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Review of Sid Lowe’s Fear and Loathing in La Liga

lowe-fear&loathing

No visitor to Barcelona football club’s iconic stadium, the Camp Nou, can fail to notice the slogan splashed in huge letters across the back of the seats: mès que un club. If one aim is to goad supporters of their arch-rivals, Real Madrid, it certainly seems to work. As Sid Lowe explains in his highly entertaining and exhaustive account of the rivalry between Spain’s two dominant football teams, the irritated Madrid fans have responded by inventing their own version. ‘Barcelona’; they chant, is más que un puticlub (more than a brothel).

At one level, Fear and Loathing in La Liga is a celebration of two highly successful football clubs who, while they may inspire mutual fear and loathing, also draw plaudits and admiration from around the world. They have also attracted some of the world’s most talented footballers, many of whom crop up in this book. There is Barcelona’s powerful forward of the 1950s, the Hungarian László Kubala, whose father optimistically bought him a violin as a child, only for the youngster to use it as a goal post. And the Argentine star, Alfredo Di Stéfano (who some still feel was a better player than either Pele or Maradona), who Madrid infamously stole from under the noses of Barcelona. The detailed account of Johan Cruyff’s time at Barcelona clearly outlines how much the current team of Messi, Chavi, Iniesta et al owe to Cruyff and the inspirational Dutch ‘total football’ of the 1970s.

However, Fear and Loathing is mès que un libre about football for, in addition to being The Guardian’s Spanish football correspondent, Sid Lowe holds a PhD in modern Spanish history. He combines his areas of expertise effectively to demonstrate how the history of the two rival clubs is inextricably bound up with Spanish history itself. Just as there are fierce battles over the past and historical memory, so many of these arguments have become expressed through the tribal loyalties of football; ‘war minus the shooting’, as Orwell famously described it. However, it is, perhaps, no great surprise that much of the story of the rivalry between the two teams is about perception, rather than reality. Most football fans, ‘the twelfth man on the terraces’, are not neutral, dispassionate observers and – like everyone else- often choose to believe what they want to believe.

For example, the book outlines how supporters of rival teams within Spain – and around the world – often scorn Real Madrid as ‘Franco’s team’. For Catalans especially, Real represents the image of traditional, Castillian, centralised power, while Barcelona is portrayed as a beacon of democracy, the symbol of the separatist movement which Franco (and by extension, Madrid) brutally suppressed. Now it is certainly true that Franco’s regime was extremely partisan towards Real; the infamous match of 1943, which ended 11-0 to Madrid, is but one example of the regime’s meddling. And Santiago Bernebeu, the father of the modern club was quite evidently pro-Franco, having and volunteered to fight for the Nationalists during the civil war. However, as the author makes clear, things are not always as simple as some would like to make out; this simplistic binary division inevitably means that inconvenient truths are ignored.

In many ways this book is an exercise in myth busting; perhaps a response to some of the more trenchant (if not bizarre) opinions the author must have come across in newspapers’ online comments, or via some of his 140 000 followers on Twitter. So, for example, he points out that Rafael Sánchez Guerra, the president of Real Madrid from 1935 to 1936, was actually put on trial by the Franco regime, accused of being ‘a Red’. And while one of the current directors at Barcelona is allegedly a member of the right-wing fundación Francisco Franco, the parents of Real’s former manager, Vincente del Bosque (now in charge of the Spanish national team), were imprisoned by Franco’s regime. To return to football, the author argues that ‘[Real] Madrid did not become the best because they were the regime’s team; they were the regime’s team because they became the best.’ And it’s not as though Barcelona fans have a monopoly on feeling aggrieved: Madrid’s defeat in the 1960 European cup final still rankles, amidst rumours of bribes and dodgy English referees.

The book’s skilful interweaving of football, history and politics makes for an enjoyable and interesting read. Perhaps members of the IBMT who are not followers of the beautiful game may wonder why two books relating to football have been reviewed in recent newsletters. However, if Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly’s infamous quote that ‘some people believe football is a matter of life and death … I can assure you it is much, much more important than that’, does not convince, then perhaps an anecdote from the book concerning the supremely talented Danish footballer, Brian Laudrup, may do so. In 1994, Laudrup led Barcelona to an astonishing 5-0 victory over Real Madrid; the following year, he played in another el clásico, but this time around, the Dane led Real, in their turn, to a 5-0 victory. According to Laudrup, when he eventually decided to leave la liga, a relieved King Juan Carlos confessed to him, ‘That’s good … now I can go back to being the only King of Spain.’

Review of Henry Buckley’s The Life and Death of the Spanish Republic

IB edition of Henry Buckley's long lost memoir of the Spanish Civil War
IB Tauris’s 2013 edition of Henry Buckley’s long-lost memoir of the Spanish Civil War

The reissue by IB Tauris of Henry Buckley’s long-lost memoir, The Life and Death of the Spanish Republic, is an event which anyone interested in the Spanish Civil War should celebrate. Buckley’s classic eye-witness account of the eight years of the second Spanish Republic from 14 April 1931 to 31 March 1939 is, I think, one of the best accounts of the period penned by Britons.

Knowledgeable, insightful and beautifully written, Buckley’s memoir possesses a rare sense of immediacy that immerses the reader deep within turbulent 1930s Spain. ‘Spain’, writes Buckley, is ‘a poor country with many rich people’; struggling to cope with a difficult transition, where ‘new ideas, as well as motor-cars, raced along these fine broad roads which now intersected Spain.’ A devout Catholic, Buckley was nevertheless objective enough to recognise the Church’s failings and its complicity in creating and supporting a deeply unequal society. In fact the text is astonishingly fair-minded and objective: while he became deeply sympathetic to the Republican cause (even toying with the idea of joining the International Brigades), he was not blind to its failings, arguing that the Republic needed not just to aspire to be good, but to actually raise the pitiful living standards of the poverty-stricken peasants ‘[which] still form[ed] the majority of the nation’s population.’

Unlike foreign correspondents who arrived at the outbreak of the civil war, Henry Buckley had been in Spain since 1929. He spoke the language fluently and knew the country well. He was acquainted with many of the key figures in the Republic, including Pasionaria, Francisco Largo Caballero, Manuel Azaña and Juan Negrín. And his observations of many key figures are not written in the polite banalities of politicians and diplomats. For example, while Buckley has good things to say about many of the Republic’s political and military leaders, especially Negrín and Pasionaria, he is not always as enthusiastic about the socialist leaders Francisco Largo Caballero and Julián Besteiro.

There are occasional factual errors in Buckley’s account, though surprisingly few when one remembers how deeply immersed in the situation the author must have been. And any errors are more than compensated for by the astute observations and intelligent, grounded analysis. The account of Largo Caballero’s own contribution to his fall from office in 1937 is one good example, as is Buckley’s sorrowful analysis of the doomed attempts by the western democracies to restrict the war to Spain’s borders. Buckley fully understands the inevitable consequence of the French and British governments’ determination not to come to the Republic’s aid. His eloquent account of the final dark days of the Spanish Republic and the dashing of the hopes of those fighting in support of the Spanish Republic are heart-rending. Yet, despite all, Buckley’s conclusion is as clear as it is uplifting: ‘their courage and efforts were not in vain. No sacrifice like that ever is.’ A sentiment that, I suspect, many will feel is as true now, as it was seventy five years ago.

This review originally appeared in the IBMT newsletter 36, January 2014, p. 22.

Review of James Matthews’ Reluctant Warriors

James Matthews' Reluctant Warriors, published by Oxford UP in 2012

Within Britain, popular knowledge of the Spanish civil war usually centres on the internationalisation of the conflict; the support of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy for General Franco and the involvement of the volunteers of the International Brigades in support of the Spanish Republic. However, it should be remembered that foreigners only ever made up a small proportion of those fighting in Spain; most were Spaniards and a huge number were conscripts. Therefore the publication of Reluctant Warriors, James Matthews’ examination of the experiences of these ordinary Spaniards drafted into the armies of both sides, is to be thoroughly welcomed.

For the full review, please see the English Historical Review 2014, issue 129, pp. 761–763.

Review of Helen Graham’s The War and its Shadow

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Helen Graham’s latest monograph, The War and its Shadow, is not an introductory text to the Spanish Civil War, nor is it an easy read. While only 150 pages long, the text’s richness and complexity, the scope and ambition, the intelligence and sheer breadth of knowledge contained within make it both thought-provoking and challenging. Important and timely too. One of the major issues currently facing the International Brigade Memorial Trust is how to explain to a contemporary audience the significance of a war which was fought in Spain over seventy years ago. This book provides detailed evidence of the enduring relevance of the Spanish Civil War and the thirty-five years of malevolent and vengeful dictatorship which followed.

In structure, the book comprises a number of essays, implicitly divided into three main sections. In the first, the author discusses the legacy of the First World War, which saw the mortal wounding of many European ancien regimes but not, as yet, their destruction. During what was essentially becoming a European civil war, nationalist movements fought to reassert what they believed to be their natural right to rule. The second section examines the notion of the volunteers (originally raised in her inaugural professorial lecture) for the Spanish Republic as ‘border-crossers’. For Helen Graham, many of the International Brigaders were, to use her rather elegant expression, ‘the stormy petrels of social change’, members of a vanguard fighting for ‘cosmopolitan cultural modernity’. The third, final section of the book is a passionate essay on contemporary Spain, the enduring legacy of Francoism and the current battles to control historical memory.

The book provides a trenchant demolition of some of the more enduring myths of the Franco dictatorship. As the author points out, the Spanish Civil War was the first battle of a war ‘waged predominantly on civilians’ and there is no shortage of evidence that murder and rape were used deliberately as a weapon to break down resistance. As the leader of the military rebels, General Emilio Mola declared, they were determined to eliminate ‘without scruple or hesitation those who do not think as we do.’ This included not just members of the ‘left’ and members of some imaginary ‘judeo-masonic conspiracy’, but any representatives of progress and modernity: teachers, trade unionists, homosexuals and ‘modern women’ too, as the accounts in chapter three of the viciousness visited on the Barayón family make only too clear.

Like Paul Preston’s acclaimed Spanish Holocaust, Helen Graham’s The War and its Shadow reiterates that Franco’s dictatorship was not ‘softer’ than those of Hitler and Stalin,  remarking pointedly on a persisting lack of awareness of the vast number of ‘extra and quasi-judicial’ killings enacted by the Franco regime between 1936 and 1975. The chapter on Franco’s prisons is particularly harrowing. ‘All Spain is a prison’ wrote Marcos Ana, as Franco’s regime set about ‘teaching the defeated the meaning of their defeat’. As evidence of the truly repugnant nature of Franco’s Spain, the author reminds us that even Heinrich Himmler was shocked by the extent of judicial murder when he visited Spain in October 1940 (though admitting that his main concern may have been the wastage of potential slave labour). The book explains how the victimisation continued within the prisons, with ‘the rape/sexual assault of women prisoners was systematically perpetrated with impunity by the servants of the Franco regime’, and children removed from what were considered to be ‘unfit’ mothers.

The book concludes with a rather depressing, though no doubt accurate, assessment of the situation in contemporary Spain, which finds the conservative Partido Popular in power during a time of severe financial crisis. Attempts to recuperate historical memory are becoming increasing difficult, as court cases are launched against those – however prominent – involved in investigating the crimes of the Franco regime. As the author explains, while there have been many positive changes in Spain since the death of Franco, ‘many of its most damaging effects endure within the constitutional polity.’ Clearly much of Spain remains in shadow and the task of dismantling the Francoist structure has some way to go.

This review originally appeared in the IBMT newsletter 34, January 2013, pp. 24-5.

Review of Elizabeth Roberts’ ‘Freedom, Faction, Fame and Blood’

My review of Elizabeth Roberts’ new book appeared in the Journal of Contemporary History, October 2012, vol. 47:4, pp. 889-891.

The ‘methodologically challenging’ study by Elizabeth Roberts is a comparative study of the experiences of three groups of ‘soldiers of conscience,’ British men and women who risked, and often lost, their lives fighting in ‘a far-away country,’ during the Greek War of Independence, the Spanish Civil War and the Russo-Finnish War.

Review of Angela Jackson’s For Us It Was Heaven

The following review originally appeared in the IBMT newsletter, issue 32, Spring-Summer 2012, p.10.

NEARLY twenty years ago, Angela Jackson, then beginning the research for her doctorate, conducted an interview with a woman who, many years before, had worked as a nurse in Republican Spain during the civil war. The story that Angela was told that day by her eighty year old interviewee, Patience Edney (née Darton), became an important part of a ground-breaking thesis. It also led to a well-received book which, like this one, was published within the Cañada Blanch series on contemporary Spain.
The publication of this biography of Patience thus brings Angela back to her beginnings and, perhaps understandably, is the cause of a certain amount of reflection by the author. In many ways the book is a personal account of Angela’s relationship with Patience and the process of researching and writing. As the author acknowledges, it is not always an easy task to write about someone that you are close to, requiring the ability to ‘tread carefully the path between hagiography and hatchet job.’ This, in the main, the author manages well, despite her obvious affection for her subject.
The opening chapters portray Patience in the years before Spain, where we learn about the development of two important and long-standing features of Patience’s life: nursing and left-wing politics. Born into an upper middle-class family, Patience decided to train as a midwifery nurse at University College Hospital in London, where she was also introduced to progressive politics by the illustrious scientist and dedicated Communist, J.B.S. Haldane.
The story of Patience’s time in Spain naturally forms the central part of Angela’s portrayal, for Spain always had a strong hold on Patience’s heart. She had been training when the Spanish Civil War broke out and was persuaded to go out to Spain to nurse the British Battalion’s former commander, Tom Wintringham, who was dangerously ill with typhoid. As anyone who has read Angela’s Jackson’s previous works will know, a nurse’s life in war-torn Spain was not an easy one and this biography presents a clear picture of the impossible conditions under which the Republican services were forced to operate, where hospitals and ambulances were deliberately targeted by the Nationalists. Yet, despite the long hours and near exhaustion, there was still the opportunity for love and it is here that Angela’s close relationship with the subject allows us particular insight into Patience’s life in Spain. Uncovered through her personal letters, we hear how she fell in love with and married a young German International Brigader. Soon we realise why Angela refers to Patience’s grief and her fortitude: her new husband was killed on the Ebro in the summer of 1938. Patience didn’t mention him again, nor did she visit Spain, for another sixty years.
In the 1950s, following the Second World War, Patience turned her efforts towards Mao’s China, carrying on the work she had begun in Spain. While there are accounts by other Spanish veterans who went on to work in China, such as Nan Green and David Crook, this is not an area that has been widely written about, so I found this section particularly interesting.
The concluding chapters return the story to Spain. In 1986 Patience attended the huge Homanaje in Madrid, accompanied by her son, Bob, named after her German former husband. The book’s last act is genuinely moving, for Patience did not survive her triumphant return to Spain: To Die in Madrid’, read Patience’s obituary in El Periódico. In a last salute to Spain, Freiheit!, the song of the German Thaelmann volunteers, was sung at Patience’s funeral. It is a fitting conclusion, both to her extraordinary life and to this engaging biography.

Review of Ben Hughes’ They Shall Not Pass! The British Battalion at Jarama

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The Battle of Jarama in February 1937, the first action of the British Battalion in the Spanish Civil War, provided a brutal wake-up call for both the volunteers themselves and the British Communist Party, which had recruited them. During three days of bitter and sustained fighting, the six hundred poorly-trained, ill-equipped ‘city-bred young men’ were attacked by an overwhelming force, comprising the cream of Franco’s professional army, backed up by German armour. That the British Battalion managed to hold the line – just – was a feat of both stubborn defiance and astonishing bravery. But the cost was substantial. After the three days of fighting of 12-14 February, less than half the Battalion remained; Suicide Hill was not named in vain. As the Scottish Political Commissar, Peter Kerrigan, later stated, ‘this battle has been reported on many occasions. Suffice it to say that it was the bloodiest of all the battles that the British Battalion was involved in, in Spain. There was none as deadly.’

Ben Hughes new study places the battle of Jarama at the centre of the story of the British and Irish in Spain. Drawing on the numerous memoirs, both published and held in archives around the world, They Shall Not Pass! successfully weaves the volunteers’ accounts together, contextualising them within a clear narrative. This is a satisfyingly well-written account which tells the, often horrifying, story with both verve and understanding.

Divided into three parts, the book’s scope actually extends beyond Jarama, though the main focus of the book is, of course, the battle itself. Part one begins with a chapter to set the scene, before two chapters briefly sketch out the volunteers’ journeys to Spain and the hurried and limited attempts to transform the volunteers’ political will into military skill. Hughes then returns to the Jarama Valley, concluding his first section at lunchtime on 12 February 1937, with the battalion under attack, but dug in, still determined that that the fascists will not pass.

In the second and crucial section of the book, Hughes reveals how the naïve optimism of the novice volunteer soldiers was violently shattered by the terrifying onslaught of Franco’s elite troops of the Army of Africa. Ten graphic chapters provide ‘a micro history’ of the battle, almost forensic in the attention to detail. Hughes has clearly spent considerable time on his primary research here and the work certainly pays off. The events are recounted from, in Hughes words, ‘a worm’s eye point of view,’ which provides the reader with an understanding of how shocking the experiences of the Jarama battle – and the war in Spain for that matter – really were for the volunteers.

The third and final part of the book provides an account of the experiences of the British and Irish volunteers from the battle of Brunete of July 1937, through to their return to Britain at the end of 1938. Unfortunately, this section is somewhat of a disappointment, perhaps because the previous sections have set such a high standard. Increasingly reliant on secondary sources, it offers nothing like the level of detail of the earlier chapters and is correspondingly less original and informative.

Interest picks up again in the epilogue, which brings the account up to the present day, revealing what happened to the veterans of Jarama during the Second World War and thereafter. For example, the later lives of the three commanders of the battalion at Jarama, Tom Wintringham, Jock Cunningham and Fred Copeman, certainly make interesting reading.

The book also benefits from two useful appendices, including directions to help locate the actual site of the February battle, which I’m sure a number of IBMT members will find beneficial. There is a thorough index and copious footnotes, both of which should prove valuable for students and researchers. All the maps are very clear and other good touches are the brief biographies of the dramatis personae and the numerous photographs, including a number of colour pictures of Jarama features such as the sunken road and ‘the knoll’  in the present day.

There are, of course, a few areas where the reader may disagree with Hughes’ approach or conclusions – I think that he overestimates the casualty rates at Jarama, for example – and there are a number of oversights and little errors, inevitable in a book of this scope and probably only apparent or of interest to the specialist. Most, though, do not detract from what, I think, is one of the best recent additions to the collection of studies on the brave group of British and Irish volunteers, who fought in the Spanish Civil War.

Review of Hugo García’s The Truth about Spain

Hugo García's The Truth about Spain, published by Sussex Academic Press, 2010
Hugo García’s The Truth About Spain, published by Sussex Academic Press, 2010

There has been a spate of books published recently on The Impact of the Spanish Civil War on Britain, to use the title of Tom Buchanan’s latest (2007) work. In addition to the IBMT’s Antifascistas (2010) written to accompany the exhibition on the British and Irish volunteers, we have had Brian Shelmerdine’s British Representations of the Spanish Civil War (2006), Lewis Mates’ The Spanish Civil War and the British Left (2007), David Deacon’s British News Media and the Spanish Civil War (2008) and now Hugo García has added The Truth About Spain!: Mobilizing British Public Opinion, 1936-1939. This is not to forget Chris Hall’s Not Just Orwell, Daniel Gray’s Homage to Caledonia, the two oral histories of British volunteers – Max Arthur’s The Real Band of Brothers and Peter Darman’s Heroic Voices of the Spanish Civil War – and two more general books that include much of interest to a British audience: Paul Preston’s study of the war correspondents, We Saw Spain Die, and Steve Hurst’s Famous Faces of the Spanish Civil War. Clearly, as we approach the seventy-fifth anniversary of the war, the conflict still has a powerful resonance in Britain, despite rarely making an appearance in the classroom.

Hugo García has made an important contribution to this rather crowded field; it is a rich, detailed study, impeccably researched. The title, however, is somewhat of a misnomer for García’s aim, as he admits, is not to judge the veracity of Republican and Nationalist propaganda, but rather to attempt to present an objective, dispassionate analysis of the forms and effectiveness of their propaganda campaigns, how they functioned and impacted on British opinion.

The book comprises four main sections. The first is a history of ‘modern’ forms of propaganda and censorship, from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the Second World War, focusing on the use of propaganda in the totalitarian countries and in Spain itself during the Second Republic.

Part two compares the differing approaches of the Nationalists and the Republicans and contains a wealth of detail on the development, manning and operation of both sides’ propaganda machines. As García shows, the view of foreign correspondents as spies and criminals by senior Nationalists, and their treatment by their rude and obstructive Press officer, Luis Bolín was often counter-productive. For example, the expulsion of The Times correspondent George Steer required him to move to the Republican zone, from where he later produced his devastating coverage of the bombing of Guernica.

García’s analysis of the Republicans’ approach – frequently drawing on Arturo Barea’s wonderful memoir, The Forging of a Rebel – recognises that the Republic’s initial problem was to overcome the chaos that followed the rising and which had shattered the state apparatus. As García describes, order was gradually re-established by the end of 1936, leading to increasingly sophisticated and professional dealings with the foreign press. In contrast to the repugnant Bolín, Republican faces such as Constancia de la Mora offered an efficient and charming front to the foreign correspondents, recognising their value, rather than treating them as irritants.

García then turns to the propaganda messages put out by both sides, particularly atrocities and foreign intervention. It was obviously vitally important for both sides to get across their version of events: the Rebels’ depiction of themselves as Nacionales with an anti-Communist crusade was countered by the Republicans’ portrayal of the war as ‘progress versus feudalism’, or the defence of democracy against international fascism. García argues that the techniques used by both sides were, in fact, very similar and that both sides knowingly and deliberately used falsehoods to sustain their portrayal of the conflict.

The final section discusses the impact of the propaganda on Britain. As he recognises, García faces the thorny problem of assessing exactly how the ‘messages’ put across by both sides were received in Britain; not easy to judge considering the unreliability of opinion polling, then still in its infancy. García claims that, in the main, there was a general indifference, ‘a plague on both your houses,’ as one contemporary newspaper put it. However, as he recognises, of those who took sides, many more sided with the Republicans than with the Rebels. And while the strongest support for both sides came from the political extremes in Britain, the Republicans had some success in extending their realm of support as the war progressed.

However, García believes that the reportage of the horrors of the Spanish war was most effective in convincing neutrals of the horror of war in general, rather than of one particular side, and thus consolidated support for non-intervention. In a depressing conclusion, he argues that even if the Republican propaganda had been more effective, it would probably still not have achieved enough to be able to save the Spanish Republic. Sadly, it is difficult to disagree with García’s view put forward at the very beginning of the book, that ‘this was, from very early in the war, a lost cause.’ Once Britain and France were determined to pursue a policy of non-intervention in the war, despite ample evidence of a huge German and Italian presence in Spain, the Spanish Republic was effectively doomed.

Review of Daniel Gray’s Homage to Caledonia

Gray

It is fitting that Homage to Caledonia, Daniel Gray’s book on Scotland and the Spanish Civil War, begins with the funeral of Steve Fullarton, the last remaining Scot to have fought with the International Brigades in Spain. This book acts as a testament, not just for the more than 550 men and women from Scotland who risked their lives in Spain, but also for those who stayed behind in Scotland and campaigned for the beleagured Spanish Republic. Gray’s deep sympathy with his subject is manifest, yet this is a serious, scholarly work.

The book’s first section on the volunteers draws strongly on Ian MacDougall’s excellent 1986 study, Voices from the Spanish Civil War. As Gray explains, the reasons that lay behind the determination of so many Scots to go to Spain are not hard to find. He paints a clear picture of the dire poverty of many working class Scots and the ensuing atmosphere of strikes and protests that led many to join the Communist Party. It is a political journey that took in hunger marches, anti-Blackshirt demonstrations and the long – and often one-way- trip to Spain.

Gray’s descriptions of the horrifying battles of Jarama and Brunete in 1937, though brief, effectively capture the lack of preparation and the awful shock that the volunteers faced in Spain. Further chapters examine the daily grind in Spain and the brutal experiences of those held in Franco’s prisoner-of-war camps. The work of medical services in Spain is not overlooked, with one chapter describing the role of the ‘misguided’ Scottish Ambulance unit. Gray describes how four volunteers left the unit in disgust, following suspicions that its leader was using it as a cover to evacuate Nationalist sympathisers from Spain.

The book’s second section turns to ‘Scotland’s War’, the home front. Gray examines of the role of Scottish women, such as the Conservative MP Katherine Atholl, ‘the Red Duchess’, in raising funds and campaigning for the beleaguered Spanish Republic. He also outlines the huge importance of family politics, evidenced by the extraordinary Murray family, three of whom went to Spain whilst their five sisters stayed at home campaigning. As Gray says, ‘anti-fascism often ran in families, who supported each other in the shared belief that no death was in vain, no matter the personal pain a parent or sibling might feel.’ (p.52)

Whilst Gray’s work naturally focuses on the Scottish supporters of Republican Spain, he does not forget the Scottish ‘Friends of National Spain.’ Far-fetched stories in the right-wing press north of the border mirrored those in England: for example, Grays recounts how both the Catholic Herald and Glasgow Observer claimed that the Republican government had created a battalion of prostitutes to defend Madrid. Gray brings to life the various right-wing fanatics, such as Major-General Sir Walter Maxwell-Scott, Walter Scott’s great-great grandson, who alleged in March 1937 that 50 000 ‘workers of the world’ were fighting for the Republic.

Gray concludes the section with the tale of ‘Scotland’s other left’, the parties who, with the Communists, supported the Republic. The chapter’s main concern is the Independent Labour Party, whose four MPs were all Scots. Of the Scottish volunteers in Spain, perhaps as many as 100 were members of the ILP, who divided themselves between the Catalan POUM militia (in which George Orwell famously served) and the International Brigades. The sectarianism between the CP and ILP in Scotland mirrored that in Spain; as Gray says, ‘the politics of Catalonia had been imported by Caledonia.’ (p.145)

Gray’s final section is a collection of essays on individuals and themes of Scottish interest. The first two subjects, the ILP volunteer Bob Smillie and the Anarchist Ethel Macdonald, have both been covered in detail by Tom Buchanan and Chris Dolan respectively. The only note of real controversy here is that Gray repeats the accusation that Smillie was kicked to death by SIM agents during his interrogation. However, as Tom Buchanan has argued, the lack of conclusive evidence suggests that this case must remain not proven.

Gray’s chapter on the Aragon campaigns of 1937 and 1938 include a number of well-chosen vignettes, giving a powerful sense of the Scot’s experiences in Spain. Gray provides an extremely moving description of the terrible last days of the battalion in September 1938, in which nearly 200 volunteers were killed or wounded in just three days of desperate and bloody fighting.

The issue of dissent and discipline is now an important part of any study of the foreign volunteers in Spain. Obviously Russia, via the Communist Party, had a very powerful influence on the volunteers, particularly on their attitudes to the Barcelona May days and the POUM. However, Gray believes that ‘this should not … detract from the credibility of the 35 000 people from around the world who travelled to Spain of their own volition.’ (p.193)

Gray concludes his study with an examination of the legacy of the Scottish supporters of the Spanish Republic. As Gray argues passionately, the Spanish episode remains something to be proud of; ‘a glorious, if often tragic, chapter in Scotland’s unwritten history.’ (p.211)

This review first appeared in Family and Community History, 13:2, November 2010, pp.149-150.