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.
Further reading…
The following suggestions for further reading are from my Unlikely Warriors:
For British politics in the 1930s, see John Stephenson and Chris Cook’s Britain in the Depression and Juliet Gardiner’s The Thirties. Joe Jacobs’ memoir Out of the Ghetto is good for a view from the street.
There are many published accounts by British volunteers in the International Brigades; of those still in print, Walter Gregory’s The Shallow Grave and Fred Thomas’s To Tilt at Windmills are justifiably popular. George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and the Spanish born Arturo Barea’s The Forging of a Rebel are both important and highly readable. Many works focus on the national and ethnic groups within the ‘British’ volunteers, of which Hywell Francis’ reissued Miners Against Fascism and Daniel Gray’s Homage to Caledonia are two notable recent additions.
Paul Preston’s We Saw Spain Die is a fascinating account of the foreign correspondents who witnessed the conflict. For the war itself, Hugh Thomas’s The Spanish Civil War in its fully revised third edition is always useful, though Helen Graham’s The Spanish Civil War and Paul Preston’s Concise History offer more accessible introductions to the subject. Ronald Fraser’s Blood of Spain remains a shining example of the merits of oral history.
For the role of the former volunteers after the civil war and the continuing relevance of the conflict, see Tom Buchanan’s Impact of the Spanish Civil War on Britain.
ASLEF meeting in London
The generous support for the International Brigade Memorial Trust from the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen continues. After a very successful event at ASLEF’s national conference in Liverpool last May, I was invited back by the District Council Number One to give a talk at their December meeting, in the Marx Memorial Library in London.
My talk outlined the experiences of British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and why the conflict continues to be relevant. Not surprisingly, the continuing legacy of the war featured strongly in a detailed and wide-ranging Q&A which followed the talk. Topics raised included the role of the Spanish monarchy in the 1930s, the ‘civil war within the civil war’, the British government’s policy of appeasement, fascism in contemporary Spain and how to ensure that the war and the contribution of the volunteers from around the world does not get forgotten. The discussions continued over beer and a curry in nearby Exmouth Market.
Many thanks to all for the generous donation to the IBMT, to Steve Richardson for his invitation to talk at the meeting, to John Callow for providing the venue and to Perry Calvert for chairing and acting as my impromptu agent. I’m glad to say that I returned home with considerably fewer copies of Unlikely Warriors than I had arrived with. Happy Christmas reading to all!