Warmest greetings from the International Brigade Memorial Trust to all our friends in ALBA.

Current events are underlining the importance of the example set by the International Brigades. Militarism and expansionism have brought the world to a new dangerous moment. This is the time to reassert the values that the volunteers stood for: anti-fascism, solidarity, democracy and peace.

Best wishes to your gala and every success in the coming year in keeping alive the memory and spirit of those men and women who defended the Spanish Republic and risked everything in that noble cause.

Jim Jump
Chair
International Brigade Memorial Trust

The International Brigade Commemoration Committee, Ireland, send greetings of solidarity to your Gala on the 30th of April. We welcome and acknowledge the fight against right wing extremism in America and elsewhere. Sorry we cannot be with you but we are having the May Day march and rally for International Workers Day. In the memory of all who have gone before and in particular the anti-fascist who fought against Franco we say SALUD-The struggle continues. No better song to mark this occasion than James Connolly’s Rebel Song-sorry we are not here to sing it with you.

Come workers sing a rebel song,
A song of love and hate,
Of love unto the lowly
And of hatred to the great.
The great who trod our fathers down,
Who steal our children’s bread,
Whose hands of greed are stretched to rob
The living and the dead.

chorus:
Then sing our rebel song as we
proudly sweep along
To end the age-old tyranny
that makes for human tears.
Our march is nearer done, with
each setting of the sun.
And the tyrants’ might is passing
with the passing of the years
We sing no more of wailing
And no songs of sighs or tears;
High are our hopes and stout our hearts
And banished all our fears.
Our flag is raised above us
So that all the world may see,
’Tis Labour’s faith and Labour’s arm
Alone can Labour free.

chorus

Out of the depths of misery
We march with hearts aflame;
With wrath against the rulers false
Who wreck our manhood’s name.
The serf who licks the tyrant’s rod
May bend forgiving knee;
The slave who breaks his slavery’s chain
A wrathful man must be.

chorus

Our army marches onward
With its face towards the dawn,
In trust secure in that one thing
The slave may lean upon.
The might within the arm of him
Who knowing freedom’s worth,
Strikes hard to banish tyranny
From off the face of earth.

IBCC Committee: Ernest Walker, Lynda Walker, Dooley Hart Adam Murray, Paddy Mackle, Frank Cammock, Geraldine Kelly, Paul Kelly.

Dear Friends at ALBA,

We would like to join you from Spain in celebrating the legacy of the volunteers. In these challenging times of war, financial crisis, uncertainty, and the constant misinformation in the media and toxic politics, we find ourselves facing the ghosts of the past. We are facing similar difficulties to those our admired veterans from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade faced. Like them, we detest war and attacks on civilians. Like them, our voice shall be clear: Stop the Wars- everywhere.
Let´s remember what we have in common, not our differences: we, the aware working class, share the same concerns no matter our nationality or ethnicity.
La lucha continua! Solidarity from Madrid, Spain.
Almudena Cros
President
AABI