Homage to Caledonia

by Gray, Daniel.

  There is a universe of difference between aiming badly at a factory for making aeroplanes and accidently hitting women and children and deliberately murdering women and children in cold blood.

  Sir Henry Lunn, supporter, along with his son Arnold, of the Friends of National Spain.

  Just as pro-republicans believed the Spanish Civil War was a rehearsal for a wider European war, Lunn believed it to be a rehearsal for the communist elimination of religion worldwide.

  Two further FNS meetings were to follow. On 20 April, Maxwell-Scott told an audience at Glasgow’s Central Hall of the fine and bounteous conditions in which Spaniards in nationalist territory now lived. When Franco was victorious, he said, there would be no fascism, merely a ‘corporate’ state like that of António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal. From June, the FNS attempted to establish a presence in Edinburgh, organising a meeting at Usher Hall for the 17th of that month. Despite explicit objections to the council from the local CPGB, the assembly went ahead in front of an audience of 500 people, 300 less than had turned out at the Mound on the previous night for a protest rally against the FNS.

  The meeting was chaired by Perthshire-born Conservative MP Nairne Stewart-Sandeman, who claimed to have proof that the bombing of Guernica was undertaken entirely by land bombs, with no hint of an air attack. On a recent visit to Spain, he claimed to have seen no evidence of the persecution or massacre by Franco’s forces of republicans in nationalist lands. Arnold Lunn’s father Henry (founder of what became Lunn Poly travel agency), a Methodist minister, claimed that the FNS had the endorsement of all Scottish churches. In so doing, he neglected to mention Christian support for republican aid appeals. Women’s police representative Mary Allen also addressed the floor, bursting with pride that she had been among the first foreign females to be invited by Franco to visit Spain during the civil war. To caterwauls from pro-republican spectators, a motion proposed by Allen congratulating ‘General Franco and the Spanish people on their heroic and successful fight to maintain Christian civilisation, freedom, and religion in Spain’ was then carried.

  Following the meeting, the mood outside the Usher Hall on Lothian Road remained relatively calm. Breathing a collective sigh of relief, FNS members headed towards King’s Stables Road, from where buses were to convey them home. But lying in wait there were several hundred anti-fascist protesters. Mayhem predictably ensued as the buses were halted in their progress by a determined crowd. Remarkably, only three arrests were made, all for the stoning of an FNS bus destined for Bannockburn.

  Despite these open meetings, the FNS were never able to build popular support in Scotland and their movement slowly degenerated into a self-congratulatory gentleman’s club for pro-Francoists. On 2 February 1939, the FNS held a banquet dinner at the Grosvenor Restaurant, Glasgow, to celebrate the fall to the nationalists of Barcelona. With Spanish flags draped on either side of a portrait of Franco, diners toasted impending nationalist victory, and guest of honour Charles Sarolea, a professor of French at Edinburgh University, claimed it would save ‘us from a European catastrophe in the same sense as has Mr Chamberlain at Munich’. Evidently, prescience was not his strong point. Their party was interrupted, however, by four unwelcome guests. On hearing about the FNS dinner, former International Brigaders Robert Middleton and Hugh Eaglesham had booked a table for two at the Grosvenor. Whilst perusing the menus, they requested that their waiter introduce them to the FNS party. The men were informed that this would not be possible and upon protest were forced into a quiet room to receive a warning from the restaurant manager. Meanwhile, two further ex-Brigaders, William McAulay and John McLean, had entered the Grosvenor and made the same request as Middleton and Eaglesham. The four men were then asked to leave, but instead began to chant ‘down with Franco, arms for Spain’, until eventually they were carried off by the police. In court, Eaglesham expressed his anger that the FNS should be celebrating what amounted to the slaughter of innocent women and children in Barcelona. All four were given the option of a £1 fine or 10 days in prison.

  The 1930s BUF’s pamphlet Break the Chains That Bind You, an attack on Jewish financial influence, strongly echoing Nazi rhetoric.

  Whether on the streets or in upmarket restaurants, the FNS were unable to avoid working class protest. In this atmosphere, despite the clout of the Catholic church and some of its members, the aristocracy and sections of the press, Scotland’s pro-nationalist movement was unable to flourish. Those motivated to oppose the Spanish republican side, whether through religious sympathy or admiration for Franco, were always in a minority, and by some distance. Scotland had already nailed its colours to the mast.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Red, Red Heart of the World:

  Scotland’s ‘Other’ Left

  Not filtered by the West through the Guardian digest but straight from the red, red heart of the world.

  Willy Maley, ‘On My Father’s Refusal to Renew his Subscription to the Beijing Review’

  THROUGH THEIR CENTRAL role in supporting the International Brigades and the aid movement, the Communists came to be the political party most associated with support for republican Spain. In Scotland, however, a number of other, smaller parties played their part in the campaign, some even sending personnel to serve in Spain.

  An early defender of the Spanish republic was the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). Formed by ILP members unhappy at their party’s 1932 decision to disaffiliate from Labour, the SSP was part of the Britain-wide Socialist League. The SSP pledged itself to influencing Labour policy on Spain through continued affiliation, becoming something of a campaign group within the party. Though initially staunchly pacifist – leader Patrick Dollan told his party’s 1934 conference that the SSP would ‘under no circumstances take part in war’ – the outbreak of war in Spain prompted a swift change of policy. The SSP harangued Labour over their early support for non-intervention, and became a leading voice in the campaign to grant the Spanish republicans the right to buy arms. They were, from the start of hostilities in Spain, a prickly thorn in Labour’s side.

  Similarly loyal to the Spanish republic was the Scottish Workers’ Republican Party (SWRP), founded by John MacLean in 1923, the year of the great revolutionary’s death. Ideologically, the SWRP sought to blend Marxism with nationalism, arguing that once nationalist revolution had occurred in one country, it could be exported elsewhere and a commonwealth of independent socialist nations created. Though this theory had been gestated with Scotland in mind, the party viewed it as applicable to Spain too. With the intention of protecting the republic and advancing a revolution, the SWRP wrote to left-wing groups in Spain to enquire as to how exactly they could assist:

  At a workers’ open forum here in Glasgow… The workers after assiduous discussion made it be known that they wish to come to Barcelona to help in the fighting on the Zaragoza front: they rank as ex-servicemen, as machine gunners, bomb throwers, rifleman, snipers and such. But what we want to know is how to get there, we have little idea: believe me, they are quite enthusiastic and bursting for further information. Please explain in detail.

  Whether through lack of organisational knowledge or for other reasons, the SWRP were ultimately unable to send a group of their own to Spain, although some party members did travel on an individual basis or join the International Brigades. Though a small faction, the SWRP nonetheless contributed to the rich tapestry of the Scottish left and its seemingly intrinsic support of the Spanish republic.

  Most influential of the ‘other’ parties was the ILP, which arguably contributed more to efforts for republican Spain than the Scottish Labour Party. Though officially a Britain-wide movement, the ILP was very much a Scottish party; its four members of the UK parliament elected in 1935 all represented Glasgow constituencies, and the party headquarters was situated in the city. Of those four MPs, two, James Maxton and John McGovern, became figureheads of its support for the republican side.

  Maxton, described by political adversary Winston Churchill as
‘the greatest parliamentarian of his day’, wholeheartedly embraced the republican cause from the moment of Franco’s attempted coup. It was said that if a doctor could have passed the 46-year-old fit, he would have been quick to join the fight. Maxton berated the British government’s non-intervention policy, and accused the Chamberlain administration of allowing ‘class prejudice’ to prevent their aiding the republic. In 1937 he travelled to Spain to try to secure the release of ILP members taken prisoner there. For its duration, the war in Spain became Maxton’s greatest fixation.

  The ILP was essentially a revolutionary, Leninist party, although it rejected the dictatorial notion of democratic centralism. Unlike the Labour Party, the ILP condemned non-intervention from the start of the Spanish war, and rallied behind the Spanish republican side. Of the Scots who fought in Spain, as many as 100 were ILP members. A majority of them joined the International Brigades, although a number served in the ILP militia group made famous in the writings of George Orwell.

  While the Communist Party and the leadership of the republican side agreed that revolution in Spain should be postponed and resources concentrated on defeating fascism first, the ILP believed that a revolutionary struggle should run parallel to the waging of war. This left them in ideological agreement with the POUM, and Spain’s anarchists and their trade unions, for whom the Spanish Civil War was a revolutionary war. The ILP and the POUM were also united by their anti-Stalinism, although neither group were Trotskyite, as they were commonly mislabelled.

  When hostilities on the Spanish republican left over-spilled into internecine warfare in Barcelona in May 1937, the ILP sided firmly with the POUM and against the Communist-influenced troops of the republic. ILP figures in Barcelona identified the struggles of the POUM in Catalonia with their own in Scotland. John McNair, ILP representative in Spain, remarked that his young assistant Bob Smillie (see Chapter 12) ‘thinks Barcelona is just like Glasgow!’, and John McGovern MP wrote in the party’s New Leader newspaper that ‘Catalonia reminds me in many ways of my native Scotland’.

  John McNair, ILP representative in Spain

  Six months previous to the fighting in Barcelona, the ILP had signed up to the CPGB-led Unity Campaign, though tensions in that relationship had begun to emerge in March 1937 at the party’s annual conference. There, speakers raised doubts over the morality of maintaining relations with the Communists due to their role in Spain. One ILP member accused the Spanish Communist Party of plotting with the USSR and the CPGB to ‘throttle the workers’ revolution’, while John McGovern castigated them for their ‘lies’ about the POUM, and labelled the Daily Worker the ‘subsidised press of Stalin.’

  Hostilities between the two parties were exacerbated when the ILP endorsed the POUM’s rejection of the Spanish republic’s Popular Front government. The POUM and ILP agreed that Spain should be run instead by a ‘Workers’ Front of Socialist Parties’. In a New Leader article published on 21 May, ILP figurehead Fenner Brockway wrote a lengthy editorial on the ‘counter-revolution in Spain’. He contended that the Spanish Communist Party were now ‘committed to the defence of property’, and claimed that Soviet-facing Communist parties across the world had ceased to be revolutionary.

  East Fife MP Willie Gallacher, third from right, visits the ILP Contingent in Spain.

  This dismissal of official doctrine led to the repression of the POUM in Spain and CPGB denouncements of the ILP in Britain. Following Barcelona’s ‘civil war within a civil war’, CPGB attacks on the ILP intensified, prompting the dissolution of the Unity Campaign in late May. The Daily Worker began to print vitriolic attacks on the ILP. An article published a day after Brockway’s New Leader piece was tellingly entitled, ‘Is the ILP winning the war or aiding Franco?’ Referring to the POUM as the ‘Spanish ILP’, the article claimed that rank-and-file ILP members were opposed to their party’s acquiescence with the Spanish group, and frothed:

  The Spanish ILP and the British ILP have eternally disgraced themselves by supporting a rebellion of anarchist uncontrollables at the very moment that Spanish rebellion is knocking at the gates of Bilbao.

  A month later, in an article headlined ‘Spanish Trotskyists Plot With Franco’, the Worker alleged that the POUM leadership were in actual fact spies working within the republican movement for the nationalist leader. This attack on the POUM’s actions in Spain was carried over to an attack on the ILP in Scotland in a CPGB circular. As figures who had ‘supported, aided and defended’ the POUM in their ‘criminal acts’ of ‘sabotage’ in Barcelona, the leadership of the ILP were endorsing the enemy of the republican struggle, according to the leaflet. ‘For the ILP to come out in defence of the POUM’, it raged, ‘is a political crime against the Spanish people.’ The CPGB emphasised the misdeeds of the POUM by invoking a hypothetical comparison with Barcelona events:

  Suppose the Mosley Blackshirts were in control of the South-side of Glasgow and the North-side was governed by a Popular Municipal Council with the support of the great mass of the people, resolutely determined not only to prevent the Blackshirts from crossing the Clyde, but to advance and drive them out of the city. Suppose in such a situation the ILP, which had failed to play its part in the fight and retained their weapons in their homes and premises, started a revolt in Bridgeton and Shettleston calling for the overthrow of the Popular Council because they contended in represented capitalism, or for some other reason. Would it matter what the slogans of the revolt were? Its net effect would be to undermine the authority of the Council and aid the Blackshirts. Would it not be to the eternal disgrace of the Council if, in such a situation, it failed to crush the revolt and break up the organisation?

  Written to justify the banning of the POUM on 16 June, in drawing a direct comparison between the Spanish party and the ILP, the CPGB were clearly escalating their campaign of condemnation against the Scottish party. While in Scotland Communist censure resulted in little more than a war of words, in Spain it had meant an often violent repression that David Murray referred to as a ‘clamouring for the suppression, the liquidation, the annihilation of the POUM’. The battle raging on the left in Spain was also being played out in Scotland, albeit on a far lesser scale; the politics of Catalonia had been imported by Caledonia.

  Direct ILP intervention in Spain came with the sending of a contingent of party members in early 1937. Prior to this, ILP representatives had already travelled to Spain and liaised with POUM colleagues, often clandestinely. A letter sent by John McNair in September 1936 to a Spain-bound ILP envoy identified only as Mr Martin captures the cloak and dagger atmosphere:

  When you arrive at Perpignan go immediately to the Continental Bar, Place Araga, Perpignan. This is a restaurant and café where all the comrades meet and when you arrive there ask for Comrade J Canal. He will probably speak English. Give your letters to him and he will see that you get a Spanish workers’ passport. In the small parcel attached is the famous packet of Players. There is a letter inside addressed to one of our comrades. The point is that this packet must be handed to a Spanish armed worker by you and not simply smoked in the office. You understand it isn’t the value of the tabs, but the fact that one English workman gave them to us on that condition. If you could get a photo of this and send it on it would be excellent. Let them take photos on the spot of you and the ambulance. These photos will be reproduced in their paper La Batalla which we receive every day and we can then put them in our press here. Keep in the limelight as much as you can and get the stuff over to us. This publicity all helps us to raise money and carry on the good work.

  Among the party of ILPers to join ‘Mr Martin’ in Spain at the start of the following year were several Scots, including Jock Ritchie, an ex-boxing champion from Lesmahagow, and Charles Doran, a Glaswegian veteran of World War One. They left London bound for Spain along with 23 other volunteers on 8 January. As they gathered at Victoria Station, the men sang the ‘Internationale’ and a small crowd gathered to wish them farewell, although one woman shrieked: ‘It is su
icide for you all!’

  Although 130 ILP members had volunteered to make the journey, the party leadership had decided to allow only unmarried men to travel. The initial contingent of 25 was viewed as a vanguard group later to be joined by 150 further volunteers (the day after they departed for Spain, the British government invoked the 1870 Foreign Enlistment Act and it appears the ILP made no further attempts to send fighting personnel.) In Barcelona, they were joined by Eric Blair (George Orwell), and Larkhall man Bob Smillie. The ILP contingent spent two weeks at the Lenin Barracks where they received training. In common with much of the instruction received by International Brigaders, rifle drill was completed in the absence of one major component: the rifle. In late January, the newly-created British section of the POUM militia departed for the Aragon Front via Lerida, where they met with John McNair. There, they were informed that they would be fighting as the 29th Lenin Division of the POUM Militia. In Aragon, they were stationed on hill slopes around 180 metres from nationalist front lines. Under the by-line ‘Lesmahagow man in Spain’, the Lanark Gazette reported with pride on the conditions faced by British section member Jock Ritchie:

  The familiar accent of Lanarkshire was heard in the trenches of the Aragon Front when a Motherwell man, Mr David Murray, visited Jock Ritchie, ex-amateur heavyweight boxing champion of Scotland. ‘Big Jock’ was very calm and collected and as a bullet smashed into a sniper’s post in a tree just overhead he remarked laconically ‘they always shoot high anyway’. As they talked about the county, the besieged town of Huesca could be plainly seen about 500 yards away. Much nearer than that could be observed a line of loop-holed sandbags, in one of the enemy’s positions. As a matter of fact at the point where Jock was anxiously awaiting his dinner, the rebel trenches were only a few yards away, well within a good biscuit or rather bomb toss.