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¡NO PASARÁN! International Brigade Memorial Trust l 1-2024 l £5
Singing the praises of the volunteers
REMEMBER JARAMA Programme for the 2024 Battle of Jarama commemoration organished by AABI, the Madrid-based Association of Friends of the International Brigades Thursday 22 February
Saturday 24 February
Sunday 25 February
Madrid
Jarama
Madrid
l 7pm, AABI office (Local 3, Cayetano Pando, Madrid 28047), Yugoslav documentary film ‘Spain Of Our Youth’ (1997, Zdravko Velimirović, 56 mins, Serbian with Spanish subtitles).
l 8.45am, departure by coach from Hotel Agumar. l Walk across the battlefield, this year dedicated to the Yugoslav and Czech volunteers, with the route following the Dimitrov Battalion’s footsteps and the XV International Brigade’s positions. l Unveiling of a replica of the memorial to the British volunteers who fell at Jarama, sited where the original memorial was raised in 1937. l 1.30pm, fraternity lunch, Restaurante El Pino, Arganda del Rey. l 3.30pm, return to Madrid.
l 11am, meeting at Paseo de Moret (close to Moncloa metro and bus station). l Tour of University City, including Parque del Oeste, medical faculty building, International Brigade monument and, time permitting, Puente de los Franceses, ending at about 2pm-2.30pm. l Opportunity to visit Fuencarral cemetery, where there are several memorials to the International Brigades.
Friday 23 February Tarancón l 9am, departure by coach from Hotel Agumar (Paseo de la Reina Cristina 7, Madrid 28014). l 11am, visit to the Scottish memorial and International Brigade hospital. l 1.30pm, fraternity lunch. l 3.30pm, return to Madrid.
If you plan to attend all or any of these events and want to make contact with other IBMT members or have any queries, contact IBMT Scotland Secretary Mike Arnott: scotland@international-brigades.org.uk UNTARIOS VOL I
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INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE MEMORIAL TRUST IBMT, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU l 07865 272 639 admin@international-brigades.org.uk l www.international-brigades.org.uk
Mal McCann
¡NO PASARÁN! Magazine of the International Brigade Memorial Trust No.65 l 1-2024 t Sean Cooney,
member of folk trio The Young'uns, on stage at the IBMT’s Annual General Meeting in October. Behind him is an image of local Brigader Johnny Longstaff. 6 New Year message l IBMT President Marlene Sidaway celebrates the Trust’s recent achievements. 7 Witnesses to an atrocity l Paul Preston recounts the horrors of the Málaga-Almería road massacre. 11 Naval volunteers l Tony Fuller and Leonie Parkes tell the story of the Brigaders who served in the Republican navy. 14 William Carson l Natalie Thorp shares how a chance conversation led her to research her great-uncle’s life. 16 Killings behind the lines l David Ebsworth reflects on the violence committed by both sides during the civil war. 19 Books l Reviews of ‘Forged in Spain’, ‘British Battles of the Spanish Civil War: Fighting Franco’ and ‘Tomorrow Perhaps the Future’. 22 Final word l Messages of solidarity to the IBMT’s 2023 Annual General Meeting.
¡No pasarán! (formerly the IBMT Magazine and the IBMT Newsletter) is published three times a year. Back numbers can be downloaded from the IBMT website. All content is the © of the IBMT and credited contributors and cannot be reproduced without written permission. Views expressed are not necessarily those of the IBMT.
Re-enactment of the Brigaders’ return to Belfast organised by playwright Martin Lynch and the local International Brigade Commemoration Committee.
IBMT film remembers Brigaders’ return ommemorations and film-screenings were held around Britain and Ireland in December to mark the 85th anniversary of the return home of the International Brigaders in the final months of the Spanish Civil War. More than 300 members of the British Battalion arrived on 7 December 1938 at London’s Victoria station to a tumultuous reception. The event was captured on film by Ivor Montagu of the Progressive Film Institute. It was the centrepiece of a seven-minute newsreel, ‘Welcome to the International Brigade’, which is now held in the archives of the British Film Institute. For the December anniversary, IBMT Film Co-ordinator Marshall Mateer created an expanded version of the newsreel, ‘The Brigaders Return!’, adding new material about the prelude to the journey home and what happened to the men as they dispersed around the country. The original footage sees the Brigaders sailing
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Memorial for the Dover volunteers
Editor: Helen Oclee-Brown IBMT, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU 07865 272 639 admin@international-brigades.org.uk International Brigade Memorial Trust www.international-brigades.org.uk
into Newhaven by ferry and their arrival in London, where they were greeted by Labour leader Clem Attlee and other labour movement figures. There is also footage of Communist Party leader Harry Pollitt addressing the battalion in Spain. On 7 December, the actual day of the 85th anniversary, a wreath was laid on behalf of the IBMT by the Labour MP Ian Byrne at the International Brigade memorial on London’s South Bank. In the evening there was a screening of ‘The Brigaders Return!’ at the Marx Memorial Library. Among the speakers was another Labour MP, John McDonnell. In Belfast, the screening was accompanied by a reading by Martin Lynch from his play ‘Pictures of Tomorrow’, named after a poem by the Irish Brigader Charlie Donnelly. In Dundee and Southampton, there were commemorations at local International Brigade memorials before film screenings. Separate commemorations were also held in Hull and Newhaven. Other screenings took place in Manchester, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Oldham and Salford.
IBMT Film Co-ordinator Marshall Mateer.
A blue plaque looking out towards the port of Dover was unveiled on 13 December at the town’s RMT offices to pay respects to the memory of the International Brigade volunteers from east Kent. Three who died in Spain are named on the plaque: Harry Addley, Jack Black and George Gorman. The ceremony opened with the playing of ‘The Internationale’ by a brass ensemble of students CONTINUED OVERLEAF ¡NO PASARÁN! 3
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The International Brigade Memorial Trust keeps alive the memory and spirit of the men and women who volunteered to fight fascism and defend democracy in Spain from 1936 to 1939
NEWS FROM PREVIOUS PAGE from Simon Langton Girls’ Grammar School. Next came speeches from local trade union representatives Mike Sargent and Eric Segal, John Bulaitis, senior lecturer in history at Canterbury Christ Church University, IBMT Chair Jim Jump and Trinity Buckley, grand-daughter of Harry Addley. The plaque was raised with the help of the RMT and the South East Kent Trade Union Council. Organisational and research support came from local history teacher Tom Millard. In 2022, he curated an exhibition on the volunteers at the Urban Room in Folkestone with help from sixthform students at Dover Grammar School for Girls.
MPs praise the work of the IBMT Twenty-four Members of Parliament signed an Early Day Motion (EDM) marking the 85th anniversary of the return of the International Brigades from the war in Spain. The motion praised the work of the IBMT in keeping alive the memory and spirit of the volunteers ‘who fought on the side of the Republican Government against fascism of
Franco, Mussolini and Hitler’; it also underscored the importance of the Trust’s educational and commemorative work. The EDM was tabled by Beth Winter, the Labour MP for Cynon Valley in Wales. Her five co-sponsors were Richard Burgon (Labour), Ian Byrne (Labour), Jeremy Corbyn (Independent), Claire Hanna (SDLP) and Chris Stephens (SNP). The other signatories were Aspana Begum (Labour), Jonathan Edwards (Independent), Mary Kelly Foy (Labour), Kim Johnson (Labour), Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru), Ian Lavery (Labour), Andy McDonald (Independent), John McDonnell (Labour), Grahame Morris (Labour), Kate Osborne (Labour), Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour), Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour), Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru), Zarah Sultana (Labour), Jon Trickett (Labour), Mick Whitley (Labour), Nadia Whittome (Labour) and Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru). The full text of EDM 149 says: That this House notes that 7 December 2023 marks the 85th anniversary of the return to Britain of the British and Irish volunteer members of the International Brigades who fought on the side of the
International Brigade Memorial Trust 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU Executive Officer: Helen Oclee-Brown 07865 272 639 admin@international-brigades.org.uk www.international-brigades.org.uk Registered charity no.1094928
President Marlene Sidaway president@international-brigades.org.uk Chair Jim Jump chair@international-brigades.org.uk Secretary Megan Dobney secretary@international-brigades.org.uk Treasurer Paul Coles treasurer@international-brigades.org.uk Scotland Secretary Mike Arnott scotland@international-brigades.org.uk Wales Secretary David McKnight wales@international-brigades.org.uk Other Executive Committee members David Chanter, Alex Gordon, John Haywood, Jonathan Havard, Alan Lloyd, Dolores Long, Luke O’Riordan Founding Chair Professor Sir Paul Preston Patrons Professor Peter Crome, Professor Helen Graham, Ken Livingstone, Len McCluskey, Christy Moore, Jack O’Connor, Maxine Peake, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, Mick Whelan Historical Consultant Richard Baxell 4 ¡NO PASARÁN!
p Ian Byrne MP (left) with (from right) IBMT President Marlene Sidaway, IBMT Chair Jim Jump and IBMT Secretary Megan Dobney.
International Brigade Memorial Trust Republican Government against fascism of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler in the Spanish Civil War; recalls that 304 volunteers of around 2500 who served from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth were met at Victoria Station by Labour Party leader Clement Attlee MP; regrets the 530 deaths the British and Irish volunteers suffered; notes there are now over 100 memorials to volunteers across Britain and that they continue to increase in number; and celebrates the ongoing work of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, including through its work in schools, and through its close relationship with official governmental and civic society sister organisations in Spain, to keep the volunteers memory alive.
Plaques to the memory of South Wales miner and political activist Harry Dobson have been unveiled in Wales and Catalonia. At Tonypandy Library, a new plaque replaces one that was raised soon after Dobson’s death at the Battle of the Ebro in August 1938. The first plaque went missing after the original library was demolished in the 1990s. The event on 16 November was opened by Wendy Lewis, Mayor of Rhondda Cynon Taf. The plaque itself was unveiled by Dobson’s nephew, Ray Gleeson. On his way to Spain, Dobson survived the sinking of his ship, the Ciudad de Barcelona, which was torpedoed by an Italian submarine off the coast of Malgrat de Mar, north of Barcelona. On 23 September, a plaque for Dobson was unveiled in the municipal cemetery of La Bisbal de Falset, close to where he died at a field hospital sited in a cave on the side of a hill.
IBMT joins Madrid burial site protest The IBMT has written to Madrid Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida asking him to freeze plans to build a waste facility on top of a mass grave containing the remains of International Brigaders. The municipal authorities in Madrid, where the right-wing PP party is in power, want to install a large rubbish depot next to a wall of Fuencarral cemetery. The site is believed to be where the bodies of International Brigaders were dumped in 1941 after they were exhumed by the victorious Francoists. Sent in December, the letter from IBMT Chair Jim Jump asks the Madrid council to investigate the site before proceeding with any work. Among those buried there, according to records drafted in 1937, were some British volunteers, including Julian Bell, Samuel Walsh and Arnold ‘Gens’ [Jeans]. International protests are being coordinated
Parkin Photography
Two plaques for Harry Dobson
p At the IBMT’s 2023 AGM in Stockton, Elaine Hodgson holds a photo of her father, the Middlesbrough
volunteer Herbert Hodgson, on his Spanish military ID. by the Madrid-based Association of Friends of the International Brigades (AABI). The AABI is also in touch with Spain’s socialist government’s secretary of state for democratic memory. In addition, it is urgently trying to contact any relatives of the volunteers mentioned in the 1937 list. ‘It would help our efforts to preserve the memory and dignity of these Brigaders if we could prove that relatives opposed this terrible project,’ says AABI President Almudena Cros.
Stockton AGM re-elects five Trustees Five members of the IBMT’s Executive Committee were re-elected for another three-year term at the Trust’s Annual General Meeting in Stockton-on-Tees on 7 October. They are David Chanter and John Haywood (jobshare), Paul Coles, Alex Gordon and Jonathan Havard. Some 40 members attended the AGM in Stockton’s Georgian Theatre. They agreed to consider making future AGM ‘hybrid’ meetings, with attendance in person or online. The meeting
also agreed to explore the possibility of supporting a memorial to the International Brigades at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.
Historians put Spanish war in context The IBMT’s 2023 Len Crome Memorial Conference saw an online conversation between leading historians of the Spanish Civil War on the conflict being part of a wider European civil war going back to at least the First World War. Chaired by Richard Baxell on 11 November, the discussion between Helen Graham and Paul Preston charted the long roots of the Spanish Civil War. These extended to attempts to wipe out the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and also to double down on any socially levelling reform inside the developed industrial heartlands of Europe. The annual conference is named after Len Crome, born Lazar Krom in 1909 in Latvia, who was a GP in Blackburn in 1936 when he volunteered to go to Spain. He rose to the rank of major and headed the medical services of the 15th and 11th Brigades. ¡NO PASARÁN! 5
Your local IBMT affiliated memorial group Several independent locally based International Brigade memorial groups have sprung up around the country in recent years. The IBMT welcomes this development and supports their work. IBMT affiliation costs £30. You can affiliate through our website here: www.internationalbrigades.org.uk/membership. DIRECTORY l Aberdeen XV International Brigade Commemoration Committee Contact: Tommy Campbell tommy.campbell01@outlook.com l Belfast International Brigade Commemoration Committee Contact: Ernest and Lynda Walker lyndaernest@btinternet.com l IB Cymru Contact: Mary Greening ibcymru1937@gmail.com facebook.com/groups/314892162181123 l Hull International Brigades Memorial Group Contact: Gary Hammond thehutpeople@gmail.com
NEW YEAR MESSAGE s we enter our 22nd year as a registered charity, it’s worth looking at the solid foundations we’ve laid for the future. Our strength is in our members and Trustees representing Ireland, Scotland, Wales and many parts of England, who generously devote their time to the Trust. It’s gratifying that so many members are active within local affiliated groups, organising lectures and events to spread the history of the Brigaders – and, importantly, to raise money to help run the Trust. One of our main aims has always been to educate the public, especially younger people, about the Spanish Civil War. So we’re delighted that teaching aids are now available
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‘View our database with details of more than 2,000 volunteers who went to Spain.’ for Key Stage 3 pupils in England. Thanks go to IBMT Chair Jim Jump, Professor Peter Anderson and historian and teacher Alex Clifford for this feat. Speaking of education, on our website (www.international-brigades.org.uk), we host a digitised version of our ‘Antifascistas’ exhibition – the original exhibition is still available to hire. This was another of our achievements last year and one that I’m particularly proud of as I’ve been closely involved with managing the exhibition for some time. Also on the website, you can view our database with details of more than 2,000
volunteers who went to Spain. It is run by Alan Lloyd, the IBMT Archivist, who is one of our Trustees, and it’s an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to know more about the International Brigades. Last summer, we welcomed Helen Oclee-Brown as our new Executive Officer. She has taken on the job with great gusto, editing our publications and dealing with the mass of correspondence we receive. Helen works alongside Jim Jump, our Secretary Megan Dobney and our Treasurer Paul Coles who selflessly share their skills and knowledge to keep the IBMT running smoothly. Lastly, I was delighted that our 2023 Annual General Meeting was held in Stockton-on-Tees, my own birthplace. Sharon Bailey and her team from the Battle of Stockton Campaign arranged a brilliant weekend with several social events nearby. The door of The Golden Smog was always open, too; the pub’s landlord John Christie was instrumental in raising the memorial to the Stockton Brigaders on the wall in Wasp Nest Yard, close to the Georgian Theatre where the AGM and social were held. Lively discussions during the AGM covered many aspects of our work, including the possibility of holding future AGMs as hybrid meetings. Watch this space! All good wishes for 2024. I hope to meet many of you at events this year.
IBMT President Marlene Sidaway
l North West International Brigade Memorial Group Contact: Dolores Long doloreslong@fastmail.fm twitter.com/ibgtrmanchester l Oxford International Brigade Memorial Committee Contact: Colin Carritt colin.carritt@tiscali.co.uk l Sussex Brigaders Remembered Contact: Pauline Fraser pbf262@myphone.coop
International Brigade Memorial Trust www.international-brigades.org.uk 6 ¡NO PASARÁN!
p IBMT President Marlene Sidaway (second from left ) at the 2023 Burston Strike School Rally with IBMT
volunteer Beth Richards (left) and (from right ) IBMT Archivist Alan Llloyd and IBMT Secretary Megan Dobney.
Witnesses to an atrocity PAUL PRESTON describes how an ambulance crew of two Canadians and an Englishman rescued hundreds of refugee children and told the world about ‘the crime on the road Málaga-Almería’. Above and right: refugees fleeing from Málaga pictured by Hazen Sise. ASC Desbandá
he rebel conquest of Western Andalucía during the first nine months of the Spanish Civil War witnessed some of the worst atrocities committed during the entire conflict. The architect of the gratuitous cruelty was General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano. A poorly defended Málaga fell on Monday 8 February 1937. Two days before, tens of thousands of refugees had started to flee in terror via the only possible escape route, the 200-kilometre highway that ran from there to Almería. It has been estimated that more than 100,000 displaced people fled. Although it is impossible to know the exact number of victims, it is indubitable that they ran into many thousands. Franco’s battle cruisers Cervera, Almirante Cervera and Baleares moved slowly eastwards along the coast following the streams of refugees, stopping for concerted bombardments at Vélez-Málaga, then Río de la Miel at Nerja and then again at Motril. The defenceless refugees were also strafed from the air and then machine-gunned by the CONTINUED OVERLEAF
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WITNESSES TO AN ATROCITY FROM PREVIOUS PAGE Italian armoured units that were chasing them. That the humanitarian tragedy was not much greater was owed to a small number of volunteers who came together by chance. Indeed, much of what is known about the flight from Málaga to Almería, and more importantly the fact that there were not far more casualties, is thanks to superhuman efforts of the distinguished Canadian surgeon Norman Bethune and his two-man ambulance crew, the Canadian Hazen Sise and the Englishman TC Worsley. ethune was in Spain only for a short time, from the beginning of November 1936 to the end of May 1937. However, his contribution to the Republic’s Blood Transfusion Service was of monumental proportions. Bethune was an innovative thoracic surgeon, a committed Communist who was driven by compassion to help wholeheartedly those most in need. The Republican Health Service was dramatically short of equipment and supplies for blood transfusion, the lack of which seriously increased the high mortality rate among wounded soldiers. The Barcelona Blood Transfusion Service, under the direction of the pioneering Catalan doctor Frederic Duran i Jordà, had begun to solve the problem by dint of the following procedure: blood was collected from civilian donors and, after a conservation process, it was transported to front-line hospitals. Bethune created a similar service in Madrid. He obtained the support of the head of the health services of the International Brigades and the leaders of International Red Aid. Bethune travelled to Paris to buy equipment, refrigerators, microscopes and other medical materials and then he went on to London, where he bought a five-door Ford that was converted into an ambulance. By the end of December 1936, Bethune’s team was already giving the first blood transfusions in the Ciudad Universitaria. The service worked 24 hours a day. The team
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quickly became famous on the Madrid fronts and both doctors and wounded appreciated their work. The British medical unit, for example, had set up a small hospital in a centre in Villarejo de Salvanés. Dr Reginald Saxton, with the most basic knowledge of transfusion and very rudimentary utensils, was appointed as the team’s transfusionist. Without being able to count on local donors, all the medical personnel were giving their own blood to quite dangerous limits. Saxton was near despair when, he recalls, ‘like a fairy-godmother, came a Canadian doctor who appeared on the doorstep’. At first, the service supplied blood to all of Madrid’s 56 hospitals, but it was soon expanded to include 100 health facilities along the entire 1,000kilometre front. In Paris, Bethune acquired a heavy and unwieldy vehicle that, with a few changes, would be similar to the refrigerated trucks of the Barcelona Institute for transporting blood. At the General Motors factory in Barcelona, the anarcho-syndicalist workers of the CNT who had collectivised the factory provided all the necessary facilities to convert it into an ambulance. It would be in this ambulance that Bethune, his assistant Sise and his 29-year-old English driver, the aspiring novelist Thomas Cuthbert Worsley, would spend three days and three nights making hectic round trips back and forth on the road from Málaga to Almería. Worsley was the son of a distinguished but rather wayward clergyman from Durham. Usually known to friends as Cuthbert, a name
‘The refugees still fìlled the road, and the further we got the worse was the condition of the people. Most feet were bound round with rags, many were bare, nearly all were bleeding. It had become pitiful, tragic. There were seventy miles of people, desperate with hunger and exhaustion.’ 8 ¡NO PASARÁN!
that Bethune refused to use, calling him Tom instead, Worsley was educated at the public school, Marlborough College in Wiltshire, and at St John’s College, Cambridge University, where he read Classics and English Literature. After leaving Cambridge, he took up a post as a teacher of both subjects at another English public school, Wellington College in Crowthorne, Berkshire, from September 1929 until summer 1935. This brought him into contact with some left-wing students, particularly the brothers Giles and Esmond Romilly. Nephews of Winston Churchill, they both ran away from Wellington in 1934 and eventually volunteered in the International Brigades and fought in the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War was to have a profound effect on Worsley. Sympathising deeply with the Spanish Republic, he was anxious to contribute to its cause. However, as a pacifist, he did not wish to join the International Brigades and take up arms. While staying in the English countryside with a friend, he received a telephone call from another friend, the poet Stephen Spender, who abruptly said: ‘Are you doing anything now? Could you come away with me for about a
t A rare image of
TC Worsley on the cover of the Italian version of his memoir ‘Fellow Travellers’.
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u Norman Bethune in Spain during the civil war, standing beside an ambulance of the Canadian Blood Transfusion Service.
fortnight?’ Although Spender was coy about the purpose of the trip and the destination, Worsley had little doubt that this was the longed-for opportunity to travel to Spain. Spender had an ulterior motive, the hope of finding his former lover Tony Hyndman, a mutual friend. On the occasions when he came up to London, Worsley used to stay at Hyndman’s flat in Battersea. Worsley’s desire to see Spain was realised when he and his companion were able to reach Barcelona on 18 January 1937. A chance encounter between Sise, Spender and Worsley was followed a few days later by the two Englishmen meeting Norman Bethune. At their first meeting, Bethune proposed that Worsley join them as a driver. In Valencia, Bethune went to the International Red Aid headquarters where he met the prominent Italian Communists Vittorio Vidali and Tina Modotti, who were examining possible plans to deal with the difficult situation in the south. Vidali, who used the pseudonym of ‘Comandante Carlos Contreras’, had been one of the main inspirations behind the creation of the main Republican military unit, the Fifth Regiment. His partner was the photographer and actress
Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti, a friend of the Mexican painters Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Frida Kahlo. Vidali and Modotti informed Bethune that the rebel assault on Málaga had begun and that it would be too risky for his team to continue southwards. Bethune, Sise and Worsley decided to continue towards Málaga. hen they reached Almería at 5pm on 10 February, they found a starving city that had been flooded with tens of thousands of refugees and both bombed from the air and shelled from the sea. In the offices of the Civil Government, they were told emphatically that it would be too dangerous to continue. They ignored this advice and continued towards Málaga at six o’clock in the evening. After driving for 16 kilometres they came across ‘a strange procession’ of human beings and animals coming from Málaga. They stopped and Sise took some photos that would later become famous. They show the front of the caravan, not the terrifying avalanche that was following on behind. Sise later left his own graphic account: ‘Then we ran into this pathetic procession of people, first little
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crowds, then thicker and thicker.’ At first, Bethune was determined to press on but increasingly people in the throng were urging him to turn back to Almería.Finally, he gave in and decided that, seeing thousands of children on the road, they had no choice but to start trying to get as many as possible to Almería. They turned the lorry around and started to fill it with children. After the civil war, Worsley also produced a horrifying account of what he had seen: ‘We were winding back by the sea, the refugees still fìlled the road, and the further we got the worse was the condition of the people. A few of them were wearing rubber shoes, but most feet were bound round with rags, many were bare, nearly all were bleeding. Donkeys became scarcer and scarcer […] It had become pitiful, tragic. There were seventy miles of people, desperate with hunger and exhaustion, and still the stream showed no sign of diminishing.’ Of one of his later trips, on his own, Worsley later recorded the most harrowing scenes of the wounded and the dying, families torn apart, the victims of the terror on the road. He stopped the ambulance, tried to open the rear door and found himself: ‘the centre of a CONTINUED OVERLEAF ¡NO PASARÁN! 9
WITNESSES TO AN ATROCITY FROM PREVIOUS PAGE howling, crying mob, who clutched me, held up their children, imploring, beseeching, begging, and clung to the lorry’. He announced, via an interpreter, that he was taking only the children and the sick. ‘This produced another surging rush from the crowd, who were all sick and mostly had children.’ Worsley was tortured by impossible dilemmas. ‘From out of a house came a man carrying in his arms a little boy, unconscious with a high fever. “He’s dying,” the man said, “you must take him, you must. You can’t leave him here to die.” Tears were running down his brown wrinkled face; the mother followed, weeping, too; with a baby sucking at her breast, she looked at me dumbly, imploring.’ n Almería, at the Socorro Rojo hospital, the Communist militant Matilde Landa and ‘Tina’ Modotti took care of the children brought to them by Bethune, Sise and Worsley. Modotti later said to Vidali: ‘Truly an atrocious experience, even worse than Madrid. War is hateful, but this massacre of women, children and the elderly is the most horrible act.’ Of Bethune, she said: ‘He was wonderful, tireless. Instead of giving blood transfusions, he cared about saving children and saved hundreds of them.’ After having done all that they could for the refugees in Almería, Sise and Worsley
returned to Madrid, while Bethune went to Paris to purchase the additional transfusion equipment that was needed. On his return to Valencia, he wrote his moving first-hand account of the exodus from Málaga that would be published as the pamphlet ‘The Crime on the Road Málaga-Almería’. He also gathered
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foreign press to denounce to the world the ‘[Bethune] wrote his the tragic events he had witnessed. As he wrote in the pamphlet: ‘And now moving firsthand comes the final barbarism. Not content with account of the exodus bombing and shelling this procession of unarmed peasants on this long road, on the from Málaga that evening of the 12th when the little seaport of Almeria was completely filled with refugees, would be published its population swollen to double its size, when as the pamphlet ‘The 40,000 exhausted people had reached a haven of what they thought was safety, we were Crime on the Road heavily bombed by German and Italian fascist air planes. Málaga-Almería’. What Bethune did not say in his cry of outrage that when Sise was driving a load of He also gathered the refugeesisback to Almería, he and Worsley foreign press to walked among the refugees; and when Worsley drove, Bethune walked again, one denounce to the more exhausted body in the column of desperately tired and hungry people. world the tragic This is an edited version of a much longer events he had essay with footnotes by Paul Preston, titled witnessed.’ ‘Almería to Málaga – Witnesses to an atrocity’.
The long procession of refugees fleeing from Málaga pictured by Hazen Sise. 10 ¡NO PASARÁN!
It will be published in March by The Clapton Press in ‘Perfidious Albion. Britain and the Spanish Civil War’, a set of essays about various elements of British participation in the Spanish Civil War, benevolent and malevolent. Paul Preston’s latest book is ‘Architects of Terror: Paranoia, Conspiracy and Anti-Semitism in Franco’s Spain’ (2023).
NAVAL VOLUNTEERS
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u International Brigade
volunteers and Spanish crew members aboard the Alcalá Galiano in 1937. They include Liverpool volunteer Jack Coward (foreground, centre, with white hair).
The British sailors who fought for the Republic TONY FULLER and LEONIE PARKES draw on first-hand accounts to tell the story of the International Brigade volunteers who served in the Spanish navy between 1936 and 1938.
hile researching the involvement of Great Britain and the Royal Navy in Cartagena during the Spanish Civil War, we have been reading the recently published diary kept by the British Vice-Consul in Cartagena, William Leverkus, between 21 October 1936 and 3 August 1939.i Leverkus’s diary gives an excellent first-hand account of life in the town, illustrating what was often the grim reality of that period, though it also reflects his strong sense of duty and his droll sense of humour. The diary was written to be read by his family and friends and was never intended to be published. It is therefore an excellent and essentially honest, non-partisan source of the social history of Cartagena. It contains local and national information or rumours about the naval and military operations of the war. Used with more specific sources these will enable further research into, among other things, a little-known aspect of the history of the International Brigades. The first part of the diary covers the period from October 1936, broadly three months after the war
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started, to 23 April 1937, an important date as this was just a few days after the last British destroyer, HMS Gipsy, called at Cartagena. The British government was complying with the terms of the Nyon Agreement that had just come into effect; it resulted from weeks of behind-the-scenes activity among the major members of the Non-Intervention Committee (NIC) to prevent non-Spanish nations and their forces becoming active in Spain. The hypocrisy was, of course, that Germany, Italy and Russia were all members of the NIC and had agreed to its terms of reference, while at the same time sending every form of military equipment and, more importantly, troops and technical advisors to support both sides in the conflict. Agreeing Apart from agreeing that merchant shipping going into Spanish waters and ports should carry international observers, the terms divided the coastline of Spain into ‘spheres of influence’, each monitored by a member of NIC nations. CONTINUED OVERLEAF ¡NO PASARÁN! 11
NAVAL VOLUNTEERS FROM PREVIOUS PAGE Bizarrely, the coastline that included Cartagena, the home of the Republican navy, was part of the German sphere of influence, rather than being allocated to a neutral country like Britain or France. Equally bizarrely, from April 1937 to the end of the war, no German naval ship put into Cartagena, nor did the German and Republican navies engage in belligerent action against each other, though the German navy did stop and search merchant shipping from all nations inside Spanish waters. Although the military branches of the International Brigades were never based in Cartagena, many sources show injured and wounded volunteers in hospital both in Cartagena and Murcia. Inevitably, some of these volunteers were in contact with Leverkus. For example, some sought his support in ensuring letters were sent home on their behalf. Some, like David Wilson, had quickly become disillusioned with the reality of their situation and were looking to desert. Others, usually convalescing in the town, are just mentioned in passing. What has become clear from Leverkus’s diary and, more importantly, from the visiting Royal Navy’s weekly reports (Letters of Proceedings), which were sent back to the UK and Gibraltar, is that there was a small number of British International Brigade volunteers serving in the Republican fleet, which had its headquarters in Cartagena. There are almost 40 Letters of Proceedings available covering British ships in Cartagena from July 1936 to April 1937. Varying in length from a few pages to a substantial file, many of them contain information about bombing raids, the movement and description of material carried by commercial shipping, interactions with people of all nationalities while ashore and the interaction of naval personnel with William Leverkus and the British volunteers in the Republican Navy. Importantly, from a historian’s point of view, they help to identify some of the Republican sailors and give substance to what they did while in the Republican navy.ii Reported It was initially reported (Leverkus and Letters of Proceedings) that there were ‘about fifteen’ volunteers, several of whom had served in the British Royal Navy, though subsequent research shows that estimate may be high. Records contained in the IBMT database show that all British Republican naval personnel were registered as members of the International Brigade. A group of around 10 volunteers for the Republican navy assembled in Paris (with army volunteers) in late November 1936 before travelling to Albacete by train. One group of 50 was commanded by Geoffrey Marshall and Jack Coward, and another group of 50 12 ¡NO PASARÁN!
p Map of Cartagena naval base in July 1936.
by David Wilson. Despite some doubts about when they arrived in Spain, we believe the date to be 3 December 1936. Initially, they were all posted to torpedo boats, which prompted the former Royal Navy sailors immediately to ask for a meeting with the ‘Chief-Of-The-Fleet’. On 12 December 1936, it was agreed that the sailors with previous naval experience should immediately be transferred to a ‘fighting unit’. Several were transferred to the destroyer Alcalá
Galianoiii, which one of the volunteers, Thomas (Tommy) Hadwin, identified in his diary as being exactly the same as the British Vickers-built Hclass destroyers. This was not surprising as Spanish destroyers had been built under licence by Vickers through their jointly owned Spanish subsidiary, Sociedad Española de Construcciones Navales, SE & C. The transfer was a sensible decision as several had extensive Royal Navy and merchant marine experience, including battle experience in the First World War. Those not transferred to the Galiano stayed on torpedo boat PT-14. One volunteer, Dick Turner, transferred to another destroyer, the Escano, when Galiano went into dry-dock for long-term repairs in August 1937. There is also documentary evidence of Italian and Mexican volunteers serving in the Republican navy, though their involvement is outside the range of this study.
‘Importantly, from a historian’s point of view, they help to identify some of the Republican sailors and Book give substance to what In Michael Alpert’s recent book ‘The Spanish they did while in the Civil War At Sea’ he specifically mentions one volunteer identified by the Spanish Naval Historical Republican Navy.’ Service in their updated list of naval volunteers and iv
uInternational Brigade comrades including Geoffrey Norton Marshall (left) and Thomas Hadwin.
advisors published in 1963.v While the majority of people mentioned are Russian, one was identified as ‘T Hadivin,’ who was subsequently confirmed to be Thomas (Tommy) Edward Hadwin, whose brief war diary has already been mentioned.vi As previously stated, all the naval volunteers – who served in the ‘Marine Section’, an ad-hoc designation believed to be coined by Geoffrey Marshall – had extensive Royal Navy experience, and several were known to sailors from the various British destroyers that visited Cartagena. At least two of the volunteers knew each other from their home towns, having decided to join the fight together and then gone through the selection and joining process together. Another volunteer, David Wilson, whose interaction with William Leverkus and various Royal Navy personnel is extensively reported in the Letters of Proceedings, quickly became disillusioned and was repatriated within two months of arriving. John (Jack) William Coward eventually transferred to the land army, where he served with distinction throughout the war. He had been reported killed in action in early 1939 and his family were informed of his death, but he was very much alive and returned home in late
1939. Coward finally died in 1971. Albert Edward Cole, who had long experience in the British merchant marines, was appointed second-in-command of PT-14. None of the torpedo boats saw much service: they were long past their effective operational dates and their commanders even went as far as refusing to go to sea if they thought the sea too rough. Cole returned to England but quickly came back to Spain, where he joined the 129th International Brigade before commanding an anti-tank unit in the British Battalion. He was finally repatriated to the UK in December 1938. The most senior officer from the Marine Section was Geoffrey Norton Marshall. Initially appointed as navigation officer for the whole destroyer flotilla, he was soon promoted to captain of the more than 300 seamen on the Alcalá Galiano, where he served until mid-1938. He was detained in Barcelona while making his way back to the UK, accused of either being a Fascist spy or colluding with Nationalist forces. After spending three months in Montjuic prison in Barcelona, he was released and immediately repatriated. His subsequent life and government files on his activities indicate that he was a spy, but more
‘[Norton] was detained in Barcelona while making his way back to the UK, accused of either being a Fascist spy or colluding with Nationalist forces.’ likely for the British government. Within weeks of being released, he was working in Toulouse for a British Foreign Office cover organisation, running a group of intelligence operatives in Spain. After spending time working with and for MI5, the British secret service, in 1942 he transferred to the Special Operations Executive where, as Lieutenant George Nairn Mallard, RNVR, he was posted to North Africa as part of Operation Massingham. He was strictly forbidden to work in France or Spain, CONTINUED OVERLEAF ¡NO PASARÁN! 13
WILLIAM CARSON FROM PREVIOUS PAGE where he was too well-known and was already wanted for his spying activities, hence his cover identity. Actions None of the Marine Section was killed in naval actions, although one (John Steele) died in an accident in Albacete while being treated for severe alcohol addiction. All the other volunteers returned to the UK, though at different times. Interestingly, as the naval volunteers returned home, no replacements were found for them, their places being taken by Spanish recruits. Not only were there International Brigade volunteers on active duty in Cartagena, at any one time there would be a good number of British International Briagde volunteers and Royal Navy or merchant marine personnel in hospital in Cartagena and Murcia. At one time in early 1937, volunteers were telling Royal Navy personnel and Leverkus that there were around 500 British wounded International Brigade volunteers in Murcia’s four hospitals, another set of contacts extensively reported in the Royal Navy Letters of Proceedings. Indeed, so much general medical and hospital care was given to British merchant mariners that the Royal Navy proposed making a gift of medical supplies to the Naval Hospital in Cartagena. However, that was taken over by interdepartmental arguments about being seen to favour one side rather than the other; whether the gift should be from the Royal Navy or the merchant navy, and which department should have responsibility for paying for the gift. Sadly, the gift was never made because the civil war ended before a final decision could be made.vii i
Leverkus: The humanitarian efforts of a British Consul during the Spanish Civil War; introduction, Luis Miguel Pérez Adán; transcription, Antonio Cortiñas-Guntin; Ediciones Nova Spartaria, Cartagena, Spain, 2022. ii The Letters of Proceedings for all ships that operated in all Spanish waters from 1936-1939 are in the series ADM 116/3513 to ADM 116/3520, The National Archives, Kew, London. iii Details of the meeting are given in the autobiography and (incomplete) war diary of Thomas Edward Hadwin, held at the Marx Memorial Library, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU; reference SC/VOL/THA. iv ‘The Spanish Civil War At Sea: Dark and Dangerous Waters’, pp. 119, Pen and Sword Maritime Books, Yorkshire, 2021 v Alpert, op.cit., p.116, quoting Spanish archives help by the Servicio Histórico del Estado Mayor de la Armada. vi ‘Thomas (Tommy) Edward Hadwin: International Brigade Volunteer, December, 1936 to December, 1937’, (Dr Tony Fuller and Leonie Parkes, pp. 28 & 29, Royal British Legion, Spain District North Magazine, Edition 11, Winter, 2022. vii Reference: ADM 1/9949, (Admiralty Files), ‘Proposed Gift to Cartagena Naval Hospital by the British Government, April/May, 1939’, The National Archives, Kew, London.
14 ¡NO PASARÁN!
From fiction to family history NATALIE THORP shares how a chance conversation inspired her to research the life of her great-uncle. illiam Carson – or Uncle Bill as we called him – was, until recently, just a name in the IBMT database. Records showed only that he was from Stockton-on-Tees and was injured at Jamara. All his family knew was that he had signed up to fight in the Spanish Civil War and had been shot. This all changed last summer when, during a conversation, my mother said that ‘history is boring’. I suggested she read historical novels as they make history come alive and, out of all the books I could have picked, I mentioned ‘Winter in Madrid’ (a love story set in the Spanish Civil War by CJ Samson). ‘Oh’, she said, ‘My uncle Bill fought in that.’ That was the start of a steep learning curve for me: over the last few months, I have learnt so much about the politics of the time, the war and the volunteers, largely due to the help of IBMT Archivist Alan Lloyd, historian Tony Fox, my mum, and Bill’s son Kit. I googled Bill and found that not only was he on the IBMT database, but he was named on a memorial in Stockton. We were devastated to find out that we had missed the dedication of this memorial, just months earlier.
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Research My research on the MI5 and the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History files and on family trees revealed the following incredible historical account. Bill was born in 1904 in a poor area of Stockton;
his father worked in the local steel mill. His paternal grandparents emigrated to North America before he was born. His maternal grandfather, an illiterate steelworker, was born in Ireland during the potato famine, came to England and died when Bill was 18. I suspect that this family history had a great effect on Bill’s political views. Bill signed up to fight in Spain in January 1937. MI5 records show that he was working in London in 1936, so he must have gone straight to King Street, London, for his first recruitment interview with the Communist Party, before signing up with the Brigades in Paris. Exactly why and how he was accepted has still to be discovered as he had no military experience and was not a Communist Party member. An MI5 file reports him as being in ‘a party of men of rough type’ all travelling to Calais and on to Paris on weekend tickets: ‘From the appearance and demeanour of these men it is reasonable to assume that they are prospective recruits for military service in Spain.’ Unfortunately, only two weeks after arriving in Spain, on 20 February, Bill was shot through the shoulder while at the Jarama front. The British Battalion notebook recorded him as having been a clerk; he was not assigned to any particular military duty, but several other men who arrived the same day as him were killed at the Battle of Jamara, so we can only assume that the situation was so desperate that he was sent to the trenches almost immediately on arrival. He stayed in the
‘Exactly why and how he was accepted has still to be discovered as he had no military experience and was not a Communist Party member. An MI5 file reports him as being in “a party of men of rough type”.’
International Brigade Memorial Trust
Gota de Leche hospital in Spain until July 1937. On Bill’s return home on 21 July 1937, he was interviewed by Special Branch, where he said that there was ‘great discontentment amongst the Britishers’ and that many were following his example and returning while there was still a chance. However, the injury and the horrendous fighting conditions in Spain did not dampen Bill’s political beliefs. Settled He settled in London, staying at a boarding house run by a Russian immigrant called Leah Brina Malnick (known as Lena). It was here that he met my great-aunt Sally, and they married in August 1940. Sally was an active Communist Party member throughout the 1920s and 30s and was on the reception committee for the National Hunger March of 1932. Bill himself became a party member in 1946, and he and Sally were under surveillance for approximately 20 more years: monitored in their places of work to ensure they did not have access to politically sensitive information. Even as late as 1960, Bill was being watched, as authorites suspected he might be approached to be
p William Carson (above) in 1950, 13 years after
arriving back from Spain. u Natalie Thorp (right) speaking during the 2023
AGM weekend in front of the memorial in Stockton-on-Tees in honour of her great-uncle and the other local volunteers.
‘A shifty individual, who is often unshaven and has been described as a typical communist. ’
a member of the new underground communist movement. ‘A shifty individual, who is often unshaven and has been described as a typical communist. Sells the Daily Worker’ was how they described the loving father who had worked in the civil service and a bank and whose face cracked up when he heard a good joke. I attended the IBMT’s AGM in October 2023 and was struck by how helpful and kind the volunteers’ descendants were and how dedicated they and the historians are to maintaining the memory of those who fought against fascism. They have helped me so much with finding out about what happened to Bill and I am glad I was able to supply them with more personal information on him. My goal now is to try to discover more about Bill and Sally’s lives; they kept their politics private from the children to avoid them being stigmatised, so I will use the MI5 files as a starting point to discover who they worked with, what they did and how they stood up for their beliefsd in a time of politcal unrest. The files are lengthy, and in some places coded, so it will be an enormous task. I am not sure how to start, but I will persevere to ensure their ideals are not forgotten. ¡NO PASARÁN! 15
KILLINGS BEHIND THE LINES
Miss Walker of Coventry and the thorny question of the ‘Red Terror’
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hile doing some further research about
Novelist DAVID EBSWORTH reflects on the violence the War Routes of Northern Spain – Franco’s propaganda strategy to bring in committed in the Spanish Civil War after coming tourists while the Spanish Civil War still raged – I came across an account of a Coventry school across a memorial in Santander to victims of teacher (and Franco supporter), Miss Walker, Republican supporters. ‘spreading the word’ about the Nationalists’ side Monument in Santander to the Francoists thrown into the sea.
of the story to a meeting of her local Soroptimist Club. Here’s part of what she said: That night we spent in the Hotel Real at Santander, the summer resort of the Court. Espina’s last book records how 200 men were thrown alive with weights on their feet from the Lighthouse Rock, into the sea sheer below, by the enemy. Today a young soldier was playing with a child in the sunny doorway. She’d not long returned from one of those battlefield propaganda tours, the Rutas de Guerra, and she’s repeating the story told in fascist author Concha Espina’s ‘Retaguardia’, and presumably recounted for the tour group also by their Falangist guide as an illustration of the ‘Red Terror’ – atrocities allegedly committed by the forces of the Republic. It’s an incident very typical of the ‘scripts’ used by the tour guides and then repeated by the tourists themselves when they returned from their trips and spread the word about the importance of Franco’s ‘crusade’. Later, a monument was erected to commemorate the Falangist martyrs in question. And, while I’ve been writing the first draft for my own modern guidebook to the War Route Tours, it’s highlighted again perhaps the most difficult aspect of the Spanish Civil War in most contexts – how to deal with the thorny question of this Red Terror. t’s easy enough to write about the atrocities committed by Franco’s forces and Falangist death squads. There had been the instruction issued to supporters by one of the other rebel generals weeks before the military coup even began – an instruction to eliminate left-wing elements, communists, anarchists, union members etc. And the slaughter committed by Franco went on long, long after the actual war itself had ended in 1939. The Popular Front Republican government at least tried – though not always successfully – to end extra-judicial killings, whereas, for the Nationalists, they remained a matter of policy. And indeed, these instructions were followed
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International Brigade Memorial Trust
p Original English language War Route brochure from around 1940.
literally in the opening moments of the insurrection when rebel Moroccan troops in Melilla rounded up and executed innocent civilians. Word spread. It spread quickly. In areas where the coup was successful, like Navarra, Paul Preston (in ‘The Spanish Holocaust’) reminds us that there was no Republican violence at all, but a substantiated figure of 3,280 people assassinated by the rebels. Word spread further. And in areas where the coup had failed, like Asturias, Vizcaya and Cantabria – so, yes, in Santander – the authorities and individuals wreaked revenge on the rightwing supporters they thought responsible for the rebellion. Spanish Civil War correspondent John Langdon-Davies recounted that, yes, there were atrocities on both sides during the early part of the war. But these were largely ‘random’ killings by terrified mobs. And then, Paul Preston again, reminds us that in one German bombing raid on Santander alone, 47 women, 11 children and 9 men were killed, causing a ‘vengeful crowd’ to kill 156 imprisoned army officers, right-wing militants and priests; indeed priests. He makes the point that a ‘focus on numbers of fatal victims… misses the wider issue of the daily violence of grinding poverty and social abuse’. There was a clear understanding, first, that the Catholic Church and its priests were often
apologists both for that poverty and social abuse and largely responsible for the rebellion itself. Images of priests sporting bandoliers of bullets and preaching insurrection from the pulpit – or standing at mass gravesides to bless the killers – were only ever going to put them in the same category as other political plotters and insurrectionists. And ‘The Spanish Holocaust’ cites many, many testimonies (usually from Francoist supporters) of the rabid priests with blood on their own hands. ater, Miss Walker talked about some of the War Route tour beyond Santander itself, further along the coast to the west. We’ve already mentioned Asturias – a beautiful region of Spain, with the highest ranges of European mountains apart from the Alps. These are her words: From Covadonga we went on to Oviedo, the martyred city. In the miners’ rebellion of 1934 the dynamiters had entered through a sacrist’s close to the lovely ninth century Cámara Santa and blown it up, leaving a great hole in the Cathedral roof. She doesn’t seem to have bothered saying much more about the events of 1934, but they are hugely relevant to the rest of the story of Spain’s civil war. Revolutionary strikes among Asturian miners soon turned to violence and armed conflict, and there’s no doubt that much of
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‘The Popular Front government at least tried to end extra-judicial killings, whereas, for the Nationalists, they remained a matter of policy.’
the violence against churches, priests, businessmen and supporters of the Falange was bloody and mindless. Over 100 members of the Guardia Civil and 33 clergymen were summarily executed, along with some other individuals. But then came the revenge. Twenty thousand Moroccan troops from the Army of Africa under the command of Franco and General Yagüe were unleashed against the miners. Hundreds of deaths occurred in the fighting on both sides but the eventual outcome was inevitable. In the repression that followed, an estimated 200 strikers were summarily executed but there were many more reported incidents of torture, rape and mutilation perpetrated by the Moroccan soldiers. Less than two years later came the military coup – this time a rebellion led by generals like Franco and Yagüe. The images of 1934 on each side were powerful. For the right, the nightmare of armed workers exacting summary revenge on their old enemies. For the left, the sure knowledge of the savagery which would befall them in a repeat of the 1934 repression. But in most of Asturias the coup was a failure. Except in two places – at the Simancas barracks in Gijón and in the city of Oviedo itself, defended by right-wing Colonel Antonio Aranda. Here’s starry-eyed Miss Walker again: The story of the defence of Oviedo was told to us by one of the defenders – a ‘Laureado’. The highest military order in Spain is the laurel wreath Cross of San Fernando. Of Oviedo’s 70,000 inhabitants, only 20,000 remain. Whole streets of houses are mere shells, the churches all destroyed, while the hospital received thousands of shells one night. The CONTINUED OVERLEAF ¡NO PASARÁN! 17
RED TERROR
Civil Guards round up rebellious Asturians in 1934. FROM PREVIOUS PAGE soldiers only ask you to admire the courage of the women and children who carried on. She was once more a little short on detail. Both Oviedo and the Simancas barracks were besieged by workers’ militiamen, mostly miners again. But then rebel ships and bombers attacked civilian targets in the rest of the city, killing many innocent women and children. A militant anarchist mob took revenge, as at Santander, by executing right-wing prisoners including priests. The barracks were eventually overrun and the garrison killed. And the other side of Oviedo’s story? Colonel Aranda had taken hundreds of ‘hostages’ and many of these disappeared forever. Falangist death squads hunted down and slaughtered ‘leftists’. Prisoners were used as human shields. And then a rebel relief column marched towards Oviedo from Galicia. Terrible punishment was wreaked on Republican forces they encountered along the way. The relief column arrived in Oviedo and lifted the siege in October 1936 and Paul Preston details the 370 prisoners immediately taken and executed without a trial. He goes on to set some further context to the violence. ‘In the course of the war in Asturias,’ he says, ‘around two thousand rightist prisoners were murdered. The rebels’ revenge when Asturias was occupied saw them kill nearly six thousand Republicans.’ And again, these killings by the rebels were very much ‘institutional’. But, of course, Miss Walker would not have been told any of that – and nor, I suspect, would she have cared very 18 ¡NO PASARÁN!
much. The reason that only 20,000 of Oviedo’s population remained in the city was that the rest had fled before the rebels’ advance, many of them remembering what had happened in 1934.
‘Hundreds of “hostages” disappeared forever. Falangist death squads hunted down and slaughtered “leftists”. Prisoners were used as human shields. ’ By the time she arrived in the city late in 1938, according to Paul Preston’s research, perhaps as many as two thousand had been slaughtered there alone. And the irony? Preston records that ‘at least twenty schoolteachers were shot and many more were imprisoned’. he institutionalised violence perpetrated by the Nationalists would, of course, go on and on. But Miss Walker – perhaps recalling the luxury of her room in Oviedo’s Nuevo Hotel Pasaje – finished her account on a cheerier note:
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In earlier days it was said that the workers of Spain went hungry to bed every night. Today no one is hungry in National Spain; there is plenty of food, good and cheap, the bread the little ones had was the same quality as that served to us in the great hotel. Of course, the victims of violence – right and left – in Oviedo, and elsewhere along Spain’s northern coast, may have had an entirely different view of things. Is such violence inexcusable, regardless of which side the perpetrators may have been on? Of course. But that’s easy to write and say with hindsight, and from the perspective of my own comfortable life all these many years afterwards. It was brutal, and hard to reconcile with the wonderful nature of the Spanish people – the majority of them, anyhow – we know today. But that is war, humanity’s affliction. I did my very best to discover what had happened later to Miss Walker but without much success – only an account of a schoolteacher, now married, but with the maiden name Walker, who died in one of the many German bombing raids during the Coventry Blitz. The same person? I don’t know – but, if so, it would perhaps have been yet one more irony. David Ebsworth is the author of the acclaimed Jack Telford trilogy of novels centred on the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath: ‘The Assassin’s Mark’, ‘Until the Curtain Falls’ and ‘A Betrayal of Heroes’. A shorter version of this piece appeared on his blog (www.davidebsworth.com).
BOOKS
International Brigade Memorial Trust
Tales of extraordinary people ‘Forged in Spain’ by Richard Baxell (Clapton Press, 2023).
xtraordinary people’ is Richard Baxell’s term for the subjects profiled in his new book, all of whom left Britain for Spain during the civil war. His biographical approach puts their civil war experience into the context of the rest of their lives. As the title indicates, all were ‘forged in Spain’: since all survived the experience, we gain an understanding of the impact of the war on their later careers. One of them, at least, will be familiar to many readers of ¡No pasarán!: Sam Lesser, founder member of the IBMT who became its Chair in 2006. In selecting his subjects, Baxell has steered clear of the usual list of writers and artists. Although, understandably, a majority fought in the International Brigades, a number of his subjects did not. The Brigaders themselves illustrate the diverse range of British volunteers: Malcolm Dunbar, who became the senior British officer in the XV International Brigade; Peter Kerrigan, the working-class Glaswegian who became the senior British Political Commissar; Sam Lesser, who as Sam Russell became a Daily Worker correspondent after fighting in the defence of Madrid; the doctor Alex Tudor-Hart; the artist Clive Branson, who was captured by Francoist forces and imprisoned in San Pedro de Cardeña and Palencia before being exchanged; Alexander Foote, who deserted from the RAF and served as a driver in Spain. The others add breadth to the story: the trade union official and Labour MP, Leah Manning, who – after witnessing the brutal
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aftermath of the military repression of the 1934 miner’s rebellion in Asturias – played a major role in the evacuation of 4,000 Basque children to Britain in 1937; Stafford Cottman who fought in the POUM militia, but whose story has been overshadowed by that of Orwell; Peter Kemp, one of the few British volunteers in Franco’s forces; Charlotte Haldane, responsible in Paris for the reception and despatch of British volunteers to Republican Spain, as well as her husband, the famous scientist JBS Haldane, who used his fame to rally support for the Republican cause. The biographies illustrate accounts of the broader movement in Britain in support of Spain. Understandably the early lives of his subjects shed light on the class divisions of interwar Britain, seen most obviously in their contrasting social and educational backgrounds – between, for example, the Cambridge graduates Dunbar, Tudor-Hart and Kemp and the working-class Kerrigan and Lesser. hough Baxell describes his subjects as ‘extraordinary’, they are not presented as flawless. His account identifies both their strengths and weaknesses and clearly several were experienced as difficult characters by their colleagues in Spain. His use of British intelligence archives for some of the biographies provides added detail and indicates the level of interest taken in the volunteers during the war – with Special Branch officers at Newhaven, for example, noting arrivals and departures – and afterwards. Their interest was understandable: in 1939 Foote became a Soviet agent based in Switzerland forwarding intelligence from dissidents in Germany to Moscow by radio. Baxell, however, dismisses MI5’s suspicions about Tudor-Hart but points out that they missed the importance of his second wife, Edith Suschitzky, who had
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‘His use of British intelligence provides added detail and indicates the level of interest taken in the volunteers during the war – with Special Branch officers at Newhaven, noting arrivals and departures – and afterwards.’
played a key role in the recruitment of Kim Philby. It is usually argued that Brigaders were marginalised by the armed forces after the outbreak of the Second World War. Baxell indicates not only that they were kept under observation, but that Dunbar and TudorHart’s careers were affected. However, several performed important roles, particularly after the Soviet entry into the war in 1941. Dunbar fought in Normandy and Branson in Burma, where he was killed in 1944. Tudor-Hart was eventually accepted by the army and served as a surgeon in the Middle East and Yugoslavia. Cottman became a rear gunner in the RAF. The later lives of Baxell’s subjects are equally fascinating. Lesser, Daily Worker (later Morning Star) correspondent famously interviewed ‘Che’ Guevara in Havana soon after the 1962 Missile Crisis. Kemp also became an occasional journalist, covering trouble spots across the globe for the News of the World and Daily Telegraph. Manning returned to parliament as a Labour Richard Baxell. MP between 1945 and 1950 and Cottman worked in air-traffic control at Heathrow airport. Those who were members of the Communist Party provided insights into its post-war evolution. Kerrigan, the party’s National Industrial Organiser, and Lesser were clearly at the heart of the party. Others parted company at different times: Charlotte Haldane in 1941 after living in the USSR as a journalist; her husband in the early 1950s; Tudor-Hart expelled in the 1960s for ‘Maoism’. This is a book that should be of great interest to many readers of ¡No pasarán! The author rightly points out that the involvement of the volunteers in Spain is usually passed over as a footnote in British history. It is to be hoped that ‘Forged in Spain’ will help rectify this situation. CHARLIE NURSE ¡NO PASARÁN! 19
BOOKS ‘British Battles of the Spanish Civil War: Fighting Franco’ by Charles Esdaile, (Pen and Sword, 2023).
Battle history betrays
harles Esdaile is an academic military historian based at Liverpool University. His latest book concentrates on the battles fought by the British Battalion of the International Brigades. His stated aim is to ‘debunk’ the ‘myth’ that the International Brigades were elite troops, arguing throughout the book that the International Brigades were no better than other Republican troops. Esdaile makes three assertions to support his aim. First, that the Nationalists exaggerated the importance of the International Brigades to show the influence of Communists over the Republic. Second, that the Republican portrayal of the International Brigades as antifascist crusaders come to defend democracy is false. Third, that the surviving International Brigaders exaggerated the role they played and the sacrifices they made. Before critiquing Esdaile’s thesis and arguments, I will look at the positive aspects of
the book that I found informative. His description of each battle is excellent: clear, easy to understand and detailed with good supporting maps. His descriptions of the British Battalion in action are not particularly controversial, but his conclusions are contentious. The book starts with a discussion of previous histories of the International Brigades and the British Battalion. Esdaile claims that most accounts are non-critical eulogies of the International Brigades. While many such works exist, most modern accounts portray the International Brigades in a more nuanced way. Many modern authors admit that not all British Battalion members were heroes and there were, on occasions, incidents of desertion, ill-discipline and poor leadership at the highest level. Esdaile is complimentary about Richard Baxell’s book ‘Unlikely Warriors’, although he criticises Baxell for lack
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‘Esdaile uses the phrase “International Brigades heroicised” about the memorials to the International Brigades. I wonder, would he use such words about the Cenotaph or Menin Gate?’
of focus on the battles. Esdaile presents himself as an unbiased academic; however, in my view, some of his comments betray his bias. In chapter one, he approvingly quotes Edward Hooton’s ‘Spain in Arms’ where the International Brigades are described as ‘one of the most cynical publicity stunts since the Children’s Crusade’. In this chapter, Esdaile uses the phrase ‘International Brigades heroicised’ about the memorials in London to the International Brigades and the Iron Fist statue at Jarama. I wonder, would he use such words abut the Cenotaph or Menin Gate? More problematic to me was his refusal to equate the Nationalist uprising with fascism, suggesting that the rising was to prevent revolution and or social change. To me, this sounds like a version of the propaganda put out by the rebels: that they rose to prevent a Communist takeover. Esdaile’s accounts of the battles are detailed and easy to follow; the only time I found a problem was when he briefly mixes up the actions at Belchite and Quinto. Esdaile suggests that after Brunete the British Battalion was a mere shadow of itself. His claim that the British Battalion was often tenacious in defence but often poor and even reluctant to attack is possibly correct, and he points to the high losses among the officers and commissars to support this view.
‘Tomorrow Perhaps the Future’ by Sarah Watling (Penguin Random House, 2023).
Of writers and rebels
uthor Sarah Watling expresses disquiet at the threat of right-wing extremism in Europe today in her introduction to ‘Tomorrow Perhaps the Future’. The links between the current threats to roll back democracy and the fascism engulfing Europe and further afield in the 1930s are all too clear. The author examines what the dozen writers whose stories occupy this book chose to do, and what their insights bring to the story of the war in Spain: how and why writers took sides, and whether they were able to distance themselves from the suffering and chaos they witnessed. Perhaps their choices may give those writing today clues as to what path to follow. Watling describes her work as ‘a book about a cluster of people I was drawn to sometime ago
now: individuals, most of them writers, for whom the Spanish war and its challenges never lost their force’. Most of her subjects are women, although Langston Hughes, friend of Nancy Cunard, makes several appearances.
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The introductory chapters provide background on her subjects in the years immediately preceding 1936. I was riveted by the account of Josephine Herbst’s dangerous quest to make contact with the Cuban underground in 1935 during Batista’s first presidency and then tackle an equally perilous journey to Nazi Germany.
‘I was riveted by the account of alaria Kea, the only African American nurse to serve in Spain, ‘raised money to send Josephine Herbst’s medical supplies’ to the beleaguered country dangerous quest to [Ethiopia]; she even hoped to volunteer her skills there, though this soon proved contact the Cuban medical impossible’. Nancy Cunard ‘picked a side in the Ethiopian underground war too’, reporting from the League of Nations in Geneva for the Associated Negro Press in Chicago. in 1935.’
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International Brigade Memorial Trust
u Members Esdaile goes on to try and ‘debunk’ the so-called ‘myths’ about the British Battalion. He of the XV dismisses the story of the troops at Jarama who Brigade marching at made a stand on the third day and sang ‘The Brunete in the Internationale’; but for a mainly Communist summer of force, would not this have raised morale? 1937. His claim that the Nationalists could have beaten the British Battalion but did not attack again because they were on the edge of the overall offensive might be correct, although equally they could have been exhausted by their heavy losses. Only in his notes about Brunete does Esdaile mention the incident at Villanueva de la Cañada when the last of the Nationalist Garrison broke out with civilians, stating that this incident was exaggerated or never happened. The incident is well documented but was probably embellished in the telling. He states that Pulburrel Hill and Hill 666 were not fortified, with little evidence to support this view. He strongly criticises the performance of the British Battalion when on the offensive, but also mentions they never got time to adequately recover between battles. Esdaile’s book makes several controversial assertions about the British Battalion, several of which I disagree with, but overall, it is worth reading as a military account of the British Battalion in Spain. CHRISTOPHER HALL
Marx Memorial Library
author’s bias
‘Dipping in and out of the narrative of the war as seen by the writers, to give background, impeded the flow of the story.’
p Salaria Kea, the only African American nurse
to serve in Spain, pictured in March 1937.
Watling’s method is to group together writers who were in Spain at roughly the same time. While there’s some chronology here, she then takes us back in time to explore, for example, the lives of lesbian lovers Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland. This is followed by an account of Nancy Cunard’s reporting of the Battle for Madrid and then a chapter on her earlier life and engagement with the struggles of African Americans.
So it goes on, introducing several other participants in Spain’s struggle and how their careers and convictions led them to Spain. ‘Writing this book, I claimed the freedom to pick up each life story that seemed relevant and put it down when it went beyond where I needed to go’, states Watling. Personally, I would rather have read the background to each writer’s life before the narrative of their time in Spain. Dipping in and out of the narrative of the war as seen by the writers, to give background, impeded the flow of the story. So I picked out the story of Salaria Kea and leafed through the book to follow her through the various sections into which Watling had placed it. Even in Spain, where Salaria might have expected to be treated as an equal, the racism of the southern United States dogged her career. It is on Salaria that I think Sarah Watling produced some of her own best writing, fired up as it were by her subject. PAULINE FRASER ¡NO PASARÁN! 21
International Brigade Memorial Trust
Parkin Photography
Parkin Photography
FINAL WORD
t Joe Solo, musician, writer and activist,
p Anne McShane remembers her father, Juan
performing at the AGM on stage at the Georgian Theatre in Stockton-on-Tees.
Díaz, who helped evacuate Basque refugees during the Spanish Civil War.
Global greetings Messages of solidarity sent by IBMT’s sister organisations to the Trust’s Annual General Meeting in October KFSR – Kämpfer und Freunde der Spanischen Republik We, the members of the association Fighters and Friends of the Spanish Republic (KFSR) are sending you warm greetings on the occasion of your 2023 annual meeting. We are with you in our thoughts and thus express our respect for the comrades who fought and fell in Spain. Without the work of our international partner organisations, many people today would not know that more than 40,000 men and women opposed their own governments and rushed to help the Spanish Republic in the fight against the fascist aggressor. A few years ago, the KFSR began to document the origins and history of all the battalions of the International Brigades to be prepared historically and visually for an overall exhibition. We have made a start in 2023, together with our Italian friends of the XII International Brigade.
‘Our remembrance should not only be about the dead, but especially today about the living.’ 22 ¡NO PASARÁN!
Let us always remember what we do in our organisations to preserve and keep alive the history of the International Brigades is to ensure their example of anti-fascism and international solidarity is not only remembered by us but also passed on to future generations. Our remembrance should not only be about the dead, but especially today about the living. Let’s join forces for this. Never again fascism, never again war! ¡Salud!
AABI – Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales We send you our fraternal greetings from Spain. The working class understood very clearly back then who was the oppressed and who was the oppressor, and they did not hesitate to drop their working tools in the factories and dockyards to take up weapons as tools in the fight against Fascism. As we know, many of them left their blood and their lives on Spanish soil. Many survived, and they never forgot their unshakable commitment to defend freedom and democracy. It is our shared mission to pay tribute to these anti-fascist heroes and heroines. Beyond frontiers, and despite the linguistic borders, these men and women offered
one of the most glorious examples of the generosity that human beings are capable of. Thank you, IBMT members, for your continued support of our shared cause.
ALBA – Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives ALBA brings you greetings on the occasion of your AGM being held this weekend. We applaud your ongoing work to honor and disseminate the legacy of the anti-fascism of the Fifteenth Brigade, of which the Lincoln Battalion was a part. In an unprecedented act of working-class solidarity, they joined with people from 53 countries to defend the legal, democratically elected government of Spain against the onslaught of world fascism. Your important work helps to inspire the next generation to continue the struggle to realize the still relevant goals and social visions of the Spanish Republic and the International Brigades. As the growing threat of fascism confronts us once again, ALBA and the IBMT’s efforts to make this important history more widely known, provides us with role models – these heroes who were guided by altruistic motives to put their lives on the line for a more just and a better world. ¡La lucha continúa!
‘Your important work helps inspire the next generation to continue the struggle.’
The IBMT shop Proceeds help fund the commemorative, educational and publicity work of the International Brigade Memorial Trust. Free postage & packing on goods totalling £30 or more for orders within the UK and Europe. Send orders, including your name and address, a size and colour where appropriate, and a cheque payable to the IBMT to: IBMT Merchandise, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU. For multiple orders in the UK up to a value of £30 (excluding p&p) calculate total p&p by taking the highest p&p among items ordered, halving the p&p of the remaining items and adding them together. For orders outside the UK or to pay by credit card or PayPal, go to the merchandise page on our website: (www.internationalbrigades.org.uk/ catalog) where there are also other items listed for sale.
Spanish Civil War postcards: Collection of 20 cards based on designs originally made in 1937 by the Sindicat de Dibuixants Professionals. Produced in collaboration with art reproduction specialists Past Pixels. £12 plus £3 p&p.
British Battalion t-shirt: Based on the original British Battalion banner brought back from Spain towards the end of the Spanish Civil War. Design comes in full colour or monochrome. Produced by merchandise specialists Red Molotov. Available in sizes: XXL, XL, L, M, S £20 plus £3 p&p.
Felicia Browne t-shirt: A tribute to the women who volunteered to support the cause of anti-fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Based on a sketch of a militiawoman by Felicia Browne, a British artist who was herself a militiawoman in Spain. Produced by merchandise specialists Red Molotov. Available in sizes: XXL, XL, L, M, S £20 plus £3 p&p.
Scotland International Brigade tote bag: This tote bag remembers the 549 Scottish volunteers who fought fascism in Spain. Produced by radical merchandise specialists Red Molotov. £11 plus £3 p&p.
Ireland International Brigade tote bag: This tote bag combines the Spanish Republic’s flag and the starry plough of the Irish Citizen Army. Produced by radical merchandise specialists Red Molotov. £11 plus £3 p&p.
Wales International Brigade tote bag: Celebrate the 184 volunteers from Wales who fought fascism in Spain with this tote bag. Produced by radical merchandise specialists Red Molotov. £11 plus £3 p&p.
Tin-plated badge: With three-pointed red star of the International Brigades and the background in the colours of Republican Spain. 2.5cms diameter. £2 plus £3 p&p.
International Brigades greetings cards: Featuring five different pieces of International Brigade-themed artwork. Produced in collaboration with art reproduction specialists Past Pixels. 10 cards and envelopes per pack. £10 plus £3 p&p.
Jarama Valley/Brigadista Reprise CD single: Billy Bragg performs the famous song of the British Battalion, plus Maxine Peake delivers La Pasionaria's emotional farewell speech to the International Brigades with a dub backing from The Urban Roots. £6 plus £3 p&p.
Tote bags: High quality cotton canvas tote bag with designs based on the British Battalion banner, the International Brigade emblem or celebrating Irish, Scottish or Welsh volunteers (see designs of the respective t-shirts). Available in a range of colours. Produced in collaboration with Red Molotov. 38 x 42cms. £11 each plus £3 p&p.
International Brigades mug: 2,500 volunteers from Britain and Ireland joined the legendary International Brigades to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War. This quality ceramic mug features the emblem they wore with pride. Produced by radical merchandise specialists Red Molotov for the IBMT. £9 plus £3 p&p.
British Battalion mug: This quality ceramic mug features a design based on the original British Battalion banner brought back from Spain towards the end of the Spanish Civil War. Produced by radical merchandise specialists Red Molotov for the IBMT. £9 plus £3 p&p.
INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE MEMORIAL TRUST Help us inspire new generations with the story of the men and women who fought fascism and defended democracy in Spain from 1936-1939. International Brigade Memorial Trust 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU 07865 272 639 admin@international-brigades.org.uk www.international-brigades.org.uk
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¡No pasarán! They shall not pass!