Editorial in the Guardian: In praise of ... the International Brigades
"Pendleton man killed in Madrid fighting," this paper reported in early 1937, noting the death of Fred Newbury, a young man "of fine physique who was full of enthusiasm for the Spanish workers' cause". He had, it added, been unemployed for 12 years and left his wife and two children to fight for the Republicans.
The men and women of the International Brigades came from across Europe and beyond, and from all sorts of backgrounds too. In one of the Manchester Guardian's regular lists of those killed, the name of Jim Foley, "an old member of the Irish Republican Army", is followed by that of Christopher St John Sprigg, "the author of a number of detective novels and books on aeronautics". Winston Churchill's nephew Esmond Romilly cycled across France in order to fight, one of over 2,000 people from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth who joined the Brigades. Many were communists; all were driven by a loathing of fascism. They confronted it out of choice when Britain and France were still trying to appease Hitler. They were heroes, but not treated as such, attacked in rightwing British papers as mercenaries (the Guardian published plaintive denials from the frontline) and neglected after Spain fell in 1939.
Now the Spanish government has awarded citizenship to the few who survive, a handful of Britons in their 90s...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
The men and women of the International Brigades came from across Europe and beyond, and from all sorts of backgrounds too. In one of the Manchester Guardian's regular lists of those killed, the name of Jim Foley, "an old member of the Irish Republican Army", is followed by that of Christopher St John Sprigg, "the author of a number of detective novels and books on aeronautics". Winston Churchill's nephew Esmond Romilly cycled across France in order to fight, one of over 2,000 people from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth who joined the Brigades. Many were communists; all were driven by a loathing of fascism. They confronted it out of choice when Britain and France were still trying to appease Hitler. They were heroes, but not treated as such, attacked in rightwing British papers as mercenaries (the Guardian published plaintive denials from the frontline) and neglected after Spain fell in 1939.
Now the Spanish government has awarded citizenship to the few who survive, a handful of Britons in their 90s...