Frank Ryan (; 11 September 1902 – 10 June 1944) was an Irish politician, journalist and soldier. He first came to prominence as an Irish republican activist at University College Dublin and fought for the Irish Republican Army during the Irish Civil War. Ryan fell under the influence of Peadar O'Donnell, an advocate of socialism within Irish republicanism, which resulted in him breaking with the IRA and becoming involved with founding a new political organisation, the Republican Congress, and editing its associated newspaper, An Phoblacht.
Ryan led the Irish brigade in the Spanish Civil War on the Popular Front side, fighting for the International Brigades (retroactively known as the Connolly Column). After being captured by pro-Nationalist Italians, he was sentenced to death, later changed to 30 years but after an international campaign, Ryan was released from prison in 1940 with the help of German authorities. Ryan would subsequently spend the next three years in Nazi Germany, During his time there, Ryan was in poor health and after a failed attempt to return to Ireland on a U-boat he died of pneumonia aged 41. In 1979 the Irish government was eventually successful in repatriating his remains and he was buried in Glasnevin cemetery.
Early life Ryan was born in the townland of Bottomstown near Elton, County Limerick. His parents, Vere Foster Ryan and Annie Slattery, were National School teachers at Bottomstown (parish of Knockainey) with a taste for Irish traditional music, and they lived in a house full of books. He attended St. Colman's College, Fermoy. From then on he was devoted to the restoration of the Irish language.
He studied Celtic Studies at University College Dublin, where he was a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) training corps. He left before graduating to join the IRA's East Limerick Brigade in 1922. He fought on the Anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War, and was wounded and interned. In November 1923 he was released and returned to University College Dublin. He was active in several Irish-language societies, winning the Cumann Gaedhealach's gold medal for oratory in Irish in 1924. During the Gaelic Revival era, he was commissioned to write for Irish-language publications – he briefly edited An Reult (). He formed the University Republican Club and led it on demonstrations before graduation in 1925.Cronin, p. 22
After university, he taught Irish at Mountjoy School (a Protestant school in Dublin), but journalism was his vocation. His day job was editing Irish Travel for the Tourist Board, while he also edited An tÓglach () for the IRA. Evenings were devoted to teaching Irish at Conradh na Gaeilge, lecturing in history and literature, and leading the occasional céilidh.
In 1926, he was appointed adjutant of the Dublin Brigade and given the job of reorganisation. Ryan was always an anti-imperialist, and Peadar O'Donnell believes the biggest influence on Ryan's thinking in those days was the Congress of the League against Imperialism in Brussels, which he attended with Domhnall O'Donoghue, both as delegates of the IRA, in February 1927."The League Against Imperialism: British, Irish and Indian Connections" , Communist History Network Newsletter, Issue 14, Spring 2003.
In 1929, Ryan was appointed editor of the Republican newspaper An Phoblacht, where he worked alongside Geoffrey Coulter, his assistant. Together they turned it into a lively political paper, boosting the readership substantially. In this year he was elected to the Army Executive, a body one below the IRA Army Council.Cronin, p. 33
Starting in 1928 and lasting until the mid-1930s, Ryan would enter into a romantic relationship with Rosamond "Róisín" Jacob, a fellow Republican and socialist. The pair met through Ryan's Irish language classes. Because of a number of factors, such as the age difference between the two (she was 40 and he was 26 when they met, at a time when the norm in Ireland was that women should be younger than their partners), their different religious backgrounds (Ryan was nominally a Catholic, Jacob nominally a Quaker) and the fact that they were unwed, the relationship was considered "an affair" and they believed that it had to be kept a secret.
In May 1930, Ryan spent several weeks in the US, addressing Irish conventions, where he witnessed the start of the Great Depression, and the ravages of unemployment. In 1931, he was imprisoned for publishing seditious articles in An Phoblacht. Later that year, he was again imprisoned for contempt of court. Following the victory of Fianna Fáil in the 1932 Irish general election, Ryan was released from prison in March 1932 alongside thousands of other republican prisoners as part of a general amnesty.
Republican Congress
In 1933, Ryan, along with George Gilmore and Peadar O'Donnell, proposed the establishment of a new left-republican organisation to be called the Republican Congress. This would form the basis of a mass revolutionary movement appealing to the working class and small farmers. At an IRA Army Convention, they narrowly failed to gain approval for the proposal. When Ryan, Gilmore and O'Donnell held a meeting in Athlone that April that continued to push for the creation of the Congress, the IRA Army Council subsequently "court marshalled" all three of them, while IRA volunteers who supported the Congress were stood down.Cronin, p. 52 In the aftermath, Gilmore, Ryan and O'Donnell pressed ahead with the Republican Congress, founding the organisation at another meeting in Athlone in April 1934, with Ryan becoming editor of its eponymous newspaper. Ryan's close friend was the poet, Irish republican and left-wing political activist Charlie Donnelly who had formed a Republican Congress branch in London. Donnelly sent articles concerning the situation in Britain for publication in the Irish Congress newspaper.
For months arguments raged both within the IRA and between the IRA and various left-wing organisations on how to deal with Government pressure, the growing Fascist tendency of Fine Gael, and whether to participate in elections. The IRA leadership managed to keep to its traditional path, though it did actively confront the Blueshirts. In 1935, Ryan established two publishing concerns, the Cooperative Press and Liberty Press, to circumvent the difficulties in publishing left-wing material. During strikes in the first half of that year (butchers' shops in January, a tram and bus strike in March) and agitations for the release of IRA prisoners which was still torn between a left-wing and a conservative faction and under tremendous pressure from the Government. Meanwhile, the Republican Congress began to split apart over ideological disputes. Ryan, Gilmore and O'Donnell believed that the Congress should be united front that served as a banner for all Irish Republicans while another faction featuring the likes of Roddy Connolly and members of the Communist Party of Ireland believed it should be a vanguard party. At a disastrous meeting of the Congress held in Rathmines, Dublin in September 1934 a vote was taken on the issue in which the United Front concept won out, but immediately those favouring a vanguard party stood up, resigned en masse and walked out of the party, a blow from which it never truly recovered, leading it to become defunct by 1936.
Involvement in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939
With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Peadar O'Donnell and then George Gilmore went to Spain on behalf of the Congress to report on proceedings, and returned enthusiastic supporters of the Spanish Republicans. Ryan was incensed at quasi-Fascist Blueshirt leader Eoin O'Duffy organising an Irish Brigade to fight alongside the Fascists, and in open letters to the papers criticised Cardinal McRory for raising funds at church collections to support Franco.Cronin, p. 79 Cardinal McRory publicly suggested that the State should suppress the Republican Congress. On 22 September 1936 Ryan replied to that suggestion:"...may I assure your Eminence that as a Catholic I will take my religion from Rome, but as an Irish Republican, I will take my politics from neither Moscow nor Maynooth."Donnelly, pgs. 43-44. (Maynooth is the seat of the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference). The Congress started publicising the Spanish Republican cause in public meetings. This was no easy task, given the strength of pro-Franco feeling at the time, which was whipped up by sections of the Catholic Church and the Irish Independent. Pro-Republican meetings were frequently challenged, and on one occasion Ryan had to climb up a lamp-post to escape from a crowd which attacked a meeting he was addressing in York Street, Dublin.
Neither O'Donnell (due to his age) nor Gilmore (due to a broken leg) were in a position to return to Spain to fight. Despite his deafness, in late 1936 Ryan travelled to Spain with about 80 men, including Dubliner Tommy Wood, who was 17. He had succeeded in recruiting to fight in the International Brigades on the Republican side. Ryan's men are sometimes referred to as the "Connolly Column".
He served in the Lincoln-Washington Brigade, rising to the rank of Brigadier. He was attached to the staff of the XV International Brigade in charge of publicity: writing, broadcasting and visiting the front line to see conditions first-hand. Ryan fought in a number of engagements, he was wounded at the Battle of Jarama (12 February 1937) and he took over command of the British Battalion (the Irish were split between this and the Lincoln Battalion) after it suffered heavy losses.Cronin, pp 92–96Donnelly, pg. 54. He was seriously wounded in March 1937, and returned to Ireland to recover. He took advantage of his return to launch another left-republican newspaper, entitled The Irish Democrat. On his return to Spain, he again served in the war until he was captured in Calaceite in March 1938 by Italian troops fighting for the Nationalists. He was accused of murder, court-martialled, and sentenced to death before being incarcerated in Burgos Prison in 1938. While imprisoned under harsh conditions in Burgos, Ryan refused to sing the Nationalist anthem or give the fascist salute. He was under the death sentence for 16 months. During this time he expressed his disagreement with the IRA bombing campaign in England. His sentence was later commuted to 30 years hard labour in January 1940.
'Escape' from Burgos Prison in 1940
In October 1938 Ryan was visited in Burgos Prison by the Irish Minister to Spain, Leopold Kerney.Eamon Kerney, "Leopold H. Kerney – Irish Minister to Spain 1935 – 1946" , at the Ireland and the Spanish Civil War website; also available at Leopold H. Kerney Website
Kerney hired a lawyer for Ryan (Jaime Michel de Champourcin, paid for by the Irish government) but, in spite of all his efforts, he could not secure Ryan's release. It was de Champourcin's contacts with Abwehr (a German military intelligence organisation) chief Wilhelm Canaris, and within the Franco Government, that saw Ryan released into Abwehr hands on 15 July 1940.Carter in Shamrock and the Swastika, page 114, claims that the Irish Government made efforts on Ryan's behalf, including the commutation of his death sentence to 30 years hard labour and brokering of a deal via de Champourcin, Abwehr, German Foreign Ministry and Franco whereby Ryan could be released on condition he never returned to Spain again. The handover took place on the France-Spain border at Irun-Hendaye. A cover story that Ryan had "escaped" was released at the time. Ryan was taken to the border by Madrid-based Abwehr agent Wolfgang Blaum and handed over to Sonderführer Kurt Haller. From the border, Ryan was first taken to the resort town of Biarritz and then on to Paris where he received several days' hospitality courtesy of the Abwehr. He was then transported to Berlin, where he met up with Seán Russell on 4 August 1940.Cronin, pp 180–187
Time spent in Nazi Germany