Orwell in Spain

by George Orwell

  [378A]

  Eileen Blair to John McNair

  29 July 1937 Carbon copy

  Although the letters written by George Kopp to Laurence O’Shaughnessy, Lieutenant-Colonel Burillo and Eileen that follow this letter are dated 7 and 8 July, their contents were only known to Eileen (and Orwell) on 29 July, and they are therefore best placed here, to provide a context for letters written thereafter.

  The Stores, Wallington, Near Baldock, Herts

  Dear John,

  Herewith two enclosures. Number I is a copy of an ultimatum sent by George Kopp to the Chief of Police in Barcelona, together with the letter which accompanied it to my brother. Number 2 is an extract from a letter written by George Kopp to me, which is to some extent repetition of Number 1 but which gives more details of the conditions of imprisonment and will interest you personally by its reference to individuals.

  You will see that the important facts emerging from all the documents are that George intended to go on hunger strike on the 9th or 10th July unless he obtained some satisfaction from the Chief of Police and that he wishes his action to be given publicity. Partly because you know the conditions in Spain, I think you will be best able to decide the manner of this publicity – there is of course a strong possibility that George will be made to suffer for it however it is done, but he will have considered that himself; the main doubt appears to be whether his name should be given or not.

  It seems almost certain that the hunger strike has occurred, but actually these letters, although written on the 7th and 8th of July, only reached me this morning. In any case, if there is no further news before the next issue of the New Leader, we may assume that he is on strike and unable to communicate. As for publicity outside the New Leader, you and Fenner will know better than we what hope there is. Judging from Eric’s experiences in attempting to publish the most conservative truth, we shall not find the English-press the least enthusiastic.1

  Jock Branthwaite2 proposed to come over to Letchworth on Monday3 on a bicycle to hear you speak and to see you. We only have one bicycle; so he will represent the whole party on that day, but you could perhaps tell him what you think. Apparently George Tioli4 still being helpful, which is really a magnificent gesture.

  I hope to see you myself some time during next week – indeed I hope to see you here. Apart from all the sentimental considerations, there are a few hundred things I want to know.

  Yours ever,

  [Unsigned]

  I forgot to say that the two earlier letters to which George refers never arrived.

  1. Eileen refers to Kingsley Martin’s refusal to publish Orwell’s review of Franz Borkenau’s The Spanish Cockpit in the New Statesman & Nation because it ‘controverts the political policy of the paper’.

  2. Jock Branthwaite served with Orwell in Spain. His father was a miner and he recalled copies of The Road to Wigan Pier arriving at the front. The book ‘didn’t seem to offend his working-class sensibilities’. Branthwaite thought Orwell had no political leanings when he arrived in Spain, ‘except he was more left than right… leaning slightly towards the communists’. He told Stephen Wadhams that Orwell was not a snob: ‘I thought he was a wonderful man.’ Branthwaite got out of Spain on the last refugee boat from Barcelona for Marseilles. See Remembering Orwell, 83–4, 93, 99.

  3. For the ILP Conference, 1–13 August 1937; Monday was the 1 August.

  4. George Tioli is described by Orwell in Homage to Catalonia as ‘an Italian journalist, a great friend of ours’ He was himself wounded while tending a wounded man in Barcelona in May 1937 (p. 115 [VI/116].

  George Kopp to Dr Laurence O’Shaughnessy

  7 July 1937 Handwritten

  Dear Mr O’Shaughnessy,

  Will you please transmit to your sister the enclosed copy of a letter I am sending to the Chief of Police and tell her that if I have not received a satisfactory reply to same within 48 hours I shall begin a hunger strike. The way myself and my friends are treated makes it a duty for me to volunteer in the only way of protest which is left to us. In the case I am reduced to this measure, I want my friends in England and the I.L.P. people to give this fact the publicity without which it would be useless. You will receive further news after the 48 hours have elapsed. In the case you have no news within a week, it means I am on strike but put in a place where unable to send messages from.

  I have written two letters to Eileen which have been posted at5 your address and I hope you have been able to forward at least the first; the second, perhaps, never reached you, Ethel Macdonald,6 who took care of my mail, having been arrested without my knowing if this particular message has been posted before her detention.

  I am sorry to have to trouble you with all this, but I agreed with your sister to communicate with her through you. Tell her I am intensely thinking of her and give her my love. Shake hands to Eric.

  Sincerely yours

  (Signed) George Kopp

  5. at = to.

  6. Ethel Macdonald (1909–60), leading social activist in Scotland. During the Spanish Civil War she was the English-speaking announcer for CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo – the Anarcho-Syndicalist Trade Union) in Barcelona. She was arrested during the purge of the POUM and CNT in 1937 but escaped and helped others to escape, earning the nickname of ‘Spanish Pimpernel’. On her return to Scotland she made ‘outspoken claims’ about the death of Bob Smillie and was heavily critical of the ILP (especially David Murray: see note 9); see Tom Buchanan. ‘The Death of Bob Smillie, the Spanish Civil War, and the Eclipse of the Independent Labour Party’, Historical Journal, 40 (1997), 452–3, for an excellent account of the controversy over Smillie’s death and this period.

  Translation of letter written in Spanish by George Kopp to Lieutenant-Colonel Burillo,7 Chief of Police, Barcelona

  7 July 1937

  I was arrested on the 20th June when I had just got back from Valencia on a military commission and was prepared to carry out the orders of my superior officers. The police-agents who detained me told me that it was a question of furnishing the police with certain information which they believed it was in my power to give them, in order to help them with the investigation of a case of espionage, which I am always ready and delighted to do.

  In the course of the day on which I was arrested I addressed to you a letter which I entrusted to the Captain of Assault Guards who was charged with my detention. The reason for this letter was that, in spite of the urgency of the military mission that had been entrusted to me, I had not yet been interrogated at 6 in the evening. I asked you to have me interrogated immediately or, if that was not possible, to do me the favour of receiving me personally.

  I presume that my letter has been duly delivered to you, but your answer has never reached me.

  It is now eighteen days that I have been imprisoned and I [have] not yet been interrogated, nor have I been told the reason for my arrest – I should rather say the supposed reason, for there is no reason for it in my actions.

  I am detained in conditions which are intolerable for any decent individual, and which, in the case of an officer of the Spanish Army who has served for eight months at the front, amount to an insult. I am mixed up with pickpockets, tramps, thieves, fascists and homosexuals. I am, like the rest of the principal prisoners, confined in a room where as many as 18 persons are put and where there is only room for 3 or 4; all species of exercise is denied us; the food, consisting of 2 plates of soup and 150 grammes of bread, is distributed at unsuitable hours (4 in the afternoon and 11 at night); the guards, although I personally have no serious ground for complaint and though some of them carry out their duties in a decent manner, treat us like cattle, beating the prisoners and insulting them even to the point of insulting their mothers.

  It appears to me that a foreign volunteer, an officer of the Belgian Army, who, after aiding the legal Government of Spain by secretly manufacturing munitions in his own country, comes to enlist in the anti-fascist militia and fights at the front wher
e he is successively commander of a company, a battalion and a regiment, does not merit this kind of treatment. Nor is such treatment merited by the prisoners whom I have seen here and who after weeks of imprisonment do not know why they have been arrested.

  I do not know how far the patience of these other prisoners will stretch, nor do I know what opinion they entertain of your sense of justice, but for my own part I have come to the end of the time when I could regard my experiences with good humour, and I have no reason for doubting your integrity. I therefore address you for the second time, asking you to give me the chance of clearing myself of any accusations that can be made against me, and to do so without loss of time, since I am needed at the front.

  Awaiting your reply, I remain your servant and that of the anti-fascist cause.

  (Signed) Commandante Jorge Kopp

  7. Col. Ricardo Burillo Stolle (1891–1939), described by Thomas as ‘a left-wing aristocrat, puritanical, anti-clerical, and romantic, soon became virtually a communist’ (245, n. 1). After the Events of May in Barcelona, effective control of the police was handed over to Burillo, who became director-general of security in Catalonia (672). He later commanded the army of Estremadura (779). After Franco’s victory, he was one of many who was executed (925).

  George Kopp to Eileen Blair

  8 July 1937 Typed copy of handwritten original (which has not been traced)

  Barcelona, in jail

  I have written you two letters c/o Laurence O’Shaughnessy but am not sure the second one reached you because Ethel Macdonald has been arrested and part of the mail she was in charge of had to be destroyed; it is not known if my letter was in that case.

  I still have not been interrogated which is very bad sign; all the others have and most of the questions aimed to establish my attitude during the May Days. Absolutely frightened people have made wild statements and some of the Moka’s guards state that on each of the Poliorama’s towers8 I had a machine gun and that a heavy barrage of fire and bombs was unceasingly produced from this position during three days. I have written yesterday a sort of ultimatum to Lt. Colonel Burillo, chief of the police, and if I do not get a proper answer within 48 hours, I shall start a hunger strike as a protest not only for my case but principally for the way we all are treated here. The prisoners are beaten and insulted and I know that if actual offence should be done to me, I shall kill the guard with bare fists, which will not be a solution for the rest of us. I have sent to Laurence (for you) the copy of my ultimatum and a short note stating that I want this hunger strike business to be given a broad publicity in England and France and that further news will be sent to let you know if really I was compelled to this measure. Without publicity, my sacrifice will be useless. We are now 18 in the 10′ by 15′ room and not allowed even to take a short walk in the passage. Nobody visits me; David9 has sent me a French poetry book with the mention ‘from an almost subterranean swine’; no news from George10 who is my only hope for sending out of Spain my correspondence. I sent out messages to the Hotel Victoria to be transmitted but do not know if they are duly forwarded. My money has got out last week but Harry Milton11 lets me share some of his. We are all mixed up with thieves, confidence-tricksters, lousy tramps and homosexuals – and 18 to a small apartment! I am not at all downhearted but feel my patience has definitely gone; in one or another way I shall fight to freedom for my comrades and myself. Harry Milton wishes to be known; I promoted him from a gamma minus to an alpha plus status.

  8. See Homage to Catalonia, pp. 110–21 [VI/109–24].

  9. Possibly David Murray, the ILP representative in Valencia at the time of Bob Smillie’s death, allegedly from appendicitis. Murray was refused permission to see Smillie’s body. See Homage to Catalonia, pp. 155–6 [VI/170–71]. And see Tom Buchanan. n. 6 above.

  10. George: presumably George Tioli (see n. 4.)

  11. Harry Milton was the only American serving with the British ILP group on the Aragon Front. It was to him (‘The American sentry’) that Orwell was talking when he was shot through the throat (Homage to Catalonia), p. 131 [VI/137–8]. He regarded Orwell as ‘politically virginal’ on arrival in Spain. Stafford Cottman recalls that only Milton was proud to boast of being a Trotskyist. Milton and Orwell spent hours discussing politics. He tried, very forcefully, to argue Orwell out of his determination to transfer to the International Brigade on the Madrid Front, convinced that the Communists would kill him: ‘But he was cool as a cucumber, and he just walked away from me. He was a very disciplined individual.’ See Remembering Orwell, 81, 85, 90.

  [379]

  Review of The Spanish Cockpit by Franz Borkenau; Volunteer in Spain by John Sommerfield

  Time and Tide, 31 July 1937

  Dr. Borkenau1 has performed a feat which is very difficult at this moment for anyone who knows what is going on in Spain; he has written a book about the Spanish war without losing his temper. Perhaps I am rash in saying that it is the best book yet written on the subject, but I believe that anyone who has recently come from Spain will agree with me. After that horrible atmosphere of espionage and political hatred it is a relief to come upon a book which sums the situation up as calmly and lucidly as this.

  Dr. Borkenau is a sociologist and not connected with any political party. He went to Spain with the purpose of doing some ‘field work’ upon a country in revolution, and he made two trips, the first in August, the second in January. In the difference between those two periods, especially the difference in the social atmosphere, the essential history of the Spanish revolution is contained. In August the Government was almost powerless, local soviets were functioning everywhere and the Anarchists were the main revolutionary force; as a result everything was in terrible chaos, the churches were still smouldering and suspected Fascists were being shot in large numbers, but there was everywhere a belief in the revolution, a feeling that the bondage of centuries had been broken. By January power had passed, though not so completely as later, from the Anarchists to the Communists, and the Communists were using every possible method, fair and foul, to stamp out what was left of the revolution. The pre-revolutionary police-forces had been restored, political espionage was growing keener and keener, and it was not long before Dr. Borkenau found himself in jail. Like the majority of political prisoners in Spain, he was never even told what he was accused of; but he was luckier than most in being released after a few days, and even (very few people have managed this lately) saving his documents from the hands of the police. His book ends with a series of essays upon various aspects of the war and the revolution. Anyone who wants to understand the Spanish situation should read the really brilliant final chapter, entitled ‘Conclusions’.

  The most important fact that has emerged from the whole business is that the Communist Party is now (presumably for the sake of Russian foreign policy) an anti-revolutionary force. So far from pushing the Spanish Government further towards the left, the Communist influence has pulled it violently towards the Right. Dr. Borkenau, who is not a revolutionary himself, does not particularly regret this fact; what he does object to is that it is being deliberately concealed. The result is that public opinion throughout Europe still regards the Communists as wicked Reds or heroic revolutionaries as the case may be, while in Spain itself –

  It is at present impossible… to discuss openly even the basic facts of the political situation. The fight between the revolutionary and non-revolutionary principle, as embodied in Anarchists and Communists respectively, is inevitable, because fire and water cannot mix… But as the Press is not even allowed to mention it, nobody is fully aware of the position, and the political antagonism breaks through, not in open fight to win over public opinion, but in backstairs intrigues, assassinations by Anarchist bravos, legal assassinations by Communist police, subdued allusions, rumours… The concealment of the main political facts from the public and the maintenance of this deception by means of censorship and terrorism carries with it far-reaching detrimental effects, which will be felt in the fu
ture even more than at present.

  If that was true in February, how much truer it is now! When I left Spain in late June the atmosphere in Barcelona, what with the ceaseless arrests, the censored newspapers and the prowling hordes of armed police, was like a nightmare.

  Mr. Sommerfield was a member of the International Brigade and fought heroically in the defence of Madrid. Volunteer in Spain is the record of his experiences. Seeing that the International Brigade is in some sense fighting for all of us – a thin line of suffering and often ill-armed human beings standing between barbarism and at least comparative decency – it may seem ungracious to say that this book is a piece of sentimental tripe; but so it is. We shall almost certainly get some good books from members of the International Brigade, but we shall have to wait for them until the war is over.

  1. Following his review of The Spanish Cockpit, Orwell greatly admired Franz Borkenau’s work. Borkenau (1900–1957) had been a member of the Communist Party for eight years and an official of the Comintern, but ‘reverted to a belief in liberalism and democracy’, as Orwell put it in his review of The Communist International in 1938 (485). Unfortunately, none of their letters have survived. Orwell recommended Borkenau as a writer to the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department in April 1949 (see XX/320, 322). He refers to The Spanish Cockpit in Homage to Catalonia, p. 178 [VI/200].