Talk:Irish socialist volunteers in the Spanish Civil War

Merger Discussion 2021

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Request received to merge articles: Connolly Column into Irish socialist volunteers in the Spanish Civil War; dated: 19:48, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Reasoning: To pick back up the merger discussion almost 13 years later from the above section which got caught up in semantics, I think the wisest thing to do is merge Connolly Column into this article, and perhaps rename this article Irish Republican volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. The reasoning behind this is that all Connolly Column members were fighting on the Republican side, but not every Irish person fighting on the Republican side was in the Connolly Column. That's one way of doing it, it could be done another way. But at any rate, Irish socialist volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and Connolly Column are basically identical articles and a merger of some kind is warranted. CeltBrowne (talk) 19:41, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Ping prior: Jdorney, Conghaileach, Mia-etol, Spacemarine2552, TheOldJacobite, Fluffy999

• Agree with your suggestion in the first two lines above. Ardfern (talk) 21:16, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
• No, I'm inclined to oppose this merger. They are not 'basically identical'; Connolly Column is about a military formation, while Irish Socialist Volunteers is just as the title says; also CC focusses on activities in Spain, while ISV largely describes political manoeuvrings in Ireland. Any overlap can be resolved by trimming and having main article links, rather than lumping them together. I would also strongly oppose the suggested title, which is misleading and non-neutral (they went primarily because they were socialists, not because they were Irish Republicans), while the reasoning is disingenuous at best: Would you describe the men of the Lincoln Battalion as 'American Republicans'? Or, as most of these here that went subscribed to a united Ireland, would you call them 'Irish Nationalists of the SCW'? It isn't helpful, is it? Xyl 54 (talk) 09:48, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

PS: Regarding the previous discussion which 'got caught up in semantics', you should know (to paraphrase another socialist) 13 years is a very short time in Irish politics, and the issues raised haven’t changed. One of the tensions within the Irish contingent was between workers solidarity and anti-British sentiment, leading to the Madragues ‘mutiny’. Frank Ryan (interestingly, in view of his later career trajectory) was in favour of the former (within limits, as the Connolly article makes clear!) while those that voted to leave the Saklatvala and join the Lincolns chose the latter. Meanwhile French, Serbian, Italian and British socialists were able to fight alongside German, Austrian and Bulgarian socialists in solidarity. So Irish Republicans in the SCW may describe the Connolly Column; it doesn’t describe this lot. Xyl 54 (talk) 09:55, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

@Xyl 54: Oh dear, the language is befuddling things again. I didn't mean to suggest a name that implied Irish Republicanism, but a name that meant they were Irish volunteers fighting on the Spanish Republican side. Might Irish Volunteers to Republican Spain be a more appropriate sounding name to you? As for the rest: If we look at the two articles, both have pretty much the same structure. The first section of both articles discusses their motivation, which in the case of both articles largely focuses on the Republican Congress as a catalyst. The second section of both articles describes their military action in Spain. Connolly Column could become a subsection of a renamed article, preserving that the Connolly Colum was the main Irish fighting force on the Spanish Republican side, but did not account for all Irish on the Spanish Republican side. CeltBrowne (talk) 04:02, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

@CeltBrowne:: Thank you for acknowledging the ambiguity in the title. However I still don’t see the necessity for merging these pages. As I’ve already said, they are not synonymous, and any overlap can be resolved by summarizing and cross-linking; they don’t need to be on the same page or that. Currently Connolly Column is a clear, concise 13Kb article on a particular group; Irish socialist volunteers is a broader but still readable 19 Kb article; where is the advantage in having a 30Kb wall of text instead? Both are discrete subjects with their own notability, which is a clear reason not to merge them.

I have to say I don’t get this fascination (on Wikipaedia generally) for merging pages together; The merge guideline exists as a way to avoid duplication; it isn’t an end in itself. If the titles are discrete subjects then merges should be avoided. Xyl 54 (talk) 09:44, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

PS: Another observation is that you've suggested making Connolly Column a sub-section of this article: I'm inclined to think that the Connolly Column is the better-known, and more-visited, of the two titles (920 to 213 pageviews, currently), so having the subject buried in a a broader article is hardly doing it justice. Xyl 54 (talk) 09:51, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose merge at this time: I don't know a whole lot about the two subjects (just glancing at the multitude of related articles), and my thoughts might be too simplistic, but a defining rationale would be if the article(s) can reasonably be expanded or if the "topics are discrete subjects warranting their own articles, even though they might be short", then there shouldn't be a merge. I ran across several articles covering battalions of the International Brigades. While Connolly Column was company strength it might be considered the antithesis of the Irish Brigade. I think if merges are considered, Louise Michel battalions should have been long merged.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Otr500 (talk • contribs)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Dubious

The Campaigning section of the article states that training... took place alongside troops from the British Battalion, but that the two groups were not amalgamated. I’ve flagged this as dubious; this contradicts the account from Michael O'Riordan (who ought to know) that the Connollys were amalgamated with the (British) Saklatvala battalion, though a number left to join the (American) Lincoln battalion due to tensions. What is the source of this assertion? Xyl 54 (talk) 09:38, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

An account that may (or may not) shed some light on this specific aspect:

https://www.dib.ie/biography/oconnor-peter-a6610

In December 1936 O'Connor enlisted in London as an international volunteer in defence of the Spanish republic in the civil war against the nationalist forces of Francisco Franco. He was among some forty Irish volunteers assigned, in accordance with prevailing policy of organisation along linguistic lines, to the British battalion of the XV (International) Brigade. When at the training camp in Madrigueras tensions arose over the assignment, owing partly to the prominence of Maj. George Nathan – a former Auxiliary RIC or British military intelligence officer, subsequently implicated in the 1921 assassinations of two Limerick Sinn Féin lord mayors, George Clancy (qv) and George O'Callaghan – O'Connor argued passionately against requesting transfer out of the battalion, on the grounds that anti-fascist English workers were allies of Irish workers against British imperialism. With the majority voting for transfer, the entire Irish contingent were attached to the brigade's Abraham Lincoln Battalion of USA volunteers, within which they formed the James Connolly Unit. After Nathan's death in action, O'Connor eulogised him as ‘one of the greatest soldiers . . . in the fight’ (O'Connor, 28). CeltBrowne (talk) 00:18, 27 July 2022 (UTC)