Homage to Caledonia

by Gray, Daniel.

  By March 1939, republican defeat appeared unavoidable, and the aid movement in Scotland and elsewhere switched its focus to the plight of Spanish refugees. Half a million people had fled or been evacuated from former republican territory in northern Spain, most hoping to escape nationalist reprisals by settling in France. When they arrived on the northern side of the Pyrenees, they were instead placed in concentration camps.

  Offers from individual households to give shelter to refugees in Scotland flooded in. The Co-operative Society in Rothesay was able to provide accommodation for 200 children in its holiday camp there and a Clyde-built ship, the SS Sinaia, was chartered by the National Joint Committee for Spanish relief and a British Committee for Refugees from Spain to transport 1,800 exiles from France to a new life in Mexico. Scottish aid committees were quick to commit the money to pay for the conveyance of 20 men and their families on the Sinaia, and the Glasgow and District Joint Committee for Spanish Relief held a fundraising fiesta, which raised £1,400.

  The newly-formed International Brigade Association (IBA), with George Murray at its helm in Scotland, soon took over the mantle of campaigning for the rights of exiled republicans and all of those who fought in Spain. The IBA was to continue its work for the duration of the Franco era, agitating against British collaboration with his regime (not least in 1947, when the Labour government signed an economic treaty with Spain). The IBA also brought into the open the atrocities being perpetrated on imprisoned republicans in Spain and offered support to wounded ex-International Brigaders.

  Whatever the period of struggle against Franco’s nationalists, in villages, towns and cities, as individuals or in organisations, Scots, and particularly Scotswomen, built a solidarity movement of real consequence and clout. They gave when it seemed they had so little left to give, materially and emotionally, as James Miller acknowledged:

  We did our best, and we must congratulate our working class women on a tremendous effort – the thousands and thousands of pounds, the shoes, the clothes that were gathered and sent to Spain, and the food of all kinds. I’m just proud to have been part of that.

  CHAPTER 9

  A Home Guard:

  The Reaction of Relatives

  Annie was in very good spirits and not a bit worried about going out to the fighting zone. Of course, it is much worse for the people left at home, isn’t it?

  Margaret Murray, Perthshire and London

  THE AID MOVEMENT offered relatives of those who had gone to fight in Spain an opportunity to embroil themselves in the same struggle as their kindred. The experience of being a relative back in Scotland was often traumatic, with news of the location and health of loved ones only sporadically filtering through Spain’s wartime postal service. Long periods without dispatches from behind republican lines naturally sharpened anxiety. This was the experience of Mrs L Lacey, the Glaswegian mother of 21-year-old volunteer George Keegan, who had arrived in Spain for a second spell in spring 1937. With no news of his whereabouts and exasperated by her efforts to wrest information from the CPGB, she aired her concerns to Motherwell ILP representative David Murray:

  What do you think can have become of him after his foolish escapade? I am very anxious about him. I do not know where to get any information and I should be sincerely grateful if you could give me any.

  Murray managed to ascertain that Keegan had deserted, observing rather disconcertingly that if he freely returned ‘nothing at all might happen, as the Spanish people are curiously lenient and exacting by turns’. Despite utilising his connections in Spain, Murray was unable to locate the young volunteer, and it was only when he was wounded at Quinto in late August that news of his situation emerged. By September, Keegan was back in Scotland.

  Brigader missives that did reach Scotland often encouraged relatives and friends to involve themselves in the aid campaign. Eddie Brown wrote home in May 1937 to press home the importance of assistance:

  We hope that you are doing as much for Spain as you possibly can, as help of all descriptions is needed badly. The more help you can give, the easier the job for the International Brigades and the quicker international fascism will be smashed.

  Attempts were sometimes made to strike political and geographical chords in the hope recipients of letters would be spurred into action. Thomas McWhirter wrote home ahead of a Glasgow-based fundraising event in February 1938:

  We, Glasgow Boys, members of the glorious 15th Brigade, send revolutionary greetings from the battlefields of Spain. We are proud to be sons of Glasgow, carrying on her fighting traditions, and we sincerely hope tonight’s great gathering will mark a new stage in the advance of the revolutionary movement.

  The family of Annie, George and Tom Murray were energetic activists, although, given their political convictions, they needed no encouragement to stir them into action.

  As Chairman of the Edinburgh and District Joint Committee for Spanish Relief, Janet Murray worked diligently for the aid for Spain movement. For six months of her tenure, she was without her Brigader husband, Tom. Though racked with loneliness in his absence, she understood and supported his decision to go to Spain. Writing to him in April 1938, she confessed:

  I have never experienced such a feeling of complete desolation and I daren’t give myself time to sit and think. Nevertheless I would not have it otherwise. I believe as sincerely as you in the course you have taken and in the rightness of your action.

  Despite long gaps between replies, Janet wrote to her husband on alternate days, often exhibiting the kind of sentiments more frequently heard from soldiers on the front line. After republican successes in the summer of 1938, she wrote:

  The fight is by no means over and we simply must get arms across to you soon. I would gladly give my life if only we could do something to get things going here.

  For all her resolution and spirit, Janet Murray shared the concerns of all those Scottish families who had relatives fighting in Spain. Writing prior to the crossing of the River Ebro (see Chapter 14), she described the blindness that came with being so far away:

  A poster of fallen Scottish Brigaders. Back home, it was left to their relatives to pick up the pieces and continue the fight.

  You are now having the test you talked of. I know that you will be acquitting yourself with credit. My imagination fails me when I try to think of what you are undergoing and the life you are living. I do hope things go well with you both [Tom and George]. As you can imagine, this is an anxious time for us at home here, but we are doing our best to keep from worrying too much.

  In the following week, still having heard nothing from Spain, Janet described the experience of receiving word that eight Scots had been killed in fighting: ‘My heart sank. I do hope nothing happens to you. The anxiety is terrible but I try to keep going.’ One can only imagine the elation she felt on subsequently learning that Tom, George and Annie were well.

  Janet Murray did not have to suffer her agony alone. Tom and his two siblings had left behind a further five sisters, Agnes, Lily, Margaret, Susan and Violet, who were all involved in campaigns for republican Spain. Two of the sisters had tried their utmost to serve there themselves.

  Like so many supporters of the republic, Lily Murray bemoaned the foreign assistance received by the nationalists, and the intransigent non-interventionism of the British government, writing to Janet in January 1937, ‘Things out in Spain are very grave indeed and this fresh push of Franco’s with the aid of so many Germans and Italians must make it very hard for the government side to keep their end up.’ The following month, she wrote:

  It almost frightens one to think of it all, and this ban on volunteers will just be like everything else – carried out strictly by Britain while Germans and Italians pour in. The British people will not have their sorrows to seek ere long.

  Lily was centrally involved in fundraising for Spain in her home town of Perth. Like her brother and sister-in-law, she did not shy away from making speeches, in which she regularly quoted the Marxist politic
al scientists whose works she had studiously read.

  As a nurse, Violet Murray was keen to work in Spain, especially following the receipt of a telegram from Annie in early 1937, which simply read: ‘Come out if possible. Work for you here.’ Having registered her interest in volunteering with Harry Pollitt and the Spanish Aid Committee, Violet confessed to Janet Murray: ‘I am all excited that I will be able to do something really worthwhile for my fellow comrades in need.’ As with volunteers to the International Brigades, Violet’s decision to try and go to Spain was influenced by anti-fascist struggles on the streets of Britain. In her adopted home city of London, she was deeply involved in local campaigns against the BUF, regularly taking part in demonstrations and counter-demonstrations. She described one such occasion:

  I went down to Bermondsey last Sunday, and I shall never forget the scenes I saw. I thought once or twice I should be arrested but was very fortunate in getting home with no bones broken. Heads cut and people being trampled on and awful things happening and the police were just hitting out anywhere and at anyone. It makes one all the more anxious to go to Spain when one sees what fascism is really doing at home.

  By early October 1937, Violet’s departure for Spain appeared to be imminent. However, CPGB officials decided that she was too valuable to the domestic struggles against fascism, and at the start of November the prospective volunteer received the disappointing news that she would not be allowed to go to Spain. Lily wrote consolingly: ‘sorry to hear about Spain. Tom thinks you are doing better work here all the same.’

  Agnes, Margaret and Susan Murray were, like Violet, card-carrying members of the CPGB. Susan, who worked as a hairdresser and read the Daily Worker between cuts, was involved in numerous anti-fascist demonstrations and street tussles with the BUF. In a letter to Tom, she described the confrontational political milieu:

  As I helped to carry stuff down to a house where the Hampstead Party keep banners, platforms and literature, about half a dozen fascists followed us and prowled about with intentions of breaking in, so I stayed all night.

  Given the efforts of the Murray sisters, it is no surprise that Scottish campaigners came in for particular praise from Londoners, as Agnes remarked in a letter to Lily: ‘In the Party itself the Scotch are looked upon with admiration and respect.’ Agnes and Margaret, who were both nurses, busied themselves rallying support for their causes among colleagues and were keen fundraisers for the Spanish republic. Having a young daughter, Agnes was unable to take what otherwise would have been a straightforward decision to volunteer for service in Spain. However, with no maternal responsibilities, in July 1937 Margaret became the fifth Murray to enlist for service in Spain, informing Janet:

  I have applied to go out to nurse in Spain too, so I am just waiting till Dr Morgan of the Spanish Aid Committee returns, when a new unit is to be formed before I know definitely when I shall be going.

  Nonetheless, after awaiting a call to duty for two months, Margaret announced that domestic affairs would in fact now prevent her from going to Spain; she had become engaged to be married. The Murray family, though, had already gone far beyond the call of duty. They, like so many left behind in Britain, had taken their relatives’ fight on as their own, channelling their energies into positive action for republican Spain. Mothers, wives, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters had become soldiers of the home front.

  CHAPTER 10

  Scots for Franco:

  The Friends of National Spain

  Are there any young men from this country so foolish as to interfere in this matter?

  Frederick MacQuisten, Unionist MP for Argyllshire

  THE PEOPLE OF Scotland were not uniformly pro-republican. Opponents of the government side in Spain fell into two camps: those who positively championed Franco, and those who opposed the republicans and therefore lent their support to the nationalists by default. Both factions were influenced in their views by republican atrocities against the Catholic Church.

  In the former of those two groups was the influential Catholic Herald and Glasgow Observer. In a September 1936 report claiming that attacks on religious figures and buildings were undertaken entirely at the behest of Moscow, it went on to justify Franco’s rebellion:

  This war was not between the National Government and rebels, but a war between atheism, communism and syndicalism on the one hand, and the party which stood for law and order, nationality and religion [on the other].

  In conveying its message, the newspaper was not above propaganda and even bare-faced lying: in December 1936, it reported that the republican government had created an entire battalion of prostitutes to defend Madrid. An enduring image, perhaps, but not a truthful one.

  On 12 September 1936, the Catholic Herald’s reaction to the mobilisation of the pro-republican aid movement was to call for Catholics to denounce supporters of the Spanish republican government; it asserted that 12,000 Scottish Catholics had already signed up and that the ‘Red Army’ was intent on the ‘banishment of religion from Spain.’ In taunting language, it asked, ‘Have you less courage than the slaves of materialism?’ and demanded that readers ‘declare that Christ is your King’. Supporters were then asked to sign and send in the following pledge:

  I protest against the organised slaughter of Christians and the destruction of property in Spain by Communists who have by force usurped the place of the elected representatives of the Spanish people. I call upon His Majesty’s Government to use its influence for the protection of the Spanish patriots who are fighting for civil and religious liberty against a Communistic dictatorship which is a threat to the peace and stability of the British Empire.

  It was certainly a powerful statement to make, and powerful too was the provocative move of labelling the entire Popular Front government communist. In parallel with republican aid efforts, the newspaper launched its own Spanish Relief Fund for ‘the victims of the anti-God campaign in Spain.’ ‘All over the country’, the campaign’s maiden advertisement proclaimed, ‘money is being donated to the Spanish Reds. What are we going to do for the Catholic victims of hatred? Should our charity not exceed that of those who have no faith?’

  In the same way that pro-republicans believed nationalist victory in Spain would mean the spread of fascism across Europe, those behind this appeal asserted that ‘Unless the Church wins in Spain, it cannot survive long in this country’. In a somewhat unorthodox indemnity scheme, readers were then asked to ‘Pay something as an insurance premium against a No-God attack in Scotland.’

  John McGovern, the MP for Shettleston. His tirades against the Catholic Church in Spain caused upset among some constituents.

  Donations were made to the fund primarily by west coast residents often anonymously or under pseudonyms such as ‘Lover of St Joseph’ and ‘Remember Alcazar’. Lacking the tidal wave of popular support that accompanied the republican fundraising movement, the Catholic Herald’s Relief Fund was never a serious rival for the pound notes and affections of the people of Scotland. It did send several donations of over £100 to religious organisations in Spain, but in truth only a small number of Catholics took up the invitation to ‘show their practical sympathy with those who are the victims of the anti-God campaign’.

  Media opposition to pro-republican Scottish involvement in Spain appeared in the stories, editorials and letters pages of a number of other newspapers, and, as witnessed in the Daily Mail’s sensationalist coverage of the Jarama machine-gunner prisoners, sections of the press sought to undermine support for the Spanish republic through misreporting and embellishment. On 29 January 1938, the Daily Express claimed that 22 Scottish members of the British Battalion captured by nationalist forces at Teruel had been shot on Christmas Day because they had been forced by the republican authorities to adopt Spanish citizenship, making them liable to punishments usually reserved for natives. Furious denials of the story were issued by Harry Pollitt, and the scientist JBS Haldane, a staunch supporter of the Spanish republic, made a mockery of the Express
article by confirming that he had enjoyed Christmas dinner with the men some 50 miles away from Teruel. There is no evidence of any International Brigader having been forced to take Spanish citizenship. In short, the story was a piece of mischief aimed at destabilising the republican movement in Scotland and beyond.

  This short book, published in 1938, consolidated in writing some of the BUF policies that had pushed many Scots to oppose fascism, whether in Scotland or Spain.

  Scottish supporters of the Spanish republic did not take such press bias lightly. Trade union branches were quick to express their misgivings; as early as August 1936, the Kirkcaldy Branch of the National Union of Railwaymen passed a resolution stating that it viewed ‘with apprehension the lies and slanders being circulated by the reactionary press’. Later, a Glasgow Newsagents’ Emergency Committee organised a boycott against the Sunday Mail on account of its anti-republican bias, resulting in the unavailability of the newspaper in thousands of shops. The impact of negative press reports was felt in Spain, too, as one anonymous mother of a Brigader from Govan wrote to the Daily Worker in April 1937:

  A 1933 booklet in which Oswald Mosley set out his vision of a Fascist Britain. Propaganda pieces such as this helped the BUF push their ideas into the public domain, provoking demonstrations of support and an anti-fascist backlash.

  I just had a letter from my son. He seems quite happy and content and wishes he could get at the press who are telling such foul lies about how they have been betrayed with his Maxim gun, and he would give them a fright.

  Writing home in June 1937, volunteer Jimmy Moir communicated his own disgust at the press with the sarcastic comment:

  It seems as if I am getting near the end of the last page [of the letter] and have written a great deal about nothing at all. When I get back home, I’ll try for a job with the Daily Mail or The Times.