AN event will take place in Milltown Cemetery next month to honour Belfast native Jim Stranney who fought and died in the Spanish Civil War.
Organised by the Friends of the International Brigades in Ireland (FIBI), it will take place at Milltown Cemetery on Saturday, August 1 at 1.30pm.
Immortalised in Christy Moore’s famous ballad about the Irishmen who joined the International Brigades to fight Fascism in Spain, Short Strand's Jim Stranney fell in battle on July 30, 1938.
Like countless others, his remains lie in an unmarked grave on Spanish soil but his name was always included in the Stranney family plot in Milltown Cemetery. The previous headstone had fallen into disrepair. This event on the 88th anniversary of his death marks its replacement, honouring his life and what he stood for.
Stranney had joined around 35,000 volunteers from more than 50 countries who came to defend the democratically-elected republican government against a military Fascist coup – backed by Hitler and Mussolini – in a conflict now recognised as the curtain-raiser for World War II.
Born in 1911 on the Lower Falls, Stranney was raised in the Short Strand and witnessed the vicious fighting and social upheaval in the city during the Irish Civil War period. Despite chronic levels of unemployment, he managed to find work as a labourer and a milkman but coming from a strong Irish republican working-class tradition, it was little surprise that around 1930 he joined Na Fianna Éireann and then the IRA.
Defying IRA policy at the time, he chose to fight in Spain – and his OC Jack Brady even accompanied him and his comrade Willie O’Hanlon to the Liverpool boat to begin the first leg of his fateful journey in late 1937.
Jim Stranney is also listed on the IRA Roll of Honour in the Short Strand’s republican memorial garden. His family home on John Street also displays a commemorative marble plaque. And, of course, his name will always be synonymous with those who stand on the right side of history.
