[381]
To Rayner Heppenstall
31 July 1937
The Stores, Wallington, Near Baldock, Herts
Dear Rayner,1
Thanks so much for your letter. I was glad to hear from you. I hope Margaret2 is better. It sounds dreadful, but from what you say I gather that she is at any rate up and about.
We had an interesting but thoroughly bloody time in Spain. Of course I would never have allowed Eileen to come nor probably gone myself if I had foreseen the political developments, especially the suppression of the P.O.U.M., the party in whose militia I was serving. It was a queer business. We started off by being heroic defenders of democracy and ended by slipping over the border with the police panting on our heels.3 Eileen was wonderful, in fact actually seemed to enjoy it. But though we ourselves got out all right nearly all our friends and acquaintances are in jail and likely to be there indefinitely, not actually charged with anything but suspected of ‘Trotskyism’. The most terrible things were happening even when I left, wholesale arrests, wounded men dragged out of hospitals and thrown into jail, people crammed together in filthy dens where they have hardly room to lie down, prisoners beaten and half starved etc., etc. Meanwhile it is impossible to get a word about this mentioned in the English press, barring the publications of the I.L.P., which is affiliated to the P.O.U.M. I had a most amusing time with the New Statesman about it. As soon as I got out of Spain I wired from France asking if they would like an article and of course they said yes, but when they saw my article was on the suppression of the P.O.U.M. they said they couldn’t print it. To sugar the pill they sent me to review a very good book which appeared recently, The Spanish Cockpit, which blows the gaff pretty well on what has been happening. But once again when they saw my review they couldn’t print it as it was ‘against editorial policy’, but they actually offered to pay for the review all the same – practically hush-money. I am also having to change my publisher, at least for this book.4 Gollancz is of course part of the Communism-racket, and as soon as he heard I had been associated with the P.O.U.M. and Anarchists and had seen the inside of the May riots in Barcelona, he said he did not think he would be able to publish my book, though not a word of it was written yet. I think he must have very astutely foreseen that something of the kind would happen, as when I went to Spain he drew up a contract undertaking to publish my fiction but not other books. However I have two other publishers on my track and I think my agent is being clever and has got them bidding against one another. I have started my book but of course my fingers are all thumbs at present.
My wound was not much, but it was a miracle it did not kill me. The bullet went clean through my neck but missed everything except one vocal cord, or rather the nerve governing it, which is paralysed. At first I had no voice at all, but now the other vocal cord is compensating and the damaged one may or may not recover. My voice is practically normal but I can’t shout to any extent. I also can’t sing, but people tell me this doesn’t matter. I am rather glad to have been hit by a bullet because I think it will happen to us all in the near future and I am glad to know that it doesn’t hurt to speak of. What I saw in Spain did not make me cynical but it does make me think that the future is pretty grim. It is evident that people can be deceived by the anti-Fascist stuff exactly as they were deceived by the gallant little Belgium stuff, and when war comes they will walk straight into it. I don’t, however, agree with the pacifist attitude, as I believe you do. I still think one must fight for Socialism and against Fascism, I mean fight physically with weapons, only it is as well to discover which is which. I want to meet Holdaway5 and see what he thinks about the Spanish business. He is the only more or less orthodox Communist I have met whom I could respect. It will disgust me if I find he is spouting the same defence of democracy and Trotsky-Fascist stuff as the others.
I would much like to see you, but I honestly don’t think I shall be in London for some time, unless absolutely obliged to go up on business. I am just getting going with my book, which I want to get done by Xmas, also very busy trying to get the garden etc. in trim after being so long away. Anyway keep in touch and let me know your address. I can’t get in touch with Rees. He was on the Madrid front and there was practically no communication. I heard from Murry6 who seemed in the weeps about something. Au revoir.
Yours
Eric
1. Rayner Heppenstall (1911–81), novelist, critic, crime historian and BBC feature-writer and producer (1945–67). He shared a flat with Orwell in 1935 and though they came to blows they remained lifelong friends. He produced Orwell’s radio adaptation of Animal Farm in 1947 and later versions in 1952 and 1957. He also commissioned and produced Orwell’s radio feature, ‘The Voyage of the Beagle’, in 1946. His Four Absentees (1960) has reminiscences of Orwell; see Orwell Remembered, 106–15. See also Shelden, 225.
2. Mrs Rayner Heppenstall.
3.In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell tells how his hotel room was searched by six plain-clothes policemen, who took away ‘every scrap of paper we possessed’, except, fortunately, Eileen’s and his passports and their cheque-book. He learned later that the police had seized some of his belongings, including a bundle of dirty linen, from the Sanatorium Maurín; pp. 151, 162–3 [VI/164, 178–9].
4.Homage to Catalonia.
5. N. A. Holdaway, schoolmaster and Marxist theorist. He was a member of the Independent Socialist Party, a contributor to The Adelphi and Director of the Adelphi Centre.
6. John Middleton Murry (1889–1957) was nominally the editor of The (New) Adelphi, which he had founded in June 1923, for fourteen years but he was associated with the journal throughout its life (1923–55). The journal published about fifty contributions by Orwell and did much to foster his career as a writer. Murry was successively a fervent disciple of D. H. Lawrence, an unorthodox Marxist, a pacifist and a back-to-the-land farmer. He also edited Peace News from July 1940 to April 1946. Despite his deeply entrenched pacifism, over which he and Orwell disagreed, they remained on good terms.
[382]
‘Eye-Witness in Barcelona’
Controversy: The Socialist Forum, 1vol. I, no. 11, August 1937
This article was published as ‘J’ai été témoin à Barcelone…’, translated by Yvonne Davet, in La Révolution Prolétarienne: Revue Bimensuelle Syndicaliste Révolutionnaire, no. 255, 25 September 1937. It was this article that the New Statesman refused to publish; see Orwell’s letter to Rayner Heppenstall, 31 July 1937, above. Yvonne Davet (born c. 1895) was for many years secretary to André Gide. She and Orwell corresponded before and after World War II, and she translated several of his books into French in the hope that she could find a publisher for them in France. Her translation of Homage to Catalonia, completed before the outbreak of war and read by Orwell, was not published until 1955. At the time it had notes by Orwell not found in English editions until 1986. She also translated Jean Rhys, Graham Greene and Iris Murdoch. She and Orwell never met.
Orwell’s article was preceded in Controversy by this note:
George Orwell, author of The Road to Wigan Pier, has been fighting with the ILP Contingent on the Aragón front. Here he contributes a personal account of events in Barcelona during the May Days and of the suppression of the POUM in the following month.
I
Much has already been written about the May riots in Barcelona, and the major events have been carefully tabulated in Fenner Brockway’s pamphlet, The Truth About Barcelona, which so far as my own knowledge goes is entirely accurate. I think, therefore, that the most useful thing I can do here, in my capacity as eye-witness, is to add a few footnotes upon several of the most-disputed points.
First of all, as to the purpose, if any, of the so-called rising. It has been asserted in the Communist press that the whole thing was a carefully-prepared effort to overthrow the Government and even to hand Catalonia over to the Fascists by provoking foreign intervention in Barcelona. The second part of this suggestion is almost too ridiculous to need r
efuting. If the P.O.U.M. and the left-wing Anarchists were really in league with the Fascists, why did not the militias at the front walk out and leave a hole in the line? And why did the C.N.T.2 transport-workers, in spite of the strike, continue sending supplies to the front? I cannot, however, say with certainty that a definite revolutionary intention was not in the minds of a few extremists, especially the Bolshevik Leninists (usually called Trotskyists) whose pamphlets were handed round the barricades. What I can say is that the ordinary rank and file behind the barricades never for an instant thought of themselves as taking part in a revolution. We thought, all of us, that we were simply defending ourselves against an attempted coup d’état by the Civil Guards,3 who had forcibly seized the Telephone Exchange and might seize some more of the workers’ buildings if we did not show ourselves willing to fight. My reading of the situation, derived from what people were actually doing and saying at the time, is this:–
The workers came into the streets in a spontaneous defensive movement, and they only consciously wanted two things: the handing-back of the Telephone Exchange and the disarming of the hated Civil Guards. In addition there was the resentment caused by the growing poverty in Barcelona and the luxurious life lived by the bourgeoisie. But it is probable that the opportunity to overthrow the Catalan Government existed if there had been a leader to take advantage of it. It seems to be widely agreed that on the third day the workers were in a position to take control of the city; certainly the Civil Guards were greatly demoralised and were surrendering in large numbers. And though the Valencia Government could send fresh troops to crush the workers (they did send 6,000 Assault Guards when the fighting was over), they could not maintain those troops in Barcelona if the transport-workers chose not to supply them. But in fact no resolute revolutionary leadership existed. The Anarchist leaders disowned the whole thing and said ‘Go back to work’, and the P.O.U.M. leaders took an uncertain line. The orders sent to us at the P.O.U.M. barricades, direct from the P.O.U.M. leadership, were to stand by the C.N.T., but not to fire unless we were fired on ourselves or our buildings attacked. (I personally was fired at a number of times, but never fired back.) Consequently, as food ran short, the workers began to trickle back to work; and, of course, once they were safely dispersed, the reprisals began. Whether the revolutionary opportunity ought to have been taken advantage of is another question. Speaking solely for myself, I should answer ‘No’. To begin with it is doubtful whether the workers could have maintained power for more than a few weeks; and, secondly, it might well have meant losing the war against Franco. On the other hand the essentially defensive action taken by the workers was perfectly correct; war or no war, they had a right to defend what they had won in July, 1936. It may be, of course, that the revolution was finally lost in those few days in May. But I still think it was a little better, though only a very little, to lose the revolution than to lose the war.
Secondly, as to the people involved. The Communist press took the line, almost from the start, of pretending that the ‘rising’ was wholly or almost wholly the work of the P.O.U.M. (aided by ‘a few irresponsible hooligans’, according to the New York Daily Worker). Anyone who was in Barcelona at the time knows that this is an absurdity. The enormous majority of the people behind the barricades were ordinary C.N.T. workers. And this point is of importance, for it was as a scapegoat for the May riots that the P.O.U.M. was recently suppressed; the four hundred or more P.O.U.M. supporters who are in the filthy, verminous Barcelona jails at this moment, are there ostensibly for their share in the May riots. It is worth pointing, therefore, to two good reasons why the P.O.U.M. were not and could not have been the prime movers. In the first place, the P.O.U.M. was a very small party. If one throws in Party members, militiamen on leave, and helpers and sympathisers of all kinds, the number of P.O.U.M. supporters on the streets could not have been anywhere near ten thousand – probably not five thousand; but the disturbances manifestly involved scores of thousands of people. Secondly, there was a general or nearly general strike for several days; but the P.O.U.M., as such, had no power to call a strike, and the strike could not have happened if the rank and file of the C.N.T. had not wanted it. As to those involved on the other side, the London Daily Worker had the impudence to suggest in one issue that the ‘rising’ was suppressed by the Popular Army. Everyone in Barcelona knew, and the Daily Worker must have known as well, that the Popular Army remained neutral and the troops stayed in their barracks throughout the disturbances. A few soldiers, however, did take part as individuals; I saw a couple at one of the P.O.U.M. barricades.
Thirdly, as to the stores of arms which the P.O.U.M. are supposed to have been hoarding in Barcelona. This story has been repeated so often that even a normally critical observer like H. N. Brailsford accepts it without any investigation and speaks of the ‘tanks and guns’ which the P.O.U.M. had ‘stolen from Government arsenals’ (New Statesman, May 22).4 As a matter of fact the P.O.U.M. possessed pitifully few weapons, either at the front or in the rear. During the street-fighting I was at all three of the principal strongholds of the P.O.U.M., the Executive Building, the Comité Local and the Hotel Falcón. It is worth recording in detail what armaments these buildings contained. There were in all about 80 rifles, some of them defective, besides a few obsolete guns of various patterns, all useless because there were no cartridges for them. Of rifle ammunition there was about 50 rounds for each weapon. There were no machine-guns, no pistols and no pistol ammunition. There were a few cases of hand-grenades, but these were sent to us by the C.N.T. after the fighting started. A highly-placed militia officer afterwards gave me his opinion that in the whole of Barcelona the P.O.U.M. possessed about a hundred and fifty rifles and one machine-gun. This, it will be seen, was barely sufficient for the armed guards which at that time all parties, P.S.U.C., P.O.U.M., and C.N.T.-F.A.I. alike, placed on their principal buildings. Possibly it may be said that even in the May riots the P.O.U.M. were still hiding their weapons. But in that case what becomes of the claim that the May riots were a P.O.U.M. rising intended to overthrow the Government?
In reality, by far the worst offenders in this matter of keeping weapons from the front, were the Government themselves. The infantry on the Aragón front were far worse-armed than an English public school O.T.C.5 but the rear-line troops, the Civil Guards, Assault Guards and Carabineros, who were not intended for the front, but were used to ‘preserve order’ (i.e., overawe the workers) in the rear, were armed to the teeth. The troops on the Aragón front had worn-out Mauser rifles, which usually jammed after five shots, approximately one machine-gun to fifty men, and one pistol or revolver to about thirty men. These weapons, so necessary in trench warfare, were not issued by the Government and could only be bought illegally and with the greatest difficulty. The Assault Guards were armed with brand-new Russian rifles; in addition, every man was issued with an automatic pistol, and there was one sub-machine-gun between ten or a dozen men. These facts speak for themselves. A Government which sends boys of fifteen to the front with rifles forty years old, and keeps its biggest men and newest weapons in the rear, is manifestly more afraid of the revolution than of the Fascists. Hence the feeble war-policy of the past six months, and hence the compromise with which the war will almost certainly end.
II
When the P.O.U.M., the Left Opposition (so-called Trotskyist) off-shoot of Spanish Communism, was suppressed on June 16–17, the fact in itself surprised nobody. Ever since May, or even since February, it had been obvious that the P.O.U.M. would be ‘liquidated’ if the Communists could bring it about. Nevertheless, the suddenness of the suppressive action, and the mixture of treachery and brutality with which it was carried out, took everyone, even the leaders, completely unaware.
Ostensibly the Party was suppressed on the charge, which has been repeated for months in the Communist press though not taken seriously by anyone inside Spain, that the P.O.U.M. leaders were in the pay of the Fascists. On June 16 Andrés Nin, the leader of the Party, was ar
rested in his office. The same night, before any proclamation had been made, the police raided the Hotel Falcón, a sort of boarding-house maintained by the P.O.U.M. and used chiefly by militiamen on leave, and arrested everybody in it on no particular charge. Next morning the P.O.U.M. was declared illegal and all P.O.U.M. buildings, not only offices, bookstalls, etc., but even libraries and sanatoriums for wounded men, were seized by the police. Within a few days all or almost all of the forty members of the Executive Committee were under arrest. One or two who succeeded in going into hiding were made to give themselves up by the device, borrowed from the Fascists, of seizing their wives as hostages. Nin was transferred to Valencia and thence to Madrid, and put on trial for selling military information to the enemy. Needless to say the usual ‘confessions’, mysterious letters written in invisible ink, and other ‘evidence’ were forthcoming in such profusion as to make it reasonably likely that they had been prepared beforehand. As early as June 19 the news reached Barcelona, via Valencia, that Nin had been shot. This report was, we hope, untrue, but it hardly needs pointing out that the Valencia Government will be obliged to shoot a number, perhaps a dozen, of the P.O.U.M. leaders if it expects its charges to be taken seriously.6
Meanwhile, the rank and file of the Party, not merely party members, but soldiers in the P.O.U.M. militia and sympathisers and helpers of all kinds, were being thrown into prison as fast as the police could lay hands on them. Probably it would be impossible to get hold of accurate figures, but there is reason to think that during the first week there were 400 arrests in Barcelona alone; certainly the jails were so full that large numbers of prisoners had to be confined in shops and other temporary dumps. So far as I could discover, no discrimination was made in the arrests between those who had been concerned in the May riots and those who had not. In effect, the outlawry of the P.O.U.M. was made retrospective; the P.O.U.M. was now illegal, and therefore one was breaking the law by having ever belonged to it. The police even went to the length of arresting the wounded men in the sanatoriums. Among the prisoners in one of the jails I saw, for instance, two men of my acquaintance with amputated legs; also a child of not more than twelve years of age.
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