Homage to Caledonia

by Gray, Daniel.

  While it is impossible to categorically state where the germination of pro-Soviet views occurred, the influence of Moscow on other facets of the Brigade was more tangible. This is especially true in the case of military discipline, which was perceptibly tightened at the behest of the Communist Party. Two Scots with roles in this increased discipline were Hamish Fraser and George Murray, both of whom were made Battalion sim representatives charged with what Murray called ‘guarding against the insertion of enemy agents.’ Anecdotally, in their letters, Scottish volunteers referred to the more rigorous approach applied to Brigade discipline as the war progressed. This was undoubtedly necessitated in part by the early strains placed on the largely inexperienced republican army and their realisation that the war was to be a drawn-out affair. Equally, it does appear that much of this new-found orderliness emanated from Soviet input and instruction. In a December 1937 letter to Peter Kerrigan, Thomas McWhirter remarked with praise on the contribution of the Communist Party, which, whether Spanish or British as here, followed strictly Soviet lines:

  The rapid growth of our army is really marvellous. We are a real fighting force, our Communist Party takes the fullest credit for the way it has fought against all distortions and has welded the Popular Army of the people. No more our slovenly methods of training and general attitude to discipline, we found our methods on true discipline and methods of training that would do credit to any imperialist army.

  This clampdown did not impact upon the military sphere alone. Peter Kerrigan remarked that from February 1938 there was a ‘much stricter control of the activities’ previously designated by Political Commissars, such as wall newspapers and leisure-time events. There also developed a climate of censorship, as Kerrigan highlighted when referring to the Book of the XVth Brigade:

  The book has now been completed and is being printed off. New regulations however make it necessary to pass a censor and it will have to get his consent before being issued. I don’t think there will be any trouble but it’s difficult to tell these days.

  It would be naïve in the extreme to suggest that the ussr’s role on the International Brigades was insignificant; clearly, once they had offered military assistance they expected a level of ideological and strategic control in return (as well as the transfer of Spain’s gold reserves). This should not, however, detract from the credibility of the 35,000 people from around the world who travelled to Spain of their own volition, including the Scottish contingent. Many were Communist Party members who already idolised the Soviet Union before going to Spain. Some were communists believing in their own ‘Clyde Built’ version of the doctrine. Many more were not communists at all. What all these groups had in common was a shared sense of purpose: the defeat of Franco and his fascist allies. No amount of interpretation and reinterpretation can disguise the bare fact that they were neither stooges nor fools.

  Gas masks and helmets on display at the Spanish Civil War museum at Morata de Tajuña.

  Though the desertion rate in the British Battalion was admirably low (indeed John Dunlop remarked that a greater problem arose from volunteers deserting hospital to travel back to the front line), there were enough cases to suggest that life was not always harmonious. From the middle of 1937 onwards, there was very little chance of the ‘six months and then home’ that would-be volunteers had previously been assured of; the xvth International Brigade was now formally incorporated into the republican army, meaning shared terms and conditions. Active service would end only when the war did, a realisation that prompted an increase in defections from the Battalion.

  Memorial to the International Brigades at Morata de Tajuña.

  Perhaps the most infamous Scottish incident was that of the so-called ‘Round Robin Deserters’, which occurred before the abolition of a national maximum term of service. On 22 March 1937, the ever-supportive Daily Mail professed that Brigaders Charlie Craig, Angus MacDonald and John Parker had deserted at the Jarama front due to the high number of Scottish casualties suffered there. To escape, MacDonald had lain prone on a stretcher while the other two stole Red Cross armbands and acted as bearers. Now back in Britain, they had with them a petition signed by more than 30 Brigaders demanding repatriation, which they duly handed over to the Foreign Office. The Mail article once more alleged that those who had volunteered to fight in Spain had done so either unknowingly or for large sums of money.

  The article and the actions of the three men were met with incandescent fury by the Brigaders who remained in Spain. Bill Gilmour led the assault, writing:

  I don’t have to tell you that I left a good comfortable home to come out here. I am well led, and have enough pay to meet my needs. We were not compelled to fight. The deserters were all yellow. They ran away while the fight was at its worst. There is some excuse for men whose nerves go under the strain. But there is no punishment severe enough for men who desert their comrades in the thick of the fight, and then go home to GB pertaining to be the bearers of a petition bearing the names of 32 men of our own comrades who wanted to go home.

  The remaining members of the British Battalion issued a statement in March 1937 to further quash the claims of the Mail and the Round Robin Three:

  We desire it to be known in Britain that we came here of our own free will after full consideration of all that this step involved. We came to Spain not for money, but solely to assist the heroic Spanish people to defend their country’s freedom and democracy. We were not gulled into coming to Spain by promises of big money. We never even asked for money when we volunteered. We are perfectly satisfied with our treatment by the Spanish government; and we still are proud to be fighting for the cause of freedom. Any statements to the contrary are foul lies.

  A backlash occurred in Scotland; while queuing to collect his income support money in Dundee, John Parker was badly beaten for what locals saw as his betrayal of working class solidarity with republican Spain. In the longer term, the continued raft of Scottish volunteers and ongoing existence of the British Battalion suggested the Round Robin Deserters’ claims had been wide of the mark. A slow drip of further runaways did, however, persist. As a political commissar, Bob Cooney was charged with questioning two Brigaders who had been caught while trying to desert, namely Pat Glacken of Greenock, and Alex Kemp of Glasgow. According to his findings, Kemp had sold the idea of deserting to Glacken, and the two had attempted to cross over to the nationalists. Their motives for doing so remained unclear. A tribunal, which Cooney did not sit on, decided their fate: Glacken was allowed to rejoin the Brigades as a baker, while Kemp became the only man in the history of the British Battalion to be executed by firing squad, as Cooney explained:

  Kemp was shot by firing squad, but not for desertion. He was shot because in order to carry out his desertion he was prepared to betray the lives of his comrades by giving information to the fascists. None of the lads relished the job of carrying out the execution but at the same time they could all have been wiped out because of the actions of Kemp and Glacken.30

  This was a particularly rare punishment for a particularly rare crime; Battalion justice for smaller offences amounted to Cooney’s philosophy of ‘you would speak with a lad to talk things over’, while for desertion, Alec Park insightfully described the usual procedure, penalty and reasoning therein:

  Friday afternoon is usually the Battalion political meeting but last Friday instead of the customary meeting the platform was occupied by a military tribunal and an individual charged with desertion, tried and sentenced. The men formed the jury, put questions and finally pronounced the verdict. Everything in connection with the accused was brought before the court; his social and political affiliations in civil life, his conduct since coming from Spain and even his recent correspondence with home. The prosecution brought out, to my mind a very strong point, and that is that before he could have left republican Spain some assistance would be necessary. Such assistance would only be rendered by anti-government and fascist forces within. Such an individual would in all pr
obability get immense publicity in the capitalist and fascist press of the world. The only answer to which is that the men here are all keen to come to grips with the fascists and that one deserter does not in any way represent the outlook of the foreign anti-fascist forces in Spain. The verdict of the court was duly pronounced and although the extreme penalty could have been inflicted, he was given such a sentence as will enable him to rehabilitate himself with his comrades.

  While Park’s words represent a description of ‘in-house’ justice at the front line, deserters who managed to escape the Battalion often found themselves indefinitely imprisoned. The republican authorities were far less lenient than their comrades in the highest echelons of the British Battalion. Crieff Brigader John Gordon arrived in Spain in December 1937, but recoiled from the reality of war. Having deserted, he was captured and spent several months in Valencia’s Model Prison, before eventually being repatriated in April 1938. Having been wounded at Calaceite, Dundee-born Henry Burns absconded from Moya hospital only to be captured and imprisoned at Casteldefels, an International Brigades jail close to Tarragona. Unlike Gordon, rather than being deported Burns was escorted back to the British Battalion, where he failed to find favour; a subsequent cpgb evaluation of Burns read ‘Bad, drunkard, deserter, disrupter.’

  Though ex-members of the British Battalion rather than ilp men, David Murray willingly visited and assisted James Donald, John Mudie and Malcolm Sneddon, all imprisoned in Valencia’s Model Prison on charges of desertion. Donald and Mudie were arrested on 25 February 1937, having made their way to Valencia with the help of drivers similar to those used by the escapee cohorts of Captain Edwin Lance, while Sneddon had earlier been detained on similar charges.

  Murray provided much-needed assistance for all three men, writing to their relatives and supplying them with cigarettes, clothing, underwear and money. Back in Methil, news of James Donald’s wellbeing was particularly appreciated by his family, who had been wrongly informed of his death. While Donald’s stretch was his first and only, Dundonian John Mudie spent most of his time in Spain in penal and medical institutions. Murray described finding Mudie in extremely poor fettle on one particular occasion:

  He had no shirt and had no money since his arrival in Spain, was badly fed (a hunger strike on the part of the anti-fascists resulted in still worse food, fit ‘for a pig’), and had refused to go into line.

  In June, Mudie was dispatched to a prison in Alicante, where he spent three months before being made to work as a guard at a Hospital in Villa Paz. Unfortunately, Mudie was soon removed from this position for drunkenness, before winding up in hospital with vd. He was later to serve and die in Aragon, a dramatic end to a dramatic Spanish sojourn.

  Rather than an indictment of the International Brigades, these desertions were reflections on the personalities and circumstances of individuals. While there were a few seemingly incorrigible men like Mudie, many simply failed to grasp the horrors service in Spain would bring. Writing home to Glasgow, Brigader George Gilmour displayed an attitude towards desertion common among his fellow volunteers, and also depicted the overall spirit of defiance that, sometimes surprisingly, permeated the British Battalion throughout its existence:

  I hear that a man named [censored] has made his way home from Alicante. It is being reported that he is telling wives of good comrades that they should plead that they have divers disease and invent all the excuses they have to get their husbands home. This man is a deserter – a yellow renegade. What is the real spirit in our ranks? Let me give you an example. Over a fortnight ago a barrage started as the fascists were attempting to break through on our left flank. The rain had been pouring down all day, and all through the barrage, which started at night, it poured. Along the trenches, above the din of machine-gun fire, rifle and artillery fire, could be heard the strains of the ‘Internationale’, ‘Tipperary’ and the ‘Red Flag’; and all the folk tunes and popular melodies we could think of were sung that night in good community style, in spite of the fact that we were knee deep in water and soaked to the skin.

  A more serious threat to the morale of the British Battalion and the reputation of the International Brigades came during the summer of 1937, when two leading Scottish figures in Spain became embroiled in a furious spree of infighting. The dispute began when Battalion political commissar Walter Tapsell claimed that the promotions of Scots George Aitken (to Brigade Commissar) and Jock Cunningham (to Battalion commander) had left the two men isolated from regular Brigaders. Tapsell wrote that, ‘Aitken’s temperament has made him distrusted and disliked by the vast majority of the British Battalion who regard him as being personally ambitious and unmindful of the interests of the Battalion and the men.’ Meanwhile, Cunningham, ‘fluctuates violently between hysterical bursts of passion and is openly accused by Aitken of lazing about the Brigade headquarters doing nothing.’ Assistant Brigade Commissar at Albacete, Dave Springhall, weighed in, claiming that the Battalion’s entire leadership structure had collapsed under the pressures brought on by defeat at Brunete.

  With an amicable resolution impossible in Spain, all parties involved were summoned back to London for a meeting with CPGB leader Harry Pollitt. At its conclusion, Pollitt told Aitken, Cunningham and Bert Williams (a political commissar with the Abraham Lincoln Battalion) to remain in Britain, while Fred Copeman (commander of the British Battalion) and Tapsell were to return to Spain. Aitken and Cunningham, though barely on speaking terms themselves, were apoplectic at the decision, and the former wrote a 10-page letter of ‘emphatic protest’ to the CPGB, in response to ‘this monstrous injustice’.

  Within a matter of months, both had resigned from the Party, and the leadership of the British Battalion had been radically reshaped. As part of its restructuring, the Battalion became an official part of the republican army, meaning popular six month terms of service were now prohibited. Disputes at the top of the hierarchy had undermined soldier morale and damaged the reputation of the Brigades on a level that the smattering of desertions at the bottom never could.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Unbitter End:

  Going Home and Being Home

  Led proudly by their wounded comrades, the men marched through London. With them marched the spirit of Byron, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists and Keir Hardie, Britain’s bravest fighters for liberty through the centuries. Behind them and around them marched twenty thousand British democrats.

  Report, London Star

  JUAN NEGRIN’S PROCLAMATION that foreign volunteers were to be withdrawn from Spain with near-immediate effect came as something of a surprise to Brigaders on the front line. Many were instantaneously aggrieved that they would now be unable to complete the job as intended. Gratitude for that which they had achieved was expressed in a final parade through Barcelona on 28 October 1938. Thirteen thousand International Brigaders marched across the Catalan capital, their passage made sluggish as they received the personal and heartfelt thanks of an adulating crowd. While president Manuel Azaña and his prime minister Negrin both gave exalting speeches, it was the oration of a woman, Dolores Ibárruri, or La Pasionaria, which most captured the mood for posterity. Even doughty Scottish Brigaders were brought to tears by La Pasionaria’s famously impassioned panegyric:

  Comrades of the International Brigades! Political reasons, reasons of state, the good of that same cause for which you offered your blood with limitless generosity, send some of you back to your countries and some to forced exile. You can go with pride. You are history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of the solidarity and the universality of democracy. We will not forget you; and, when the olive tree of peace puts forth its leaves, entwined with the laurels of the Spanish Republic’s victory, come back! Come back to us and here you will find a homeland.

  In an unusually unrestrained outburst after hearing the speech, Peter Kerrigan wrote by way of reply:

  Beloved, unconquerable Spanish brothers and sisters, we will come back to Spain some day to thank you all for
all that you have taught us and to partake once more in happy circumstances of your boundless hospitality. Speed that day! Salud!

  Bill Cranston too was overwhelmed by the parade and speech, remarking ‘I really wanted to cry. We got a tremendous reception from the people of Barcelona and it’s a thing I’ll never forget, never.’ George Murray was taken aback by the affection felt towards the Brigade: ‘It was a very emotional sort of thing. Young girls were coming over and kissing you, all this kind of thing, which is surprising after all that time.’31

  Sadly, the operators of international bureaucracy did not view the Brigaders with such reverence and it was another five weeks before they were allowed to leave Spain. Despite an International Commission having granted all of the men permission to leave a fortnight after the Barcelona parade, the frustrated members of the British Battalion were left to fester in a camp south of the French border. Willie Gallacher and a number of Labour and Liberal mps raised the issue in parliament, while Brigade officials sent an urgent telegram to Clement Attlee demanding he press the matter with the prime minister Neville Chamberlain.

  This pressure finally paid off. In the first week of December 1938, a train carrying 305 British Brigaders crossed the border into France, though only after it had initially broken down. On 7 December 1938, the train pulled into London Victoria, its war-weary passengers safely home. In London, Scottish Brigaders were provided with money for onward fares and food from the Cooperative and the International Brigade Association. Steve Fullarton travelled on a later train over the border with 68 other wounded Brigaders, leaving Spain on 21 December. So destitute was Fullarton, who had eaten a plate of ham and eggs on the border train and told the guard to charge the meal to Lord Halifax, the Royal Arsenal Co-operative provided him with a suit. A Daily Worker journalist relayed the reaction of Scottish Brigaders when they disembarked from the ferry in the Newhaven mist: