International Brigade Memorial Trust
Words spoken by IBMT Chair Jim Jump at the unveiling of the memorial to the Doncaster International Brigade volunteers on 12 February…
First a big thank-you to Councillor David Shaw, former councillor Tosh McDonald and everyone at Doncaster City Council who has made this excellent memorial possible.
Eighty-eight years ago today, 12 February 1937, the British Battalion of the International Brigades went into action for the first time in the Jarama valley, south-east of Madrid. The battalion paid a heavy price: 150 men were killed, including one of the volunteers from Doncaster, Herbert Tagg of King’s Road, Doncaster. He was 43 and left a widow and three children.
Sheffield’s Daily Independent reported the death under the headline ‘Doncaster man killed in Spain fighting’, mentioning also a Leicester man, Fred Sykes, who was living in Sheffield before he travelled to Spain.
The report said: ‘Both men met their death in the decisive battle at Jarama on 27 February, when the British Battalion of the International Brigade successfully resisted the attempt of Franco’s forces to break through the Madrid-Valencia road.’
The report went on to say that in his last letter home Tagg wrote: ‘Here there is a fine army, a fine people and a fine purpose. I don’t want to come back until fascism is beaten.’
There is memorial olive tree behind an information board about the International Brigades.
Herbert Tagg was a miner, born in Oakerthorpe, Derbyshire. He had worked in collieries in the Mansfield area and been politically active for many years, including receiving three months hard labour after being arrested on a strike picket.
On that sense he was typical of many volunteers – working-class political and union activists who resisted the wage cuts of the 1920s and 30s, took part in Hunger Marches and rent strikes and fought Britain’s home-grown fascists.
They were, as folk director Ken Loach has said, ‘the cream of their generation’.
In the IBMT’s records there are 16 volunteers who went to Spain who were born or who died in Doncaster or who were living here when they set off to join the International Brigades.
There may well be more. The records are often patchy. Many gave false names or temporary addresses. They were after all defying their own government, which threatened to prosecute them for fighting in a foreign war.
Of the 2,500 volunteers from the British Isles, the fatality rate was more than one in five – 530 of them died in total.
But there must have been a lucky star over Doncaster at that time. Out of the local volunteers, only Herbert Tagg made the ultimate sacrifice.
Like him, six others were miners. We should name them all.
Hector Barber, born in Doncaster in 1906, was a wood saver canvasser in the coal mines and a member of the Yorkshire Miners’ Federation. He was wounded in the Battle of the Ebro in the summer of 1938 and spent several weeks in hospital in Vich. He is listed as a ‘Good comrade’ in the British Battalion files. He died, aged 78, in Doncaster in 1985.
Jack Foster, born in Hemsworth, lived in Grange Road, Moorends, Doncaster. He served in the John Brown Battery in Spain and is believed to have died in 1953.
Steve Gilks was born in Chesterfield and gave an address in Mansfield Crescent, Shelton. He died in Sheffield, aged 50, in 1951.
Charles Giles was an unemployed miner when he arrived in Spain, giving an address in Greendyke Lane, Doncaster. He was medically discharged in March 1937 soon after enlisting. However, he served in the West Yorkshire Regiment during the Second world War and was taken prisoner by the Japanese in Malaya in 1942. He died, aged 51, in Doncaster in February 1957.
Harold Horbury was born in Doncaster in 1904 and was a colliery surface worker. He gave an address in Barnsley when he arrived in Spain. He served in the British Battalion in the battles at Jarama, Brunete, Belchite, Aragón and Teruel and in the 15th Brigade’s kitchen from May 1938 until returning home in September of that year. He died in Barnsley in 1974, aged 70.
Tom Nottingham was born in Grimethorpe, but during the Spanish Civil War was living in Doncaster, where he died in 1960, aged 56. in Spain he was captured when the British Battalion was ambushed by Mussolini’s troops at Calaceite in March 1938. He was a prisoner of war for 10 months at the notorious San Pedro de Cardeña prison camp near Burgos before returning home in an exchange for Italian POWs.
The other nine Doncaster men were:
Frank Ayres, born in Doncaster, was a railway worker and active trade unionist. Aged 29, in 1925 he visited the Soviet Union as chair of Doncaster Trades Council. He spoke three languages and in Spain worked at Valdeganga hospital at Albacete and at Uclés hospital, in Cuenca. He also fought with 129th Artillery Division. He married a Spanish nurse, Anita de Ginar, both moving to live in Battersea, London, in 1939. He died, aged 86, in retirement in southern France.
Clockwise from left: Ralph Nicholas, Herbert Tagg, Clarence Wildsmith, Eugene Fogarty, Hector Barber, Tom Nottingham being greeted by his daughters on his return home, Thomas McNulty and Harold Horbury.
Eugene Fogarty was born in Washington DC and was a medic in Spain, working for seven months at Villanueva hospital. After the war he was a nurse at St Mary’s Hospital, London, until 1950 when he left for a similar position in Doncaster, where he died, aged 68, in 1968.
Thomas Greenfield’s service details are sketchy, but he gave an address in Catherine Street, Doncaster, when he arrived in Spain.
William Hooton was a Doncaster-born painter. His service was brief and he was repatriated in May 1937. He emigrated to Australia in 1959, where he died seven years later, aged 67.
Thomas McNulty was born in Hanley, Staffordshire, but died in Doncaster, aged 71. He was a merchant seaman and fought with British and Lincoln Battalions at Brunete, Quinto, Belchite and Fuentes de Ebro.
Ralph Nicholas was a motor mechanic, born in Hitchen, but was living in Doncaster when he went to Spain in January 1937. He was wounded at the Battle of Brunete in 1937 and again at the Ebro in the following summer. It is not known when he died.
William Parlett was a labourer, born in Sunderland, but who died in Doncaster in January 2000 at the age of 88. He was taken prisoner at the Battle of Teruel in the winter of the 1937/38 and was a held at the San Pedro de Cardeña prison camp. In the Second World War he was decorated for his service in the merchant navy, which included the Arctic convoys to Russia.
Edward Whittaker was a fitter and mechanic, born in Pontefract in 1906, and known to be living in Doncaster in 1939 soon after he arrived back from Spain. He died in Doncaster, aged 84. In Spain he served as a company armourer.
Clarence Wildsmith was an electrician and billiard hall manager, born in Barnsley. His address was in Worcester Avenue, Wheatley. He fought with the 15th Brigade’s Anti-Tank Battery. He died in Doncaster, aged 83, in October 1988.
Today we remember these 16 men and all those who fought alongside them in Spain. We remember too all those who supported them at home as part of a mass ‘Aid for Spain’ movement. The movement showed – not for the first or last time – that millions of ordinary British people had more sense than their government at the time.
They knew that fascism, that Hitler and Mussolini, had to be defeated in Spain or else there would be another world war.
By contrast the Conservative-led national governments of Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain were keen on appeasing the fascist dictators.
Their policy of ‘non-intervention’ was designed to facilitate a Franco victory in Spain. Such was their hostility to the progressive Popular Front government of the Spanish Republic that they were prepared to sacrifice democracy in Spain – as well as in Czechoslovakia – in the hope that the fascist dictators would leave the British Empire alone and instead attack the Soviet Union.
There are many lessons here for today. Fascism has not gone away. Nor has the predilection of many liberal democracies to side with fascist or authoritarian regimes rather than with progressive governments and forces.
While in Doncaster, talking about the Spanish Civil War, we must mention one of its favourite sons, Rodney Bickerstaffe, former Unison general secretary and trustee and patron of the IBMT.
He would have been proud to have been here today.
Rodney’s mother-to-be, Pearl Bickerstaffe, a Doncaster lass, was a children’s nurse in Thorp Arch. Still in her teens she compiled an extraordinary scrapbook about the war in Spain. The scrapbook’s two volumes were a prized family possession. This meant that Rodney carried Spain’s tragedy in his heart and knew about the heroism and sacrifice of the International Brigades and how, as his mother told him, the world should have listened to their warnings.
Then, when Rodney became active in the trade union movement, his hero and mentor was Jack Jones, general secretary of the mighty Transport & General Workers’ Union, who had fought in the Battle of of the Ebro with the British Battalion.
Rodney was a founding trustee of the IBMT and later one its patrons.
The IBMT keeps alive the memory and spirit of the men and women who fought fascism and defended democracy in the Spanish Civil War. Their example of International solidarity and anti-fascism, as the inscription on our national memorial on London’s Southbank puts it, ‘inspired the world’.
The final word today should go to one of the Doncaster volunteers, Tom Nottingham. The Doncaster Gazette reported his return home on 16 February 1939. A photo shows him with fellow volunteers Ralph Nicholas and Clarence Wildsmith being greeted by supporters including Mr AE Hall, Doncaster divisional Labour Party chairman, and Mrs Tagg, widow of Herbert Tagg.
Soon afterwards he wrote a full-page article for the Gazette headlined ‘Ten months in Franco prison’, telling of his time as a POW. He concluded by saying: ‘It has been a big ordeal and I feel very weak through having insufficient food for so long – I lost 31lbs during my imprisonment – but I would go out and fight again if the call came, in the interests of democracy against fascism.
Supporters at the unveiling on 12 February, including David Shaw (right), Tosh McDonald (fifth from right) and Jim Jump (back, centre).
