave there lives in the fight against fascism is extremely relevant at this moment in time. They forces in Ireland and Internationally, that abetted in the triumph of fascism then is stirring again.Tthe ideolgy of the neocon is the new fascism. From history we should learn that if you tolerate this burgeoning class we will sow the seeds of our own destruction.

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Benefit night to fund an Irish International Brigade monument in Madrid

Comments (2 of 2)