Harry Pollitt 1937
Source: International Press Correspondence, Volume 17, no 30, 17 July 1937. Scanned, prepared and annotated for the Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers.
We have reached the end of a year of agony in Spain. At the end of this year of agonising sacrifice, of unequalled valour, of fascist death and destruction in Spain, we salute our Spanish comrades and recognise in them a people that will not be conquered. They can never be beaten except by our passivity and inactivity. If ever we allow that to happen we ourselves will have to pay the price.
When I was in Spain recently, wherever I went the same question was repeated. What is British labour doing? What could I reply?
I might have replied that after this year of agony the official British labour movement is just beginning to show signs of change. We have heard some sharp, straight talking. There has been an official demonstration in Trafalgar Square demanding that ‘the Spanish Republic shall no longer be crippled by one-sided and dishonest official “neutrality"’.
Herbert Morrison [1] said in Trafalgar Square that ‘every act for which the British government had been responsible had been to the advantage of the rebels’. This is clear then. And now what about action?
All those who believe we have done all we could should go to Spain and see for themselves. They will have only too bitter a lesson of how little we have used the mighty resources of the British labour movement. How decisively British labour could have turned the scales even last October if it had listened to the plea of the Spanish delegation at the Labour Party Conference. If the London International Conference had not been sabotaged last March the horrors of Guernica and Almerķa might have been avoided.
Now, at the beginning of the second year of the Spanish Civil War, we say to the Labour Party again: ‘Comrades, if we all get together we can prevent this going any further in Spain and we can prevent it happening in any other country.’
The new army of the Spanish government is now engaged in its victorious advance to the west of Madrid. They have captured some of the batteries that have been laying Madrid waste with shells provided by Hitler and Mussolini. The rebels have been burning wheat fields to try and stop them, devastating an entire countryside with the flames of their incendiary bombs. Day after day there are battles on the ground and battles in the air. The deaths of multitudes of women and children and unprotected civilians are being avenged on the fascists.
The Daily Herald [2] admits that Franco:
... is now faced by armies which for the first time in the war are capable of carrying out a planned offensive. Now at last that time has come. The past days’ fighting west of Madrid has been of extraordinary significance... With the battle of Brunete the war changes its character and enters on a quite new phase. (Daily Herald, 13 July)
The London press is making all-round admissions that the new government and the new army is altering the face of the war. Why? Because with a relentless will, moulded and steeled in this fierce furnace of fascist war and terrorism, the Spanish people have put an end to factional differences, have sternly eliminated the weaknesses that have been holding them back and placed themselves, heart and soul, behind the new government of Republican Spain. They have put paid to the account of those forces within Republican Spain who are more concerned with their personal positions and their crank theories than with the supreme task of winning the war against fascism; who were ready to sacrifice their own country in an attempt to justify false policies and advance their personal supremacy. The people and the army have given their full support to the new Spanish government. The victories are the fruit of that determination and of the iron self-discipline of the Spanish defenders of democracy.
The British working class will never be able to forgive those who pretend to be part of our movement but who have been ready to betray their Spanish comrades. Fenner Brockway, [3] sniping and sabotaging the Spanish government which is now being proved in blood and fire as the organiser of victory over the fascists, is going to be compelled by the power of working-class indignation to go and hide the infamy of his betrayal of the working-class cause. The blood of our comrades fallen in these victorious battles cries out against the infamy.
These victories are not won without cost. New casualty lists will bring home to many a Communist and Labour Party branch the bitter price of this struggle. Not many days ago I was with our Comrade George Brown [4] looking at the devastation wrought by the fascists in Madrid. His was one of the first lives paid as a part of the cost of these victories. It is for us in Britain to avenge these lives by the work we do here.
Is there anything to be hoped from the National Government? What has been its policy? It forced ‘Non-Intervention’ on France. It protected Franco by allowing him a free run in Portugal. Baldwin and Hoare [5] lied about Bilbao – till ‘Potato Jones’ [6] made a joke of them and the British Navy. They are lying about the non-existent ‘blockade’ of Santander. They forced the Basque Nationalists to limit the character of their resistance before the fall of Bilbao.
Guernica – Almerķa – Bilbao – the responsibility for these disasters is at the door of the National Government.
The National Government hates the Popular Front governments and the Soviet Union so much that they will sacrifice the interests of sections of their own class to help the fascist countries.
They are said to have changed their attitude to Italy. It is not the murder of women and children that caused that change. Even now Eden [7] is busy seeking Germany’s support. Whether he succeeds depends on us.
‘Spain is the world at the crossroads.’ This was said a year ago. It is still true. The future of democracy, the future of the working class, the future history of mankind is being decided in Spain. What are we going to do?
Dockers! Railwaymen! Transport Workers! Seamen! There must be no loading of German or Italian ships so long as intervention in Spain continues.
We demand that the Covenant of the League of Nations shall be operated, that military and commercial sanctions shall be used against the aggressor powers in Spain. We demand that the right of the Spanish government to buy arms be restored.
We ask workers everywhere on this first anniversary of the heroic struggle of Spanish democracy to give one hour’s pay for the support of the Spanish government.
We call on all men and women who have a care for humanity to bring aid in the evacuation of Spanish refugees. We call on the Cooperative movement to send food to Spain, particularly to send milk substitutes. Children are dying in Spain, for their mothers’ breasts are dry.
To secure all these things we call for unity, the united action of all working-class organisations and of all who value democracy and oppose fascism and war.
We remember over two hundred British comrades who sleep their last sleep beneath the olive groves on the Jarama front; we remember the families of these comrades in Britain whose sorrow we can so inadequately share.
In their name we call for trade-union action throughout Great Britain; in their name we call for united action. In the name of 500 comrades now taking their part in the battle itself, looking death in the face, we call on the British working-class movement to fulfil its responsibilities.
We can and we will help to bring victory to Spain, a victory that will safeguard the world’s peace and give a new promise of the advance to Socialism.
All notes have been provided by the MIA.
1. Herbert Stanley Morrison (1888-1965) was a Labour MP during 1923-24, 1929-31 and 1935-59. He stood on the right wing of the party, was hostile to any form of cooperation with the Communist Party, and when Home Secretary in Churchill’s wartime National Government announced the ban on the party’s Daily Worker in January 1941.
2. The Daily Herald was a socialist newspaper that appeared in various guises from 1912 to 1964; at this point it reflected the opinion of the leadership of the Labour Party, that is, a right-wing social-democratic standpoint. Reynolds News was a Sunday newspaper that ran from 1850 to 1967; at first Liberal in outlook, it was acquired by the National Cooperative Press on behalf of the Labour Party.
3. Archibald Fenner Brockway (1888-1988) was General Secretary of the Independent Labour Party during 1933-39, and was a public critic of the Communist International’s Popular Front strategy and tactics during the Spanish Civil War.
4. George Brown (1906-1937) was born in Ireland, lived in Manchester and joined the CPGB after the General Strike of 1926. He was elected to its Central Committee in 1935. He was a political commissar in the International Brigades in Spain, and was killed in Brunete in July 1937.
5. Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947) was a Conservative MP during 1908-37, Prime Minister during 1923-24, 1924-29, and, at the head of the National Government, 1935-37. Samuel John Gurney Hoare, First Viscount Templewood (1880-1959) was a Conservative MP during 1910-44, and held ministerial posts in various Conservative and National Governments, including Foreign Secretary in the latter half of 1935, and Home Secretary during 1937-39.
6. David ‘Potato’ Jones (1871-1962) was one of three Welsh sea-captains who were hired to smuggle arms to Republican Spain beneath legitimate cargos in their ships, in his case potatoes.
7. Robert Anthony Eden (1897-1977) was a Conservative MP during 1923-57, and Foreign Secretary during 1935-38, resigning in protest at the National Government’s attitude towards Nazi Germany.