BBC Radio 3 Proms Extra
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.
The Long View
On 30 July 2014, I joined Quillam Foundations’ Usama Hasan, Shiraz Maher of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at King’s College, Marx Memorial Library archivist Meirian Jump, the daughter of International Brigader, Sam Lesser, Judith Kravitz-Lesser and the actor Samuel West for an episode of Jonathan Freedland’s, The Long View. Somewhat controversially, the programme examined similarities (or not) between British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and for Syria today.
The programme was recorded on Thursday 24 July 2014, on location at 1 Litchfield Street WC2 (formerly the office of the International Brigades’ Dependents’ Aid Committee), the Marx Memorial Library and at the monument to the British volunteers for the Spanish Civil War, in London’s Jubilee Gardens.
You can find out more about the programme here.
Interviewed by George Galloway on RT’s Sputnik
On 17 July 2014, I discussed the Spanish Civil War and the British volunteers with George Galloway for his programme Sputnik, for Russia Today TV. The interview was first broadcast on 19 July 2014.
La Place du Combat
In the centre of Paris, three kilometres north-east of the Louvre and just east of the Canal Saint-Martin, lies an apparently nondescript intersection of six streets, the Place du Colonel Fabien. Named in honour of the ‘militant Communist and member of the French Resistance’ killed in 1944, the junction’s only feature of note (metro station aside) is a large curved glass building, built during the 1960s, judging by the fairly brutal architectural style. This is the modern headquarters of the Partie Communiste Francais which played a key role in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, when it acted as the main recruiting centre for the International Brigades.
Between October 1936 and the summer of 1938, some 35 000 men and women from around the world made the journey to Spain to join the Brigades, with as many as 2500 of them coming from Britain and Ireland. Initially, volunteers made their way to Spain independently (though this required money and, crucially, a passport), however following the decision by the Communist International (the Comintern) in October 1936 to organise international volunteers, the role of the national Communist Parties – in particular the PCF – became crucial both in the recruitment of volunteers and getting them to Spain.
The process of volunteering was straightforward, though had to be carried out in secret. Those in Britain wishing to go to Spain would make contact with their local Communist Party who, assuming they were seen as politically trustworthy (Trade Unionists, members of the Party or other left-wing political organisation), would forward them to the Party’s head office in London’s King Street. Here, further checks would be made on their political and military background, and applicants would be given stern warnings that they may well not return. Those accepted and wishing to continue would then travel onward in small groups, trying (usually fairly unsuccessfully) to maintain a low profile, making their way by train to a port (usually Newhaven or Dover), then by ferry to France and on to Paris.
Here, in the PCF offices in Place du Combat, the volunteers underwent further checks and were given a medical examination. The British representative in Paris was the French-speaking Charlotte Haldane, (known by the pseudonym ‘Rita’), wife of the renowned scientist and ardent Republican supporter J.B.S. Haldane and mother of a volunteer in the British Battalion. Her job was to partly process the incoming volunteers, but she was also instructed to confiscate volunteers’ excess money in order to, as she put it, ‘avert the danger that any of the volunteers should get drunk, start brawls or become involved in them, or be lured into the neighbouring brothels.’ Instead, each volunteer was provided with ten francs daily pocket money (food and lodging were provided for free).
From Paris the volunteers would travel south and over the border into Spain by train, until volunteering was made illegal in January 1937, after which the usual route was to be smuggled in groups over the Pyrenees at night, which involved an exhausting and hazardous climb of some twelve hours.
Those that actually made it to the border were then taken the short distance to Figueras by lorry and put on a train to the International Brigade headquarters at Albacete, where volunteers were divided up by nationality and language. British volunteers were sent to their base at the nearby village of Madrigueras where they were given rudimentary military training, before they joined their comrades on the front-line.
Few would escape unscathed.
In conversation with Robert Elms
To commemorate seventy-five years since the end of the Spanish Civil War – and to publicise the paperback edition of Unlikely Warriors – I was invited by Robert Elms to join him on his lunchtime show on BBC London 94.9. Robert owns a house in Spain, speaks the language and has long been a supporter of the International Brigade Memorial Trust. Even so, he proved to be an extremely well-informed interviewer. As one commemtator put it to me admiringly,
I’ve just listened to the whole interview and thought how skilfully you were given the opportunity by a sympathetic interviewer to put the story across and present the International Brigaders in the favourable light they deserve.
Sadly, as I stated in the programme, there are no longer any of the British volunteers left in Britain to tell the story for themselves, so it was good to be given the opportunity to talk about them. Thanks, Robert.
Click the media player above to listen to the interview, recorded on 7 April 2014.
The British Battalion at the battle of Jarama
This lecture was originally given as part of the Charlie Donnelly memorial weekend in Madrid in 2010. It outlines the role of the (so-called) British Battalion in the three days of desperate and bloody fighting that occurred between the 12th and 14th February 1937.
Established just after Christmas 1936, the 16th ‘British’ Battalion was formed mainly from volunteers from Britain and Ireland, though it also included those from a number of other countries, including Cyprus, South Africa, and Australia. The majority of its numbers had arrived in the large influx during December 1936, but during January it also incorporated those that had already been in Spain fighting with the various militia units, with the International Brigades in Madrid and, most recently, as part of the mainly English-speaking company of the French 14th International Brigade at Lopera near Cordoba in the south and at Las Rozas to the west of the Spanish capital.
By the beginning of January 1937, the English-speaking group at the battalion’s training base at Madrigueras – just to the north of Albacete – numbered around 450. However, the battalion suffered a major setback in mid-January, when a number of the Irish volunteers, already unhappy with British officers’ tendency not to make any distinction between British and Irish volunteers, discovered that two senior British figures in Spain had played a part in British covert activities in Ireland.[1] Following a stormy meeting, the Irish group decided to leave the British Battalion and instead joined the American volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion who were training at nearby Villanueva de la Jara. Despite this setback, an influx of new arrivals brought the number in the battalion up to approximately five to six hundred by mid-February and the battalion was considered to be of sufficient strength and readiness for front-line action. Alongside the Yugoslav Dimitrovs, the Franco-Belge and the American Lincolns (who were still training), they comprised the 15 International Brigade, which was commanded by an unpopular Hungarian, under the name of Gal.[2] The 15th Brigade political commissar was the Yugoslavian Vladimir Copic, who would later replace Gal as Brigade commander.[3]
At this stage, the British Battalion was commanded by a Scottish journalist, Wilf McCartney, who had previously served 10 years in Parkhurst prison for spying for Russia.[4] He was assisted by Tom Wintringham, an influential British Communist and The Party’s specialist in military matters. The battalion political commissar, working alongside McCartney, was Dave Springhall, who had studied at the Lenin School in Moscow, the finishing school for the Party’s elite.[5]
The battalion itself was divided up into four companies, one machine-gun company, plus three of infantry. All but one of its commanders from company level upwards had some level of military experience. The only company commander without was Bill Briskey, a political activist from London, who had already shown himself to be a talented and innovative company commander.[6] Thus, the battalion appeared to be in a fairly healthy state.
However, the wounding of the battalion commander Wilf Macartney in a freak accident – he was his replaced by Wintringham – plus the loss to illness of the experienced company commander, Jock Cunningham, caused some upheaval. Furthermore, the questionable quality of the training was causing real concern to many of the volunteers with military experience. So too, understandably, was the lack of any decent weaponry. As Jason Gurney, a sculptor from London later described:
Something over fifty of them had been in action on the Cordoba Front, and the remainder had received some sort of training in Madrigueras but had still not fired a shot from any of their weapons. Only one Company Commander had been in action, and that, only as the second in command of a platoon. We possessed an assortment of automatic weapons of doubtful value as well as the Russian rifles. The Commander of the Battalion was well intentioned but totally inexperienced. The other three battalions which formed the Brigade were not very much better off. Whether Gal and his staff knew any more than the rest of us, I cannot tell. But it is quite certain that the Brigade was not the well?armed, well?trained force that various people have pretended it to have been. There was no lack of courage or firm intent amongst the rank and file[,] but events were to prove that this was not enough.[7]
The battle began on the morning of 6 February 1937. Following the failure of the attempts on the west of Madrid in November and December 1936, Franco had prepared a new offensive to the south of the capital, aiming to cut the vital road that linked Madrid with Valencia, the seat of the Republican Government.[8]. Initially intended to be part of a combined operation with Italian troops to the east of the city, Franco decided to push ahead with the Jarama action despite the Italians having being delayed by heavy rain.
Colonel Varela, Franco’s field commander, had five brigades of six battalions at his disposal, plus eleven reserve battalions, totalling some 25 000 men – mostly elite Moroccan regulares and legionnaires – backed up by German armour.[9] The Republicans had a similar number of men available, who had been mustered for an impending Republican offensive in the same sector, which had also been delayed by the weather.
The Rebel offensive pressed forward quickly and by the evening of the 6th the Republicans had been pushed back to the Jarama River, and Rebel troops were within shelling distance of the Madrid-Valencia road. Over the next three days, Nationalists continued to force themselves forwards, despite the Republican commander, General Miaja, throwing the elite Spanish Lister, El Campesino and 11th International Brigades into the defence.
By 7 February, Rebel forces had reached the junction of Manzanares & Jarama rivers, and the following day they captured the bridge across the Manzanares just south of Vaciamadrid and threatened to reach the Madrid to Valencia Road. At the same time, despite desperate defensive efforts by the Republicans forces to the south, Nationalist troops managed to cross the Jarama and prepared themselves for an assault on the Pingarrón Heights, the imposing ridge in front of them. The 15th International Brigade was now thrown in to the defence. The 600 odd British in the battalion left their base at Madrigueras and were taken by train to the International Brigade base at Albacete, and then by lorry to Chinchón, about 25 km from Madrid and 15 km south-east of the site of the rebel advance.
Early in the morning of the 12th the British were transferred from Chinchón to the junction of the Morata to St. Martín de la Vega and Chinchón to Madrid roads, where they arrived at 5.30 a.m.[10] They were then ordered to move forward towards the Jarama River, which lay beyond the next ridge. Moving in single file, the volunteers in the battalion climbed upwards to a plateau overlooking the Jarama River, near a farmhouse where they quickly established a cookhouse.[11]
The battalion’s new commander, Tom Wintringham, was informed that a Spanish cavalry unit would be protecting their left flank and that half the Dimitrov battalion would be protecting their right. At this point, according to Wintringham, a Russian Engineers’ Officer, who was attempting to install a telephone link to 15th Brigade headquarters, ordered the battalion to advance beyond what later became known as Suicide Hill and attack the advancing Rebel forces, despite Wintringham’s opposition.[12]
The battalion therefore continued its advance, but with no maps and no knowledge of the position of the Nationalist forces they had no clear idea of when they would meet the enemy. They moved forward over the ridge then, after crossing a narrow sunken road, began to descend into the valley of the Jarama River, which lay in front of them. At this point, the volunteers began to come under fire from the Nationalist forces, which the Republican command did not realise had already crossed the Jarama river. For Albert Charlesworth, a metal-polisher from Oldham, it seemed at first to be a beautiful sunny day. It was a dream from which he would shortly be very rudely awakened:
I thought it was a glorious day actually. It was a nice day, beautiful day. There was the sun… it got really warm and the birds seemed to be singing very nicely to me. We weren’t being fired on although firing seemed to be taking place- I thought so anyway. But it wasn’t until eleven o’clock in the morning that I realised that the birds that were singing were bullets whistling past and there was a fierce battle going on.[13]
When they realised that the Rebels had already crossed the river, the battalion very rapidly pulled back to the top of the ridge and took up defensive positions: No. 3 Company to the left, No. 4 Company to the right, the Machine-Gun Company just behind them and Number 1 Company in reserve, much to the disgust of its commander, the ex-IRA man Kit Conway[14]. They then prepared to engage with the advancing Nationalist forces.[15]
The battalion was then subjected to a three hour artillery and machine-gun barrage, before being attacked by ‘at least three battalions’ of experienced Moroccan infantry. For many of the British volunteers, this was their first experience of action, and they faced the battle-hardened, elite regulars of Franco’s Army of Africa. The Moroccan troops were highly skilled soldiers, in their element when advancing across the open terrain of the Jarama Valley.[16] Jason Gurney described the absolute horror that the rapid advance of the North African troops had on the poorly trained volunteers, and he effectively summarised the inequality between the two opposing factions:
Nobody at Madrigueras had said anything about artillery fire or the genius of Moorish infantry to move across country without presenting a target for anyone but a highly-trained marksman- a category that included no one in our outfit…[The Moors] were professionals, backed by a mass of artillery and heavy machine-gun fire supplied by the German Condor legion. It was a formidable opposition to be faced by a collection of city-bred young men with no experience of war, no idea how to find cover on an open hillside, and no competence as marksmen.[17]
Their position worsened considerably when the members of the Machine-Gun Company discovered that their Maxim machine-guns had been given cartridge belts filled with the wrong ammunition.[18] Deprived of their machine-guns, Harold Fry’s No. 2 company was forced to resort to firing their rifles desperately at the enemy soldiers advancing rapidly towards them.
Both No. 3 and No. 4 Companies quickly began to sustain casualties due to the artillery barrage and machine-gun fire. No. 3 Company lost their commander, Bill Briskey, and his replacement, Ken Stalker, within a short time of each other. Meanwhile, No 4 Coy’s terrified commander was making little preparation to defend the company against the imminent assault.[19]
Wintringham had initially ordered No. 1 Company to hold in reserve, but due to the threat it was hastily moved up to a small bare hill to the right of the companies on the ridge. Under the ferocious Nationalist attack, the Franco-Belge Battalion further to the north of the British was forced to pull back, which brought the British companies and the battalion headquarters under lethal enfilading machine-gun fire which swept across them from their right. The British tried desperately to hold their ground, but were cut to pieces.
Kit Conway’s Company, mostly seasoned veterans, but reinforced by new recruits – many of whom had only a few days training – were forced to retreat back on to the ridge on the top of Suicide Hill. When Moroccan troops appeared on the knoll to the right, Conway withdrew his men back further still, but was hit and mortally wounded in the process.[20] With no form of communication with the company commanders apart from runners – perhaps the most dangerous job of all in the battalion- Tom Wintringham later described the confusion surrounding him at the time:
I did not know that casualties were mounting steadily and quickly; that Kit Conway, when I lost sight of him, was not lying down to seek cover, but was dying; that the section commanders in his company were either dead or wounded; that the thin grass and weeds on the crest of the hill was being slowly mown down, as if a gigantic scythe was passing and repassing, by bullets from the machine-rifles of the Moors and machine-guns of the Germans. I did not know that the wounded I could see were only a small proportion of those limping or lifted to the rear…I did not know that one of my company commanders was on the edge of panic and would come running back to find me.[21]
By the afternoon, the desperate position of the battalion and its mounting casualties left them with little option but to attempt an orderly retreat from Suicide Hill back to the battalion headquarters on the plateau, dragging their wounded comrades with them. But, as one volunteer remembered, ‘There weren’t many to go back.[22] As the dispirited British pulled back, Moroccan soldiers rushed forward over the top of Suicide Hill in order to occupy the positions relinquished by the retreating British.
At this point, the battalion experienced their first moment of good fortune. After a desperately frustrating day spent without ammunition for their machine-guns, the correct calibre bullets had at last appeared. Quickly, the machine-guns were brought into operation and used with devastating effect on the Moroccan soldiers who, for once, were caught out in the open and totally unawares. The Moroccan troops either dropped down out of sight and waited for the cover of darkness or, where they could, retreated out of range. This brought to an end the first day of the battle of Jarama.
Like other Republican units, the British Battalion had endured seven hours of extremely heavy losses: ‘Out of the 400 men in the rifle companies, only 125 were left. Altogether less than half the battalion remained’.[23] The remnants gathered at the headquarters on the sunken road, or the cookhouse next to the farm, desperate for food and water. After dark, Jason Gurney was asked by Tom Wintringham to reconnoitre the sunken road which ran across the plateau, near its forward edge. Here he made a horrifying discovery; about 50 injured men were lying on stretchers, where they had been left and forgotten in the chaotic and desperate times during the day. By the time he discovered them it was too late; most were dying or already dead.[24]
During the night a number of stragglers were discovered at the cookhouse by George Aitken, who had replaced Dave Springhall as battalion political commissar. Aitken attempted to cajole them back to the line but, as he freely admits, some volunteers were pressed back to the front under the threat of his gun.[25] Another group of men were found hiding in wine vaults in a farmhouse behind the lines. They were also marched back to the front. Coerced or not, the volunteers would be desperately needed on the frontline over the next two days.
The following day was to be no less terrifying for the shocked and traumatized survivors of the battalion. Morning began quietly, though the volunteers could hear a battle erupting to their right and see a huge amount of enemy activity in the valley below. Wintringham prepared his depleted forces as best he could. Harold Fry’s Machine-Gun Company were kept in a forward position, overlooking the valley and river below them. No. 4 Company, under Bert Overton, were placed to the right and No. 1 Company, now under André Diamant, were facing the open left flank. Early in the morning, Dave Springhall, now the assistant political commissar of the 15th International Brigade, brought orders from headquarters that the battalion was to attack the enemy forces directly front of them, in order to take pressure of the Thaelmanns and Dimitrovs to their right. Springhall assured Wintringham that the attack would be supported by aircraft, tanks and the elite Spanish Lister Brigade.
However, no tanks appeared and the air support turned out to be 3 little planes who quickly dropped their bombs and disappeared. This made little or no impression on the Rebel forces, who were well dug in, and had set up effective machine-gun positions. In addition, the nationalists launched another artillery barrage on the British Battalion’s positions. Faced with a suicidal 600 yard advance into enemy machine-guns, Wintringham ignored the order to go forward. The order was later repeated, and again Wintringham ignored it. This was a brave decision, for he must have been fully aware that it could have seen him executed for dereliction of duty.
When dawn broke, the members of Harold Fry’s No. 2 machine-gun company were able to see a number of rebel soldiers who had moved up in the night between the ridge and Suicide Hill and quickly drove them back with concentrated machine-gun fire.[26] But as the day progressed, the Franco-Belge and Dimitrov Battalions on the right were gradually pushed back and the Battalion found itself once again surrounded on three sides. By late afternoon Wintringham was aware that an assault on Fry’s position was imminent, as small groups of Moroccan troops could be seen working their way forward to Fry’s right, where Bert Overton’s No. 4 Company was situated. At this point the nervous Overton finally panicked, and withdrew his company right back to the sunken road, as he had been begging the Scottish political commissar George Aitken to allow him to do all day.[27] This left the Machine-Gun Company’s flank totally unprotected and rebel forces quickly took advantage of the situation and surrounded them. As many as 30 members of the Company, including its commander Harold Fry, and his assistant, Ted Dickenson, were captured. [28]
When Bert Overton realized what he had done, he tried to make amends by leading a charge of 40 men in a desperate attempt to retake the trenches recently occupied by Fry’s Machine-Gun Company. The Nationalists soldiers simply mowed them down with the machine-guns they just captured. Only six of the 40 men made it back to the British positions. In the mêlée Tom Wintringham sustained a leg wound, and George Aitken took temporary control of the battalion. By nightfall only 160 still remained in the line.[29] With Wintringham injured, Fry captured, and Overton in tatters, the British Battalion was in an unenviable position. So the return from his sickbed of the experienced and widely respected Jock Cunningham, came not a moment too soon.
The third day of the battle, on the 14 February, brought a new assault on the British Battalion’s lines by a fresh Nationalist brigade, supported by tanks. Under severe crossfire and without any specialised equipment to combat the tanks, Jock Cunningham had little choice but to withdraw the battalion away from the sunken road. One of battalion (‘OR’) later described their desperate retreat:
About 1 p.m. I heard the tanks on our left…At that moment, a tank shell burst a few yards away. Across to the left a big tank, bigger than any of ours, loomed up. Behind it swarmed Moors. Their main fire was on the Spanish Company on our left. Simultaneously, the din on the right became terrific. Nothing could live in the face of such fire…In those days we had no anti-tank guns, no grenades, no anti-tank material. The left flank broke, and the rout spread to the whole line. The slaughter was terrible. One would see five men running abreast, and four of them suddenly crumple up… Here and there, little groups rallied to stem the Fascist advance. Five or six times, a little bunch of Number 1 Company under André Diamint held up the Moors. Finally, they too, had to give up the unequal fight.[30]
The Irish leader, Frank Ryan, wrote:
Dispirited by heavy casualties, by defeat, by lack of food, worn out by three days of gruelling fighting, our men appeared to have reached the end of their resistance.
Some were still straggling down the slopes from what had been, up to an hour ago, the front line. And now, there was no line, nothing between the Madrid road and the Fascists but disorganised groups of weary, war-wrecked men. After three days of terrific struggle, the superior numbers, the superior armaments of the Fascists had routed them. All, as they came back, had similar stories to tell: of comrades dead, of conditions that were more than flesh and blood could stand, of weariness they found hard to resist.[31]
With the British machine-guns crushed underneath the tanks, the desperately weakened British line finally broke and the volunteers retreated in small groups back down the slope towards the Chinchón road.
But here they were stopped by Lieutenant-Colonel Gal, the commander of the 15 International Brigade. He explained to them that they were the only troops between the rebels and the Valencia Road.[32] Despite their physical and mental exhaustion, 140 volunteers marched back with Jock Cunningham and Frank Ryan to try to recapture their lost positions. Under no illusions about the situation they were walking into, the volunteers marched, singing the Internationale to bolster their spirits, and picking up stragglers on the way.[33]
Sounding suspiciously like a Comintern propaganda creation, the story of what became known as ‘the great rally’ is nevertheless corroborated by many witnesses. and has become an powerful image of the British Battalion’s involvement in Spain.[34] There is no doubt that, as Hugh Thomas admitted, ‘It was a brave performance’.[35] The volunteers’ courage, and the deception that enabled them to fool the rebel forces into thinking they were faced by more than a handful of men, held the line at a critical moment for the Republic. It was a lucky break for the battalion, as Tom Wintringham described:
There were no Republican forces to the south of the British Battalion to their left. However, this weakness was disguised by the stubborn defence of Suicide Hill. This is the justification, the achievement, of the defence of Suicide Hill. We held our own half-mile or more; we masked the utter weakness, emptiness, of the three miles south of us.[36]… A battalion that does not know how to be defeated deserves an occasional stroke of luck…The biggest and best organized drive that Franco had so far made had been stopped – within a few miles of its starting place. Arganda Bridge was ours. The Madrid-Valencia Road was ours. Madrid lived.[37]
The Nationalist forces, fooled into believing that fresh reinforcements had been brought up to the front, retreated back to their earlier positions. During the night of 14 to 15 February, Spanish units were brought up, and the gap in the line was finally plugged. Both sides dug defensive fortifications and a stalemate ensued, which neither side was able to overcome. The positions remained virtually static for the rest of the war.
However, it was not the end of the carnage, with men continuing to be killed, either by snipers, or in futile attempts to break the deadlock. One of the most costly came shortly after the arrival on the front of the American Lincoln Battalion, and who played a central role in the attack.
Almost two weeks after the end of the three day battle, on 27 February, Colonel Gal launched an attack on the strongly held front between San Martín and Pingarrón. Facing well-directed Nationalist machine-gun fire, many volunteers refused to advance and those who did were shot to pieces. This was the Americans’ first action and they suffered terribly, losing 120 killed and 175 wounded. Among the dead was the Irish poet Charlie Donnelly. Manchester volunteer Charles Morgan was also involved in the disastrous attack:
We were all in trenches, we were told on the morning that there would be air cover, there would be a bombardment. There was neither. We were just rushed over the top to face crossfire and machine-guns. It was a slaughter. We didn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance! I saw lads, my comrades that I’d learnt to love, die and some of these boys never fired a bloody shot.[38]
As Jud Colman, a comrade of Morgan from the Manchester Young Communist League, explained, ‘Most of the attacks were almost suicidal, because there’s no way you can send men against machine-guns without losing some. It was just physically impossible’.[39]
Long portrayed by many supporters of the Brigades as a triumph, the battle in fact merely stemmed the fascist advance. It also provided a brutal wake-up call for those who believed that the rightness of their cause would ensure the Republic’s victory. As the French writer, author and philosopher Albert Camus later wrote:
It was in Spain that men learned that one can be right and still be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own reward.
Yet, despite this, the international Brigades fought on. The Spanish Republic fought on. Indeed, the following month, the Republican army would score a stunning victory at Guadalajara, bringing hope that eventually right could triumph over might. Sadly, the next major action of the British Battalion in Spain, the battle of Brunete in the full heat of the Spanish summer, would suggest otherwise.
[1] Nathan had served, probably as an auxiliary, with the Black and Tans in Ireland in the 1920s and strong rumours linked him to involvement in a hit squad that murdered two prominent members of Sinn Fein; George Clancy, the former Lord Mayor of Limerick and George O’Callaghan, the ex-mayor in May 1921. See Richard Bennett, ‘Portrait of a Killer’, New Statesman, 24 March 1961 pp.471-472. According to Joe Monks, one of the Irish volunteers, Nathan admitted to having worked for British intelligence in Limerick. Interview with Joe Monks, IWMSA 11303/4/1. (However, as Kieron Punch points out, Irish hatred of Nathan has probably been exaggerated. During his time in Spain, Nathan gained the reputation as a brave, efficient and talented officer which, for most volunteers, probably more than compensated for his murky past. Kieron Punch, ‘Did Irish recoil from a ‘Black and Tan’ in the International Brigades?’ ALBA. On-line posting. http://forums.nyu.edu. 6 December, 2002). McCartney was also rumoured to have served in the Black and Tans in Ireland. Richard Bennett in The Black and Tans, London: Edward Hulton, 1959, p.147 states that the Black and Tan auxiliaries, ‘used the Long Bar at the Trocadero as their headquarters, where they were advised by their ringleader, who later achieved a certain notoriety as a Soviet agent, to threaten to ‘blow the gaff’ about conditions in Ireland’. This may be a reference to McCartney.
[2] Gal’s real name was actually Janos Galicz. He was a naturalised Russian, born in Austro-Hungary. Thomas, Spanish Civil War, pp.590-591 and Richardson, p.72.
[3] Walter Gregory states of ?opi? that, ‘As an intelligent man with a good appreciation of the tactics and strategy of warfare, ?opi? was ideally suited to take command of the brigade. His expertise, coupled with his popularity, assured him of our respect and admiration. Indeed, I cannot remember ?opi? being the subject of criticism.’ Gregory, p.58.
[4] Alexander, p.65.
[5] As John Halstead and Barry McGoughlin state, ‘Of the 11 battalion political commissars in the 57th, British Battalion of the 15th Brigade, nine, if not all, had been sent to the ILS [International Lenin School in Moscow] or had worked in the Comintern bureaucracy in Moscow. They were, in chronological order: Douglas Springhall, George Aitken, Bert Williams, George Coyle, Jack Roberts, Ernest Torrance, James Bourne, Eric Whalley, Harry Dobson, Walter Tapsell and Bob Cooney.’ John Halstead and Barry McLoughlin, ‘British and Irish Students at the International Lenin School, Moscow, 1926-37’, Conference Paper, Manchester, April 2001, p.3. Ralph Fox, the intellectual founder of the Left Review, with Tom Wintringham and Daily Worker journalist who was killed at Lopera in December 1936 and other senior party figures, such as the brigade commissar Peter Kerrigan, had also studied at Moscow.
[6] Wintringham, p.??
[7] Gurney, Crusade in Spain, p.85.
[8] The Republican Government had ‘divisively and controversially’ moved itself to Valencia on the 6 November 1936 when it looked at though the capital city might well fall to the rebels. Preston, Concise History, p.117.
[9] Beevor, The Battle for Spain, p.209.
[10] Interview with Patrick Curry, IWMSA 799/3/1 and Alexander, p.94.
[11] Gregory, p.44.
[12] Wintringham, English Captain, p.65.
[13] Ibid.
[14] No.1 Company was made up of a combination of those who had fought at Las Rozas, and new untrained volunteers who arrived shortly before the battle. According to Jud Colman who had fought with No. 1 Company at Lopera and Las Rozas, No 1 Company were mainly kept together and became the brigade guard charged with guarding the headquarters, and didn’t fight as much at Jarama as many other groups. ‘I was very relieved. I’m not that sort of a hero. I’d be a fool if I was.’ Interview with Julius Colman, IWMSA 14575/3/2.
[15] Tom Wintringham’s description of the engagement contains a useful sketch map of the positions during the morning of 12 February 1937. See Wintringham, p.62.
[16] As battle-hardened crack soldiers, the Moroccan soldiers were used as shock troops by the rebels, just as the International Brigades were for the Republicans. Many other volunteers refer to the terror of coming up against the Moors. See for example, interview with David Anderson, in MacDougall, p.94.
[17] Gurney, p.104 and p.108.
[18] The problem was a symptom of the Republican Army’s forced dependence on antiquated military supplies. The belts were the correct type for Maxim machine-guns, and the bullets were also for Maxims, but for guns of a more modern design than the German Maxims the British were equipped with. Wintringham, p.69.
[19] Gurney, p.107.
[20] Account by Frank Ryan from Ryan, XV International Brigade, p.62.
[21] Wintringham, English Captain, pp.76-7.
[22] As Charlesworth retreated he also joined the long list of casualties when he was blown into the air by an artillery shell. After a spell in hospital he rejoined the battalion and became its postman. Interview with Albert Charlesworth, IWMSA 798/4/1.
[23] Alexander, p.97. Rust estimates that, including officers and members of the Machine-Gun Company, a total of 275 British were still in action by the end of the first day. Rust, p.46.
[24] Gurney, pp.113-114.
[25] Interview with George Aitken, IWMSA 10357/3/1. One disgruntled volunteer later wrote his memoirs anonymously and referred significantly to this event in an attempt to discredit the battalion. Anon, In Spain with the International Brigade: A personal narrative, London: Burns Oates and Washborne, 1938, p. 24.
[26] Rust, p.47.
[27] See written reports from members of the machine-gun company captured that day; Harold Fry, Bert Levy Donald Renton, Charles West and Basil Abrahams undated, NMLH Manchester, CP/IND/POLL/2/5-6. They are bitterly hostile and critical of Overton, describing how he withdrew his company after two shells had fallen to their right and claimed Overton had stated, ‘God Damn it! It is too bloody hot here; I am getting out of it.’ See also interview with George Aitken, IWMSA 10357/3/1. Aitken claims that it was later rumoured that Overton threw a Mills bomb into the company’s ammunition dump to justify the retreat.
Clearly Overton panicked at Jarama, but some responsibility must also lie with his commanders, for Overton’s weakness had been recognised before the battle. Tom Wintringham him described as ‘a fool, a romantic, a bluffer who wanted to be courageous but had lived too easily, too softly’ and went on to admit that, ‘Macartney, myself, Springhall- we had already to some extent seen through O. at Madrigueras.’ Wintringham, pp.109-110.
[28] There are discrepancies between differing accounts over the numbers captured at Jarama on 13 February 1937. Bill Alexander states that there were 30 captured (p.183), whereas James Maley- who was himself captured that day- states that the number was 28. Interview with James Waley, IWMSA 11947/3/2. My research support’s Alexander’s findings. Carl Geiser lists 27 of the 30 in his study of the American prisoners-of-war Prisoners of the Good Fight, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill, 1986, pp.270-271 note 7. The three he missed were a volunteer named Struthers or Stuhldeer, John Bruce from Alexandria and S. J. Giles from Liverpool. In addition, two volunteers, Jack Flynn and Fred Jones, were captured at the end of February.
[29] This total includes the remaining few remaining members of the Machine-Gun Company.
[30] Account by ‘O.R.’ from Ryan, XV International Brigade, p.57.
[31] Account by Frank Ryan from Ryan, XV International Brigade, p.58.
[32] Unknown to many of the British at the time, there were also no troops to their left, where a Spanish cavalry regiment was supposed to be. This made their desperate defence extremely critical for the Republic. ‘There were no troops to the south of the English…all our reserves were up to the north…It would have been impossible to stop a Fascist attack south of us. There was our weak spot.’ Gurney, pp.113-114. Fortunately for the British Battalion, and for the Spanish Republic, the rebel forces, ‘did not find this weak spot until February 14th or 15th, when it was no longer very weak’. As Tom Wintringham argues, ‘That is the justification, the achievement, of the defence of Suicide Hill. We held our own half-mile or more; we masked the utter weakness, emptiness, of the three miles south of us.’ Wintringham, p.82.
[33] Here too, George Aitken describes using his pistol to encourage a small number of reluctant volunteers back to the front. Interview with George Aitken, IWMSA 10357/3/1.
[34] An account by Frank Graham appears in his book on Jarama. It states: ‘The events which followed were some of the most glorious in British working-class history. As these men began to climb the hill again, they broke spontaneously into the Internationale. These soldiers who had previously left the front line and gone some distance stopped in surprise, and those who were sitting on the sides of the slope, jumped up to look at this strange band of men, bearded, dirty, ragged, covered with blood, who after three days’ hard fighting were proudly marching along. They broke into applause and they too began to sing. The whole mountainside echoed with their song, the song of struggle. More and more men began to join the marching column. It was a real regrouping!’ Frank Graham, p.24. Similar accounts of ‘The Great Rally’ appear in Rust, pp.51-54 and Ryan, pp.58-61.
[35] Thomas, Spanish Civil War, p.592. Robert Stradling agrees: ‘Although the British Battalion was neither significantly outnumbered nor outgunned by the forces actually facing it, its achievement was nonetheless an epic one. The assertion may ultimately be incapable of proof, but this writer is confident that its conduct- especially on 12 February- represents the greatest single contribution to the victory of Jarama, and thus to the survival of Madrid.’ Stradling, Irish and the Spanish Civil War, p. 166.
[36] Wintringham, English Captain, p.82.
[37] Wintringham, English Captain, p.117. As Wintringham notes, more significant than good fortune were the vigorous attacks of the Dimitrov battalion to the north of the British, who eventually pushed the Rebels back to the river valley gorge.
[38] Interview with Charles Morgan, IWMSA 10362/2/1.
[39] Interview with Jud Colman, IWMSA 14575/3/3.
Myths of the International Brigades
The article appears in the Bulletin of Spanish Studies: Hispanic Studies and Researches on Spain, Portugal and Latin America, Volume 91, Issue 1-2, 2014.
Abstract
Ever since the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, myths and misconceptions have surrounded the International Brigades, the volunteers from around the world who came to the defence of the Spanish Republic. Their creation, composition, and role in the war itself have all been hotly debated, with critics arguing that the International Brigades were primarily a ‘Comintern Army’, a tool of Soviet expansionism, in which any form of dissent was ruthlessly eliminated. Therefore, the discipline problems and consequent heavy-handed responses from the I.B. leadership are often seen as politically rather than militarily driven, despite the manifestly demoralizing nature of the war. Yet while a small number of volunteers were undoubtedly brutally treated, there was a much greater tolerance in the Brigades—certainly within the English-speaking battalions—than has often been suggested.
Philosophy Football’s ¡No Pasarán!
On 28 October 1938, the emotional departure from Spain of the foreign volunteers was marked by a huge farewell parade in Barcelona. The remnants of the International Brigades, a few thousand in all, led by military bands, set off nine abreast from the bull ring at the end of Diagonal, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. The 15th International Brigade, the last to be established, brought up the rear.
At the end of the parade, a huge rally was held at which important Republican figures, including President Manuel Azaña and Prime Minister Juan Negrín, expressed their thanks to the Internationals. The volunteers’ sacrifices had earned the eternal gratitude of the Spanish Republicans, eloquently expressed by Dolores Ibárruri (the legendary orator from Asturias, known as La Pasionaria) at a huge farewell parade held in Barcelona on 28 October 1938. ‘We shall not forget you,’ she had assured them, promising that, one day, they would be welcomed back to a free, democratic Spain:
“Those of you who have no country will find one, those of you deprived of friendship will find friends and all of you will find the love, affection and gratitude of the whole of the Spanish People.”
A month and a half later, on 7 December 1938, the surviving members of the British Battalion of the 15th International Brigade arrived back on British soil, having endured a very rough crossing from Dieppe to Newhaven. They hardly received a heroes’ welcome; instead they were met with an interrogation by customs and Foreign Office officials, as representatives of the British security services looked on. Put on a train to London, the exhausted soldiers, many of them heavily bandaged and a number on crutches, disembarked to find a very different welcome at Victoria Station. A vast crowd of family members, friends and supporters had assembled to welcome them home. Among the waving Union Jacks were flags bearing the names of British trade unions and left-wing political organisations. Others bore one simple phrase: ‘¡No pasarán!’
To commemorate this homecoming, ‘sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction’, Philosophy Football, in association with the IBMT and Thompsons Solicitors, organised a gala evening at the Rich Mix arts centre in London on 7 December 2013.
The evening began with Maxine Peake’s passionate rendition of La Pasionaria’s farewell speech to the International Brigades, followed by performances by poet Francesca Beard and singer Maddy Carty, both of whom had been commissioned to produce work specifically for this event.
I followed a typically ardent delivery from Bob Crow, the General Secretary of the RMT. Not an easy task. Fortunately, I was able to begin by showing film of the British volunteers returing from Spain in 1938, which the BFI had generously digitised especially for the event (a low resolution version of the film can be found online). The film is without a soundtrack, but on IBMT Secretary Jim Jump’s suggestion, the Philosophy Football team added an entirely appropriate score: the first movement of Benjamin Britten’s ‘Ballad of Heroes’, which was composed in honour of the volunteers who died in Spain. The combination of the film and music was absolutely electrifying. When it was first performed in April 1939, the music was accompanied by the words of poet Randall Swingler and I felt it was entirely appropriate to precede my talk by reading them:
You who stand at your doors, wiping hands on aprons,
You who lean at the corner saying ‘We have done our best’,
You who shrug your shoulders and you who smile
To conceal your life’s despair and its evil taste,
To you we speak, you numberless Englishmen,
To remind you of the greatness still among you
Created by these men who go from your towns
To fight for peace, for liberty, and for you.
They were men who hated death and loved life,
Who were afraid, and fought against their fear.
Men who wish’d to create and not to destroy,
But knew the time must come to destroy the destroyer.
For they have restored your power and pride,
Your life is yours, for which they died.
My (occasionally bleak) account on the experiences of the British fighting fascism between 1932 and 1945 in Britain, Spain and Europe followed, leading in to a brief discussion with writers Paul Mason and Daniel Trilling, Stop the War campaigner Salma Yaqoob and Olga Abasolo from Spain’s Los Indignados movement.
After the interval, comedian Mark Steel‘s set took well-aimed and often very funny pot-shots at Margaret Thatcher, north Londoners and Chelsea supporters (amongst others), all neatly linked by a diatribe on the difficulty of adapting to change. Socialist R’n’B band Thee Faction and a DJ set from PanditG completed what was, by all accounts, a very successful and highly enjoyable night.
Volunteers in Syria and the Spanish Civil War
In May 2013 an article entitled, ‘Homage to Latakia’ appeared in the Canadian national weekly current affairs magazine Maclean’s. Written by historian and journalist, Michael Petrou, the piece argued passionately for intervention in Syria on humanitarian grounds and drew comparisons with the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, when the western powers had refused to intervene. However, in the six months since the article appeared – chemical weapons inspections aside – the west has not shown any great enthusiasm for doing so.
While debates on the advisedness – or not – of intervention continue, so does a tendency, within the media in particular, to view the Syrian conflict through the prism of the Spanish Civil War. As with many of these comparative exercises, while it’s interesting to engage in, I’m not convinced how useful it actually is.
There are certainly parallels which can be drawn; the most glaring being that in both Syria and Spain foreign powers provided significant military support, while the western powers watched on. The disparate and fragile nature of the coalition facing Assad’s military junta seems, on the surface, to echo Spain, but here too we should exercise caution. (It seems to me the situation in Egypt is actually a closer parallel, where a military coup was launched against a legally elected government).
The most recent attempt to compare Syria with Spain was on 24 November 2013, when I participated in a discussion for Radio Four’s The World This Weekend (you can listen to my brief interview by clicking the audio-player above). The interviewer, Shaun Ley, was particularly interested to know, first, why 2500 men and women from Britain would volunteer for a war in Spain, given that it was a country of which most of them knew very little and, second, in the light of the experiences of those returning from Spain seventy-five years ago, how any survivors from the 200 or so Britons presently fighting in Libya might be viewed on their return.
Answering the first question is straightforward and clearly demonstrates the inappropriateness of comparing British Islamic jihadists fighting in Syria with the men and women who served in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. The overwhelming majority of volunteers in Spain were there because they had watched with growing alarm the rise of fascism across Europe in general and in Britain in particular. For these anti-fascists, determined to do what they could to halt the fascist tide, Spain was just the latest battlefield in the wider war against fascism. As George Green, a classical musician from Stockport, explained in a letter home to his family:
“Mother dear, we’re not militarists, nor adventurers nor professional soldiers. But a few days ago on the hills the other side of the Ebro, I’ve seen a few unemployed lads from the Clyde, and frightened clerks from Willesden stand up (without fortified positions) against an artillery barrage that professional soldiers could not stand up to. And they did it because to hold the line here and now means that we can prevent this battle being fought again on Hampstead Heath or the hills of Derbyshire.”
Interestingly, Shaun’s second question did tease out one similarity. As I explained, when the veterans of the Spanish war returned to Britain in December 1938, they faced grave suspicion from many within the British government and security services. Though the government recognised that there was little chance of successfully prosecuting volunteers for Spain under the archaic Foreign Enlistment Act, this should not be seen as a general sympathy for their cause within the British establishment. On the contrary, many veterans found their attempts to volunteer for the armed forces in the Second World War blocked and others described experiencing discrimination in their workplaces for many years after. Whether any of the 400 or so British Muslims fighting in Syria will ever return to Britain is not clear. However, it is probably safe to say that, if they do, the British security services will view them with every bit as much suspicion. In 1938 the veterans were described as having been ‘imbued with revolutionary sentiments’; in 2013 they will have been ‘radicalised’. The language may be different but, in this aspect at least, the experiences of the two utterly different groups of volunteers may be very much the same.
Paperback edition of Unlikely Warriors
The paperback edition of Unlikely Warriors was published by Aurum Press on 1 April 2014. It is available from all good bookshops and online sellers.
‘When a Nationalist military uprising was launched in Spain in July 1936, the Spanish Republic’s desperate pleas for assistance from the leaders of Britain and France fell on deaf ears. Appalled at the prospect of another European democracy succumbing to fascism, volunteers from across the Continent and beyond flocked to Spain’s aid, many to join the International Brigades.
More than 2,500 of these men and women came from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, and contrary to popular myth theirs was not an army of adventurers, poets and public school idealists. Overwhelmingly they hailed from modest working class backgrounds, leaving behind their livelihoods and their families to fight in a brutal civil war on foreign soil. Some 500 of them never returned home.
In this inspiring and moving oral history, Richard Baxell weaves together a diverse array of testimony to tell the remarkable story of the Britons who took up arms against General Franco. Drawing on his own extensive interviews with survivors, research in archives across Britain, Spain and Russia, as well as first-hand accounts by writers both famous and unknown, Unlikely Warriors presents a startling new interpretation of the Spanish Civil War and follows a band of ordinary men and women who made an extraordinary choice.’
‘The definitive work on the British volunteers … superbly written and deeply moving.’ (Paul Preston, author of The Spanish Holocaust)
‘Painstaking miniatures of the uncontroversial heroism of doomed men.’ (Gideon-Lewis-Kraus in the London Review of Books)
‘A marvellously accessible history of the British volunteers who joined the struggle against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Fascinating.’ (Victoria Hislop, author of The Return)
‘A remarkable accomplishment … a must-read for anyone interested in Spain and its recent history.’ (Caroline Angus Baker, author of the ‘Secrets of Spain’ series of novels)
‘A well researched, largely balanced, highly readable and accessible narrative of what remains a compelling story.’ (Lewis Mates in Contemporary British History)
‘Benefiting from an impressive range of research, this is an extraordinary story of heroism, tragedy and sacrifice.’ (History of War)
‘An oral history of remarkable power.’ (Good Book Guide)
‘Well researched and luminously written.’ (Francis Beckett in The Tablet)
‘A colourful, heroic, tragic and deeply troubling tale.’ (Peter Stansky in The Volunteer)
‘Authoritative.’ (Military History Monthly)
‘Beautifully written … a totally absorbing read about incredible people whose like we will probably never see again.’ (Morning Star)
Click below for customer reviews:
Jack Jones centenary, 5 October 2013
The following lecture was delived at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, as part of an event to commemorate the centenary of Jack Jones’ birth.
Jack Jones and the Spanish Civil War
Seventy-five years ago, a young trade unionist and Labour councillor from Liverpool took the momentous decision to leave his home and family to fight in a war in a country he had never seen. The young man was, of course, Jack Jones. To some contemporary audiences, this can seem an astonishing thing to do, yet for those who volunteered to fight at the time, it was often a simple and straight-forward decision. The issue was put starkly by the English poet, Stephen Spender, for whom the war in Spain was ‘an absolute choice between good and evil.’ The 1930s, wrote a volunteer from Wembley (John Bassett), were ‘a time of hope, when a man with a rifle had some power to divert the tide of human affairs.’
The reasons that lay behind the decision of some 2500 men and women from Britain and Ireland to go to Spain had more to do with events outside the country than within. While the vast majority of the volunteers from Britain knew little of Spanish politics, they certainly had personal experience of the powerful forces engulfing Europe in the 1930s, which had encouraged many to shift politically to the left. First had come the Great Depression, the catastrophic economic crisis that followed the stock market crash of 1929 and put over two million Britons out of work by 1930.
Alongside the economic turmoil came a political storm, one that had been growing since the end of the First World War and now swept across Europe. The birth of Mussolini’s fascist state in 1922 was followed by the establishment of other European dictatorships, most significantly in Germany following Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship in 1933. By the mid-1930s, essentially constitutional states such as France were themselves seemingly under threat. And, of course, fascism was not just a continental phenomenon. In Britain, Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (known as the Blackshirts) which had been founded in October 1932, appeared to present a similar threat to democracy. Mosley’ Blackshirt thugs were involved in vicious attacks on opponents, in particular in Jewish neighbourhoods such as Cheetham in Manchester and London’s east-end.
So, when on 17 July 1936, a military uprising was launched in Spain in order to overthrow the democratically elected government, Spain appeared to be the latest country about to succumb. However, while the rising scored some initial successes, it failed to capture significant parts of Spain, including the cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Bilbao. Here opponents of the rising took to the streets, erected barricades and confronted the insurgents under the rallying cry ¡No pasarán! (They shall not pass).
Faced with determined opposition, the generals saw that their rebellion was in real danger of being defeated. With their best soldiers, Franco’s elite Army of Africa, trapped in Morocco, the Rebel officers turned to fascist Italy and Nazi Germany for assistance. After some hesitation, both Hitler and Mussolini sent help, providing vital aircraft to ferry Franco’s troops across the Strait of Gibraltar onto the peninsula, where they were able to head rapidly north, leaving a trail of slaughter and destruction in their wake.
Desperate pleas for assistance from the Spanish Republican government, initially regarded with sympathy by France, met with firm opposition from Stanley Baldwin’s national government in Britain. Determined to avoid a wider European conflagration, and maintaining that appeasement of Germany and Italy was the best means of preventing it, the European democracies chose not to come to the Republic’s aid. Instead a ‘non-intervention agreement’ was created, to which Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and the USSR all signed up – in writing at least.
Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that the agreement strongly favoured the Rebels, who continued to receive covert assistance from Germany and Italy. Indeed, for many supporters of the Spanish government, the non-intervention pact was the real villain of the story, and George Orwell later argued that the fate of the Republic ‘was settled in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin – at any rate not in Spain’.
So for Jack and other supporters of the Spanish Republic the war was never seen as a domestic conflict. The view is often expressed in interviews with brigaders, that ‘Although the war was fought exclusively on Spanish soil, I never saw it as a domestic conflict.’ To the volunteers, Spain’s struggle transcended national boundaries, a perspective lucidly expressed by the sculptor, Jason Gurney from London, who arrived in Spain in December 1936:
“The Spanish Civil war seemed to provide the chance for a single individual to take a positive and effective stand on an issue which appeared to be absolutely clear. Either you were opposed to the growth of Fascism and you went out to fight it, or you acquiesced in its crimes and were guilty of permitting its growth…for myself and many others like me it was a war of principle, and principles do not have a national boundary.” (Jason Gurney, Crusade in Spain, p.36.)
Therefore fighting fascism in Spain would help the fight against fascism across Europe: conversely a victory for Franco was seen, by extension, as a victory for Hitler. The rapid and determined support for the Spanish Rebels by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy provided anti-fascists with convincing evidence for a connection between the regimes.
Around the world supporters of the Spanish Republic held meetings and demonstrations, collected food, money and medical supplies. However, some felt that sending help and money was not enough. Spain needed arms, as one young Spaniard argued: ‘We Spaniards are greatly thankful for your charity and your lint and your ointments which you send us to repair Don Quixote’s wounds; but we would be much more thankful if you were to outfit him with a new lance and an up-to-date shield.’
Some anti-fascists agreed and took the decision to volunteer to go to Spain, determined to seize this opportunity to halt the spread of authoritarian right-wing regimes across Europe. As Jack explained:
“The awful realisation that black fascism was on the march right across Europe created a strong desire to act. The march had started with Mussolini and had gained terrible momentum with Hitler and was being carried forward by Franco. For most young people there was a feeling of frustration, but some determined to do anything that seemed possible, even if it meant death, to try to stop the spread of fascism…This was Fascist progression. It was real and it had to be stopped.” (Introduction by Jack Jones in Judith Cook, Apprentices of Freedom, pp.vii-ix.)
The first volunteers consisted mainly of German and Italian anti-fascists, plus some British, French and Polish left-wingers. Sprinkled among the Spanish defenders at the rate of one to four, the brigaders both boosted their morale and trained them in the use of weapons such as machine-guns. The arrival of a well-disciplined group of soldiers provided an important psychological boost to the Republican forces. To many observers’ surprise, the defenders of Madrid managed to halt the advance of General Franco’s forces at the gates of the Spanish capital.
Yet when Jack first approached the Aid Spain Office in Liverpool’s Haymarket in order to offer his services to the Spanish Republic, he was turned down, despite having experience in the Territorial Army. Instead, he was told that he would be of more use staying in Britain and working on behalf of the Spanish Republic, including helping to recruit volunteers for the International Brigades.
However, after several requests, in early 1938 Jack’s efforts to volunteer were finally rewarded and permission was granted for him to go. However, it was not easy to get to Spain, for volunteering for the Spanish war had been made illegal in Britain, so the journey had to be undertaken in secret. Jack’s organisational experience meant that he was sufficiently trusted to be put in charge of a group of British volunteers. They followed the by now well-trodden route: from London by train and boat to the main recruiting centre for the International Brigades in Paris and then on by train once again to Perpignan in southern France.
With the border between France and Spain closed, volunteers were forced to undertake an exhausting nine hour climb over the Pyrenees to get into Spain – carried out at night to avoid the patrols set up to catch them. Jack’s group arrived in Spain in March 1938. Upon his arrival he was given some brief training in the fort at Figueras in northern Catalonia, before being allowed to carry on to Barcelona to deliver a letter he was carrying from Ernest Bevin to representatives of the socialist trade union, the UGT. After delivering the letter, Jack briefly joined a UGT unit fighting on Aragon front [near Lerida], an experience he later described in his autobiography, Union Man:
“My character was hardened by many experiences at that time but one incident stands out vividly in my memory. ‘Yo lucha para Libertad! (‘I fight for liberty’) shouted the old Spaniard, digging in alongside me. The ground was hard and stony and with the aid of a trenching tool it was possible to dig only a shallow strip and use what natural cover was available. Laying his trenching tool on the ground, he picked up his rifle to fire at the opposing force. We faced a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire and shells came flying over at the same time. I looked at the unlikely soldier by my side and marvelled at his courage. He had a gnarled bronze face, a heavy body, and was wearing the cap and overalls of a working man. He was afraid of nothing. It turned out that he was an anarchist, but he typified for me the resolve of so many Spaniards who hated the idea of a Fascist take-over. [But] in his courage he was reckless, a recklessness which did for him, for he was killed within minutes of his picking up his rifle and firing a few shots.” (Jack Jones, Union Man, 2008, p. 68.)
Despite choosing to wear a black leather jacket – he later admitted it was not exactly the most effective form of camouflage – Jack survived a period of service with the Spanish UGT unit, before rejoining his compatriots. Jack Jones from Liverpool became volunteer number 1788 of the British Battalion of the 15 International Brigade.
Probably due more to his political, than military experience, he was appointed as political commissar to the No. 1 Major Atlee Company. Jack described his role as ‘a combination of welfare advisor and political advisor’; but he would have been unusual if he had not been informed that he should both keep watch over – and a watch on – the men in his company. Based primarily on the model of the Soviet Red Army, the political commissars operated as a parallel command structure to the military and were responsible for both morale and discipline within the Communist-dominated International Brigades.
In many ways it was not an auspicious time to join the International Brigades. The appalling number of casualties in the battles of Jarama and Brunete around Madrid the previous year, meant that those who arrived in 1938 could have no illusions of the danger they faced. Furthermore, the massive offensive in Aragon launched by Franco at the end of February 1938 had ended with his soldiers dancing triumphantly in the Mediterranean at Viñaroz, splitting the Republican zone in two.
During the chaotic retreats at least 100 members of the British Battalion were killed and many more wounded. A similar number were captured and imprisoned in prisoner of war camps. The following photograph was taken of the defiant British survivors responding to a story in a pro-Franco British newspaper which had triumphantly announced the annihilation of the International Brigades.
Yet, when Jack joined the battalion in the summer of 1938, he found the men in training at Fontanella, a pretty valley surrounded by rugged hills and mountains near the Catalonian village of Marsa. The volunteers christened it ‘Chabola Valley’ after the small rough shelters they constructed under the hazelnut bushes that proliferated in the barrancos, the small dried up river gullies.
The volunteers were kept busy with ‘training, marching or rifle practice’ and ‘the procedures for crossing rivers’, while at night one of the volunteers who was a particularly strong swimmer (Lewis Clive) swam clandestinely across the Ebro to reconnoitre the Nationalist positions. Benefiting from regular food and sleep, and safe from the daily risk of death, some came to see this as one of their most pleasant periods in Spain, as one Scottish member of the battalion described: ‘In this happy existence, which was really enjoyable, we were out in the fresh air and we were sleeping under the open sky. The weather was fairly good and we were getting plenty of exercise and plenty of food.’
On 8 July the battalion was visited by a travelling van fitted out with hot showers. Many volunteers also took the opportunity to lose themselves in a book. Their ranks included a number of voracious readers and they had amassed a huge library of English books; these were stored at a nearby hacienda, where they managed to rig up electric lighting and could read long into the night. ‘It was a strange, argumentative army of thinkers,’ remembered one young Briton. Jack described his time at Chavola Valley to the historian Max Arthur:
“Life wasn’t easy, but a good spirit prevailed in the ranks. Food was short; our main meals consisted of beans, lentils and chickpeas, sometimes beans with dried fish in a stew, or beans with mule meat or old goat, stewed and topped off with rough – very rough – red wine. Some of the lads visited an old chap in a nearby village who, allegedly, made stew from mice, but nobody would admit to having tasted it. Needless to say, there were no cats or dogs around!” (Interview with Jack Jones in Max Arthur, The Real Band of Brothers, p. 137.)
Towards the end of July 1938, the period of training finally came to an end. Now promoted to Commissar of Number Four Company, Jack and his comrades in the International Brigades were to be part of a huge – and ambitious – Republican offensive back across the River Ebro.
During the nights of 23 and 24 July 1938, the British Battalion marched nearly thirty kilometres to their crossing point over the river near Ascó. Early the following morning, the British followed the Canadian battalion over the river, most of them taken over in small rowing boats, while others crossed on pontoon bridges rapidly erected during the morning by Republican engineers.
Initially, the Republican soldiers found the Nationalists unprepared and they were able to advance rapidly. By the afternoon of 25 July, Jack and the other British volunteers were within two kilometres of the village of Corbera, that lay between them and their principal target, the small town of Gandesa, the key to the Ebro offensive.
However, within two hours of the first troops crossing, Nationalist aeroplanes had begun attacking the temporary bridges over the river. A lack of supplies, especially food and water, were becoming problematic as the battalion’s supply line became dangerously over-extended. Nevertheless, in increasingly difficult conditions, the battalion pressed on towards Gandesa. As Spanish forces battered the town itself, the British Battalion was ordered to capture a hill, just over a kilometre to the east, nicknamed ‘The Pimple’ by the British. The Pimple (Hill 481) overlooked Gandesa, and though not the highest hill in the vicinity, its capture was vital if the attack on the town was to stand any chance of success. Unfortunately, Franco had by now brought up reinforcements and the attacking Republican forces met with extremely fierce resistance, particularly aircraft and artillery fire. The volunteers in the battalion faced what one described as ‘a withering, murderous reply of shells, rifle and machine gun fire’ from the resolute defenders on Hill 481 and from Nationalist positions on the surrounding heights and on top of high buildings within Gandesa itself. Between 27 July and 3 August, in searing heat, the battalion launched increasingly desperate assaults on the hill, but all were repulsed, as Jack sadly recalled, ‘at great cost’.
Even for men hardened to the brutal realities of warfare, the number of casualties sustained on Hill 481 was deeply shocking. Many of them were popular, long-standing members of the battalion, who had fought in Spain since the very creation of the battalion eighteen months earlier. One of many casualties of the first day’s fighting on the hill was Jack himself, as he describes:
“Once more I had clambered up the hill with my comrades, taking cover where we could and firing at the enemy wherever he appeared. The bullets of the snipers whizzed over, grenades and shells were striking the ground, throwing up earth and dust and showering us with shrapnel. Suddenly my shoulder and right arm went numb. Blood gushed from my shoulder and I couldn’t lift my rifle. I could do nothing but lie where I was. Near me a comrade had been killed and I could hear the cries of others, complaining of their wounds. While I was lying there, to make things worse, a spray of shrapnel hit my right arm. The stretcher bearers were doing their best but could hardly keep up with the number of casualties. As night fell I made my own way, crawling to the bottom of the hill. I was taken with other wounded men down the line to an emergency field hospital at Mora del Ebro where I was given an anti-tetanus injection. The place was like an abbatoir; there was blood and the smell of blood everywhere.” (Jack Jones, Union Man, 1986, pp. 75–6.)
Transferred from hospital to hospital, it soon became clear that Jack’s wounds were not going to recover easily and the decision was taken to send him home. Jack was finally repatriated on 14 September 1938, and he left Spain accompanied by his friend and former company commander, the Irishman, Paddy O’Daire. Back home he was reunited with his fiancée Evelyn, the widow of his friend, George Brown, who had been killed whilst serving as the British Battalion’s political commissar at Brunete in July 1937. Jack & Evelyn married the following month, in October 1938.
His wounds healed, Jack returned, as he put it, to ‘the world of ships and cargoes and the human problems of the waterfront.’ But he continued to work for Spain and campaigned to bring an end to the western democracies’ policy of non-intervention. After the final defeat of the Republic in March 1939, Spanish seamen stranded in British seaports who did not want to return to Franco’s Spain sought – and secured – Jack’s help. His connections arranged their transportation to Argentina to begin new lives. He also kept in clandestine contact with the illegal trade union movement in Spain and provided help and legal assistance to those imprisoned by the Franco dictatorship. Following Franco’s death in 1975, Jack lent his support to the re-establishment of independent trade unions in Spain.
As Jack declared in the postscript to the 2008 edition of his autobiography, the cause of democracy in Spain and the contribution of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War remained important to him throughout his life. When Jack died in 2009, he was the President of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, a position he had held since its inception in 2001.
The following 2 minute video clip is of Jack Jones talking about his time in Spain, from his participation in the battle on Hill 481 near Gandesa, to his rather sobering assessment of the legacy of the Spanish war. The interviews are from David Leach’s Voices from a Mountain, 2001.
James Larkin ‘Jack’ Jones, 29 March 1913 – 21 April 2009.