By Michael
Faulkner – June 28, 2009
The results
of the British local government elections and those for the European Parliament
that took place on June 4th were even worse than anticipated in the
last Letter from the U.K. ( June 4th 2009: A Government of the
Living Dead ) - written before the results were declared. Labour was wiped out
in the English counties and pushed into third place behind the Tories and the
Liberal Democrats. With no more than 15% of the vote it was Labour’s worst
performance since 1918. As
anticipated, the turn-out was very low (reflecting deep disenchantment with
professional politicians and hostility towards the European Union) and, as also
anticipated, because of the low turn-out, the fascist BNP scored its first ever
victory in a national election in Britain, winning two seats in the European parliament.
Prior to
the election, many commentators assumed that with results as bad as this Gordon
Brown would not survive as prime minister. This assumption has proved, for the present at least, to be
incorrect. Due largely to the fear in the party that a new leader would be
unable to avoid the pressure for an immediate election which Labour would
almost certainly lose, Brown’s opponents collapsed in disarray. Likely defeat
in a year’s time proved preferable to certain defeat in a few weeks time. Such
is the state of mind in the Labour Party at the moment.
There is a
deep irony in the fact that just two days after the election of two British
crypto-Hitlerites to the European parliament, the prime minister and the heir
to the throne joined a dwindling band of world war two veterans on the Normandy
beaches for the 65th anniversary commemoration of D Day. Operation
Overlord, launched on June 6th 1944 has entered into British and
U.S. folklore as the decisive stroke that broke the back of Nazi Germany and
guaranteed an allied victory. In
both Britain and the USA, D Day has come to symbolise the “special
relationship”, sealed in blood, between the two countries. The reality is that,
in Churchill’s phrase, “the guts were torn out of the Nazi war machine” eighteen
months earlier at Stalingrad in a sacrifice by the Red Army that was infinitely
greater than anything experienced by the Anglo-Americans in Normandy. The
“second front” that was finally launched on D Day came very late for the Russians.
It had been promised in 1942, then again in 1943 but did not materialise until
1944 by which time the Red Army, at a cost of many millions of lives, were
inexorably driving the Wehrmacht back towards the Reich. D Day, it is true,
played an important part in securing the allied victory, but the far greater
part had already been played.
The
survivors of D Day and the subsequent battles in France are now in their
eighties and nineties. They are
rightly proud of the part they played in ridding Europe and the world of the
plague of fascism. The fact that they fought as conscripts in the Second World
War does not detract from their heroism or diminish the sacrifice of those of
their comrades who did not survive.
But there
is an even smaller and older remnant of an earlier and often neglected war; men
(and some women) whose heroic contribution to the struggle against fascism was
also honoured this summer. They are the former members of the International
Brigades who volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic in the civil war of
1936 – 1939. From many different countries they came to defend with arms
the elected government against a military rebellion launched by General Franco
with the support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Anti-fascist exiles from
Germany and Italy joined Americans, British, French, Polish and many other
nationalities in a selfless and valiant fight to defend Spanish democracy.
There was no precedent for it and there has been nothing to compare with it
since. Former New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews described the Brigaders,
5,000 of whom were from the United States, as “the finest group of men I ever
knew or hope to know in my life.” The names of the national brigades and battalions reflected the
democratic traditions of their countries and the political allegiances of their
members. “The Abraham Lincoln Battalion”, “The Garibaldi Battalion”, “The
Thaelmann Brigade” (after Ernst Thaelmann, German Communist leader incarcerated
in a Nazi concentration camp); The “Major Attlee” Company (after the British
Labour Party leader), are some of the best remembered.
It is
seventy years since the Spanish Civil War ended in defeat for the Republic and
victory for Franco. The regime that his victory imposed on Spain lasted thirty
seven years. It has taken another thirty three years for the Spanish government
to appropriately acknowledge the contribution made by members of the
International Brigades to the defence of democracy in the country. In a
ceremony at the Spanish Embassy in London a few weeks ago, the ambassador
publicly thanked the handful of remaining Brigaders assembled for the occasion,
for their sacrifice in dedication to a noble cause. The six men and one woman
thus honoured were awarded Spanish citizenship. They are all in their nineties
and it is uncertain whether any of them will have the opportunity to use their
new passports. President of the International Brigades’ Association, 97 year
old Sam Lesser, expressed the gratitude of those present in a stirring address
in flawless Spanish. It was a
poignant moment which gave cause for reflection.
Here were
the few remaining members of a generation of men and women who, of their own
free will had put their lives on the line for the people of another country
because they believed that fascism had to be stopped and that unless it was
stopped in Spain it would plunge Europe into a new dark age of barbarism and
war. They understood that the “appeasement” of fascism upon which the British government of the day
had embarked, would deny to Spanish democracy the support to which it was
entitled, and that the policy of “non-intervention” could only strengthen
Hitler and bring nearer the day when German bombs, then falling on Spain, would
fall on London. The International Brigades
and the armed forces of Republican Spain alongside whom they fought, were
defeated. It is possible that had fascism been stopped in Spain in 1936 and
’37, the European democracies would have found the strength and unity to
successfully resist Hitler’s bid for European hegemony that led directly to the
Second World War. But the ruling classes of Britain and France preferred to
seek accommodation with Hitler and Mussolini rather than make common cause with
the forces of democracy and the left. They betrayed the cause of democracy in
Spain.
During the
years of McCarthyite anti-communist hysteria in the United States, former members
of the International Brigades were smeared as “premature anti-fascists.” This is not surprising given that in
1953 the United States signed a military agreement with the virulently
anti-Soviet Franco dictatorship, on the basis that “my enemy’s enemy is my
friend.” Herbert Matthews commented wryly a few years later “once upon a time
there were three big, bad Fascists – Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. We
fought a World War to kill two of them and destroy all they stood for; now we
have made an ally of the third.”
The “premature
anti-fascists”, proudly clasping their newly acquired Spanish passports, must
be dismayed by the election in Britain of two fascist thugs. The nonagenarian
International Brigaders represent all that has been, and remains, best in
Britain. The BNP represents everything that is worst.
A book
published in 1939 entitled “Britons in Spain: A history of the British
Battalion of the XVth International Brigade” contains as an appendix a “Roll of
Honour”, a list – incomplete – of 400 who had died in battle. Most
of the names are of people long forgotten, ordinary workers from every part of
Britain and Ireland. Some of those on the Roll of Honour are better known.
There is the brilliant young Cambridge student, writer and poet, John Cornford
– killed on his 21st birthday; the writers Ralph Fox and David
Guest. Then there is the Marxist literary critic and philosopher, Christopher
Caudwell, aged 29, whose great talent was still unknown at the time of his
death and whose books were published post-humously. Before leaving for Spain,
Caudwell wrote: “The Spanish People’s Army needs help badly; their struggle, if
they fail, will certainly be ours tomorrow, and, believing as I do, it seems
clear where my duty lies.” On February 12th 1937 he was killed while
operating a machine gun under the command of a London bus driver at the battle
of Jarama, where so many died.
Some of the
survivors, here and in the United States, may have been present at the farewell
parade for the Brigades held in Barcelona in November 1938, which was addressed
by the legendary Pasionaria – Dolores Ibarruri. Those who heard her words
of gratitude, addressed directly to them, will never forget them:
“Comrades
of the International Brigades! Political reasons, reasons of State, the welfare
of that same cause for which you
offered your blood with boundless generosity, are sending you back, some of you
to your own countries and others to forced exile. You can go proudly. You are
history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of democracy’s solidarity
and universality. We will not forget you, and when the olive tree of peace puts
forth its leaves again, mingled with the laurels of the Spanish Republic’s
victory - come back!” 