Homage to Caledonia

by Gray, Daniel.

  An Edinburgh Spain Emergency Committee poster from 1939. While campaigns earlier on in the war focused on humanitarian aid alone, a military element was added in later appeals, as is the case here.

  The genteel Edinburgh of ‘tea hosts’ was a far cry from the grassroots, wall-advertised whist drives of Fife.

  A girl, aged 7 years, came into our bookshop last week, put a halfpenny on the counter and asked for one of our weekly guarantor cards as she was keeping her halfpennies to help the Spanish children. Another little girl came with her at the end of the week and handed over 1d. This little girl is not only going to save her pennies, but is organising among her little playmates to contribute to the support of the Spanish people.

  Another group who found young people willing to donate to the cause were the Glasgow Clarion Scouts. They organised a cycle relay to Barcelona, collecting money on their way through Scotland and England. Glaswegian cyclist Jack Shields remarked at the time: ‘It is an inspiration to see how ready the young people of this country are to respond to the appeal of Spain.’

  Not all fundraising required physical exertion. Cinema and theatre were used to highlight the Spanish republican cause and raise relief money. In February 1937, Maryhill Labour Club screened a film entitled The Defence of Madrid in front of a 500-strong audience. It was to set the tone for future broadcasts, as crowds flocked to see films like The International Column, They Shall Not Pass, and Behind the Spanish Lines, which were later shown to similar effect across Scotland.

  The Scottish People’s Film Association broadcast comparable films, raising £66 for aid over the summer of 1937. Glasgow Workers’ Theatre Group also sought to raise both the profile of the cause and funds, performing on stage and street. Their adaptation of Jack Lindsay’s On Guard for Spain was particularly successful, and toured nationwide.

  Indeed, the arts provided a constant source of fundraising. Paul Robeson’s performance in Glasgow was just one of many evenings organised to raise money through entertainment. Concerts typically involved a range of cabaret acts: the line-up for one such event, at Dixon Halls, Cathcart Road on 13 November 1938, included a choir, called the Greyfriars Quartet, soloist David Markson, Willie McLeod (a ‘wonder boy pianist’, according to the event’s poster), ‘Curious Comedy Couple’ Herman and Grant, and the Simpson Ray Girls, a ‘Talented Group of Child Dancers and Impersonators’.

  While that particular event was organised by the Spanish Medical Relief Committee specifically, other fundraising drives saw city-wide cooperation. On 13 December 1936, six lorries, filled with foodstuffs and medical equipment, left George Square headed for Spain. The convoy’s haul was collected after the Youth Foodship for Spain Committee had organised an appeal across Glaswegian aid groups. It was the first of many, proof that, on a local basis at least, different committees could work in unison.

  Further emphasising the spirit of solidarity, a second Spanish Market for the benefit of the SAU was held in October 1937, as a joint venture with the Basque Children’s Committee. Items made by Madrid women, such as fans, Toledo brooches and castanets, were sold to the Glasgow public and Spanish films screened. Day-to-day fundraising energies were focused on an Aid Spain shop at 11 Union Street, Glasgow. Opened by Hollywood star Raymond Massey, the shop was a receiving centre for donations of money, food, milk and medical supplies, as well as cash donations.

  Political meetings on the subject of Spain became commonplace in Glasgow. As a happy side-effect they acted as fundraisers, with buckets passed around for donations. In terms of attendance, the meetings were an overwhelming success; it seemed Glaswegians had become as fanatical about the Spanish republic as they were about Celtic and Rangers. Perhaps the apex of this came in 1938, when simultaneous gatherings filled the City and St Andrew’s Halls. Afterwards, both audiences marched on to the German consulate in protest at Nazi involvement in Spain. In Glasgow, the militant spirit of the NUWM, which was in itself active inside the Spanish aid movement, lived on throughout the civil war.

  Assistance for the republican effort in Spain did not just take the form of fundraising and campaigning. A broad solidarity movement grew, with many supplementing their theoretical and financial support by putting their skills into practice. The Glasgow Herald reported an example of this on 20 May 1938:

  A 1939 Edinburgh and District International Brigade Ex-members Association flyer. Brigaders such as Bob Cooney spoke of their experiences in Spain to raise the profile of aid appeals. Note the novel approach to the admission ‘fee’.

  It was authoritatively stated in Glasgow yesterday that numerous groups of engineers whose sympathies lie with the Spanish government are working in their spare time in various parts of the city to provide materials for the use of government forces in Spain.

  The article went on to assert that garages had been re-equipped to convert old cars into ambulances and motorbikes into dispatch vehicles, as well as construct mobile washing machines for soldiers on the front lines. This was yet another example of Glasgow’s wholehearted commitment to the cause. At times, it seems, the people of the city felt that they could single-handedly save Spain from Franco.

  Though Edinburgh’s aid movement was never on the scale of that in the west, the capital did make a significant contribution. The Daily Worker diligently reported some of the early individual contributions made, noting on 7 December, ‘Over £20 and two wedding rings were collected at a meeting in the Oddfellows Hall.’ On the 11th it reported that ‘Eight members of the Granton Young Communist League borrowed a barrow from the manager of the local Co-operative and collected 1 cwt. of food.’

  More officially, the aid movement in Scotland’s capital emanated from the Edinburgh and District Joint Committee for Spanish Relief. As Chairman of the group, Brigader Tom Murray’s wife Janet worked industriously to appeal to local people, organising and speaking at meetings and fundraising events such as December 1938’s Spanish Fiesta and Fair at Central Halls, establishing a Spain Shop on Leith Street, and plying local newspapers with letters pleading for assistance. Perhaps inspired by the work of her sister-in-law Annie Murray, Janet was particularly involved with gathering medical aid for Spain. She wrote to the Evening Dispatch outlining the guiding principles and work of her group and praising the spirit of support they had benefited from:

  [our] principal object at the moment is the collecting of drugs, instruments and bandages, from doctors, chemists and others. We gladly mention the generous cooperation we are receiving from the BMA and the Pharmaceutical Society. Wholesale firms help us in the task of collecting from shops and individuals. In a country where major operations frequently have to be performed without anaesthetics, the need for these supplies requires no further emphasis. May I say for the benefit of those with political scruples that in medicine and nursing the only criteria of service are suffering and need.

  Fundraising efforts in Edinburgh occasionally took a more genteel form than those in neighbouring areas like Glasgow; when the Edinburgh Basque Children’s Committee was formed in June 1937, it hosted a garden fete for the local great and good at the home of Lady Salvesen. This was in contrast too to the wholly grassroots aid movement that arose in Fife. As an example of the difference in campaign types, advertising methods perhaps speak loudest. Where well-resourced groups in Edinburgh put out a constant stream of neatly-printed leaflets and had access to the press, in Fife the main source of advertising meetings and sloganeering was through whitewash on walls and bridges. Local pipe bands were deployed to generate support too, summoning people from their homes to donate dole money and tinned foods, and giving a send off to International Brigade volunteers at Lochgelly station. Whatever the method of garnering support, it certainly worked: for the duration of the war in Spain, Fifers donated with a munificence belying the poverty of a mining area suffering the very worst effects of economic depression.

  Pivotal in this were the CPGB, who ensured that speakers and volunteers were on hand to corral the local population and receive their d
onations not only to republican Spain, but also in support of the families of local volunteers to the British Battalion. Within the CPGB ranks, a popular local figure and NUWM man, Bob Selkirk, was key in coordinating local efforts. Selkirk had become a town councillor in Cowdenbeath in 1935 and later became the first CPGB figure in Britain to be made a Freeman of the Burgh, perhaps offering some insight into the political context of 1930s Fife. While Selkirk was a regular keynote speaker at meetings alongside local Communist MP Willie Gallacher, he did not shy away from tramping the streets bearing a homemade megaphone, calling for his cart to be filled with food donations.

  Also involved in the organisation of proceedings locally was the female-run East Fife Spanish Aid Committee and the regionally-strong Co-operative movement. Members of the Young Co-operators in Buckhaven did especially well in acquiring trucks from Co-operative Boards of Management to collect food from nearby mine villages, while in Bowhill, which was one of those very villages, a group of Co-operative mining families formed a Spanish aid committee. Co-operative clubs in Cowdenbeath and elsewhere were the scene of fundraising whist drives, which became large, community events.

  Efforts in Fife were not restricted to larger settlements. Tiny villages gave generously at concerts and door-to-door collections. In Lumphinnans, methods of raising money did occasionally require the turning of a blind eye, as Rab Smith, then a child in the village, explained:

  I remember at that time we sold a cigarette called ‘Smoke Clouds’. We sold them in order to raise money to send to the Spanish aid fund. I’m sure they injured the health of the people that smoked them, because they had a terrible smell! Nevertheless, I wasn’t concerned. I was concerned about saving Britain and saving the people in Spain.21

  The belief contained in Smith’s words – that saving Spain would in turn save Britain from fascist invasion – was shared not only by would-be volunteers to the International Brigades, but also by those active in the aid Spain movement across Fife and wider Scotland. Indeed, one of the slogans regularly daubed on Fife walls was ‘Save Spain, Save Britain’. As another Fife campaigner, James Miller, asserted: ‘We were acutely aware that if we lost the battle for Spain, then a world war was more than likely.’22 With this in mind, the locals rallied to the cause with a remarkable generosity, and donated more food and money than many areas of greater population and prosperity.

  In Aberdeen, the local NUWM spearheaded extremely successful fundraising efforts, while Dundee, a city which produced up to 123 volunteers to the British Battalion, the Trades and Labour Council was at the forefront of the local campaign for republican Spain, organising a Flag Day for the SAU in September 1936 and further events and appeals throughout the rest of the war.23 Public meetings attracted remarkable crowds: 3,000 people turned out to hear ‘back from the dead’ Brigader David MacKenzie speak at Caird Hall in February 1937. By May 1937, Dundonians had raised enough money to buy and send an ambulance to Spain, and their vehicle arrived there on the 5th of that month. In late 1937, when a Spanish and Chinese Medical Aid and Food Depot on Reform Street was opened, the store was inundated with tins of milk, beans, peas, cocoa, herring, salmon and a wave of cash donations.

  Dundee’s Spanish Medical Aid Committee was prodigiously active, gathering medicines, medical instruments and food from local businesses for dispatch to Bilbao and other afflicted areas. There was, too, institutional support for aid appeals, and in January 1939 the City Council agreed to annul debts owed to them by the Spanish Aid Committee for the rental of shop units.

  Perhaps the most significant Dundonian act of solidarity with republican Spain occurred as a reaction to the April 1937 nationalist bombing of Guernica. In May, the Dundee Spanish Aid Committee discussed the possibility of establishing a ‘colony’ for Basque refugee children, an idea that had already been raised in west Fife, where the villagers of Lumphinnans, Lochore, Glencraig and Bowhill realised that they would be unable to summon resources to make it a reality. The task of planning the provision of a safe haven therefore fell to Dundee.

  Once the idea of a children’s home had been mooted, labour organisations in Dundee were quick to pledge their support. In early June, the local Trades and Labour Council endorsed the establishment of a Basque Children’s Fund. Bodies as diverse as the Bakers’ Union, the Blind Institution, the Dundee Breakfast Club and the Women’s Liberal Association donated generously. Dockers took on a team of locally-berthed Spanish seamen at football and raised a hefty sum on the gate and from donations, while the Dundee School of Music staged a concert in Caird Hall. By the end of the month, 34 different groups were on board.

  Basque children at the Montrose home. Despite the wary looks on their faces, the children thrived in their Scottish setting.

  In July, a Basque Children’s Committee was launched to search for suitable premises in which to house children, nearly 4,000 of whom had been evacuated to southern England, where they were now residing in temporary accommodation. Various sites in Dundee were considered, only to be deemed unfit or unavailable, but suitable premises were found 30 miles up the coast in Montrose: Mall Park, owned by the Dundee Free Breakfast Mission, had room for 25 children. When the first residents arrived in late September 1937, a local councillor, Bailie McGregor, protested; citing alleged disorder caused by migrant Basques elsewhere in Britain, his was a rare voice of dissent.

  The children stepped off their train at Montrose to a welcome spelled out on a banner. They integrated well into the community and donations towards maintaining the home continued to pour in for the duration of their stay, which came to an end in the summer of 1938. In November 1937, at a packed public meeting at Caird Hall staged in solidarity with the Basque children, the young refugees provided the entertainment, and an exhibition of their drawings was held at Dundee Training College later that month. Though distraught with homesickness and worry for their families in Spain, the children did find great contentment in Scotland’s only Basque refugee colony, and two, Encarnacion and Esther Benavente, remained in the country long after their fellow refugees had departed. Bene Gonzalez, 15 years old on the day she arrived at Mall Park, recalled in 1985 that the children had lived ‘immensely happily, and joyfully’. 24 Undoubtedly, Scotland had left its mark on the young Basques, but so too had they affected the people of Dundee and Montrose: rarely before had a cause been embraced by communists, socialists, liberals, churches and businesses as theirs was.

  Another example of less conventional aid comes from the Borders town of Hawick. In December 1936, activists from the local NUWM took over a disused woollen mill on Mansfield Road and announced their intention to provide clothing for republican forces in Spain by re-opening the plant as a co-operative, a project which had been proposed two months earlier by Hawick’s only CPGB councillor, Willie Stoddart. Though support in the traditionally Conservative town was far from guaranteed (in the following months, at the annual dinner of the Callants’ Club, General Franco received praise for being the saviour of ‘Christian civilisation’), there were enough local pro-republicans to provide a workforce. The mill was refurbished and production commenced in January 1937.

  Though initially subsidised by a nationwide funding campaign, the mill soon became self-sufficient as private orders were taken on to subsidise the making of gloves, hats and scarves for Spanish republican fighters. David MacKenzie made a speech in Hawick announcing that the town was ‘now known not only throughout Britain, but also throughout Spain as the place where the workers have given material evidence of their support for the fight against fascism’. Through 1937 and into 1938, the Hawick Workers’ Mill, as it became known, successfully pulled off the twin accomplishments of offering practical assistance to the Spanish republic, and employing a 20-strong workforce in a small town devastated by unemployment. However, the Workers’ Mill could not escape the economic climate of Britain in 1939 and, as the republican cause in Spain melted in defeat, local mills sought to win contracts in the newly-lucrative war preparation market. It had for a t
ime, though, been a remarkably successful venture: a New Lanark for the highly-politicised Scotland of the 1930s.

  A Food Ship For Spain wagon in Aberdeen, typical of those seen across Scotland. Generous donations facilitated the sending of a vessel from Glasgow on 18 December 1938.

  British aid – including corned beef – is gratefully received in Madrid.

  Scotland’s largest single contribution to the campaign for Spanish aid was not focused on one particular geographical area, although the Glasgow Trades Council played an instrumental role. The sending of a food ship to Spain was first proposed at a December 1937 meeting between Edinburgh and Glasgow Trades Councils. Over the subsequent six months, an appeal to raise £10,000 for the venture received significant backing throughout the country. In the summer of 1938, a shop was opened in Dundas Street, Glasgow, for the donation of ‘canned foods for the magnificent people of Spain.’

  On 18 December, Captain McCrady and his crew set out from the Broomielaw destined for Spain with a 1,000 ton cargo of foodstuffs on board. Despite sailing through militarily dangerous waters for no pay, the crew arrived speedily, and was able to start distributing the ship’s wares to starving, under siege Spaniards in late 1938. Buoyed by the success of this endeavour, the Trades Councils proposed sending a second ship, though this was never to materialise owing to an intensification of the blockade on Spanish waters. The food ship was a rare example of inter-city working in Scottish aid operations, but in many ways, that cooperation had come too late.