On 31 May 2018 I joined the biographer and filmmaker, Jane Rogoyska, for a presentation at L.S.E.'s Cañada Blanch Centre, chaired by Professor Paul Preston. We were outlining our thoughts on the image that had recently appeared on social media: did it really show the celebrated photojournalist, Gerda Taro, on her death bed?
I was very happy to take part in a short six minute film produced by the Gill Parker Consultancy. The film was commissioned by the L.S.E. to showcase the expertise of LSE academics; in this instance Professor of Contemporary Spanish History, Paul Preston. In addition to myself, the film included interviews with former Basque child, Herminio Martínez; Professor of Spanish History, Helen Graham; and Spanish writer and journalist, Lala Isla.
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.
On 12 June 2020 during Britain's Coronavirus lockdown, I was asked to contribute to Talk Radio's 'Home-Schooling' segment.
Pictured here with the two speakers at the IBMT's 2019 Len Crome conference in Oxford: to my right, the researcher and author Daniel Gray, to my left historian and The Guardian's football correspondent, Sid Lowe. There are more images on the IBMT's Flickr account.
Full report in the May 2019 issue of ¡No Pasarán!
On 9 August 2017, I introduced a number of readings relating to the International Brigades, movingly delivered by actors Christopher Ecclestone and Yolanda Vazquez and by Margot Heinemann’s daughter, Jane Bernal.
For this year's Len Crome event, I discussed the difficulties involved in establishing the precise background and origins of the volunteers for Spain from Britain & Ireland and how the various national groups in the International Brigades got along while fighting in Spain.
The talk will be on the IBMT's Youtube channel and a precis appears in issue 45 of the IBMT magazine (2/2017).
Jack Edwards, one of the last surviving members of the International Brigades fighting for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, has died, aged 97.
Jack was born in Wavertree, Liverpool in 1914 into a family of socialists. After leaving school at fourteen, Jack initially found work with a furniture manufacturer, before training as a motor mechanic. Jack joined the Young Communist League in 1929 and was involved in selling the Daily Worker newspaper on Lime Street in Liverpool. He was also frequently involved in clashes with Sir Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts.
When the military rising of 17-19 July 1936 descended into a civil war, Jack raised money for Republican Spain, , but soon felt that raising money was not enough and decided to volunteer for the International Brigades. Jack arrived in Spain in January 1937 and, following a desperately brief period of training, fought with Number 4 Company of the British Battalion at the Battle of Jarama in February. Like many of his compatriots, Jack was wounded at Jarama, and was sent to the hospital at Benicasim to convalesce.
Once recovered, Jack joined the 1st Transport Regiment as a mechanic before joining the 129th Artillery Division, with whom he fought at Aragón, Teruel and the Ebro. He returned home in February 1939. Within a year of returning from Spain, Jack was in uniform again, having decided to volunteer. ‘It was the same bloody fight,’ he later declared. Jack served with the RAF during the war until he was demobbed in1946.
Jack attended the IBMT’s annual general meeting in Liverpool in October 2010 and unveiled the newly located plaque to the Liverpool volunteers in Jack Jones House. Until his death, he was one the IBMT’s most vocal and active veterans and, until the 2010 AGM, a member of the IBMT committee.
Writing in 2009 about his thoughts on the Spanish Civil War in Max Arthur’s The Real Band of Brothers, he said:
“People think of it as a forgotten war, but it should be remembered, really, as a fight against fascism, for democracy; that’s the main point of the war. It’s becoming a forgotten war because it wasn’t worldwide. It’s only because people keep bringing it up now and again, but I’m surprised it’s not taught in the schools – they should teach it out of respect for democracy. That would leave behind the legacy of the Brigaders – something that people could remember us for.”
Just prior to his death, Jack was interviewed for a Radio 4 programme: ‘The last of the International Brigades’, which was broadcast as part of the archive hour series on Saturday 26 February 2011.
Jack Edwards, International Brigader, 3 January 1914 to 26 January 2011.
