The last volunteer
In the Sky News studio talking about the former International Brigader, Geoffrey Servante, who died on 22 April 2019, aged 99. He was almost certainly the last surviving British veteran of the Spanish Civil War.
Forthcoming events...
2023
Saturday 15 April, The Len Crome Memorial Conference. Full details to follow.
Saturday 1 July, IBMT annual commemoration at Jubilee Gardens in London.
Review of Sarah Watling’s Tomorrow Perhaps the Future
‘We English,’ Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin allegedly remarked, following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, ‘hate fascism, but we loathe bolshevism as much. So, if there is somewhere where fascists and bolsheviks can kill each other off, so much the better.’ Initially, many in Britain probably agreed with Baldwin’s comment, seeing no reason to be drawn into another country’s civil war. However, a sizeable minority saw things very differently, believing that the conflict was not just a civil war, but part of an ongoing struggle between democracy and fascism. To them Spain became a rallying cry and over the course of the war many thousands of people from around the world volunteered to go. The majority fought in the Communist controlled International Brigades, but others went to report on the conflict, as part of ‘fact-finding missions’ or simply to show their support for the Spanish government’s cause …
My review of Sarah Watling‘s study of ‘writers and rebels’ in the Spanish Civil War appears in The Spectator.
Chris Farman 1937-2020
On 10 June 2017 a memorial to volunteers for the Spanish Civil War from Oxfordshire was unveiled in St. Clement’s, Oxford. The road to this event had been incredibly long and tortuous, not least because many locals had opposed the erection of a monument to ‘a bunch of reds’. That the project had ever managed to be realised was down to the hard work, determination and bloody-mindedness of the members of the Oxford Memorial Organising Committee, not least the historian and journalist Chris Farman who sadly died last week, one of all too many victims of the Coronavirus pandemic.
With Valery Rose and Liz Woolley, Chris was the author of No Other Way, Oxfordshire and the Spanish Civil War. Sales of the book did much to help fund the erection of the Oxford memorial. It’s a great piece of local history, well written and extremely thoroughly researched, with a great introduction written by Chris. He was the perfect choice for the introduction, for he had previously written for The Guardian and the Illustrated London News and worked as an editor on a book on the British Empire, published by Time-Life Books. He also has written his own monograph: The General Strike, published in 1972.
I first met Chris in at a fundraising for the Oxford memorial. Like his fellow organisers, Colin Carritt and John Heywood, Chris put a huge amount of time and effort into this and subsequent events. His natural charm and enthusiasm did much to help make them a success and (as I know) he was adept at persuading other people to get involved. A regular and popular presence at IBMT events, Chris will be very sadly missed.
There are full obituaries for Chris Farman on the IBMT’s website and in the Banbury Guardian.
