Battersea plaque for Clive Branson and family

A blue plaque was unveiled on 30 May on the flat in south London where International Brigader Clive Branson, wife Noreen and daughter Rosa Branson lived after Clive returned from Spain.

Raised by the Battersea Society, the plaque is on the corner of Bullen Street and 310 Battersea Park Road.

Rosa Branson, aged 95, a professional artist, was in attendance, along with multiple generations of the Branson family.

Addressing the gathering for the unveiling, IBMT Chair Jim Jump pointed out that Clive Branson was one of 2,500 men and women from Britain and Ireland who went to Spain between 1936-39 to defend democracy and fight fascism.

‘The long, dark shadow of fascism and war was the spreading across Europe, he said. ‘Clive and the other volunteers warned that world war would be inevitable unless fascism was stopped in Spain.’

Having arrived in Spain in January 1938, Branson was captured in the British Battalion’s retreat through Aragón in the spring of that year. The rest of his time in Spain was spent as a prisoner of war at camps in San Pedro de Cardeña, near Burgos, and Palencia. He left in October in a prisoner exchange for captured Italian troops.

Branson died serving in the British Army in Burma in 1944.

‘Militarily, Clive’s contribution to the war effort in Spain was negligible,’ Jump said. ‘But his legacy is disproportionately large.’

While in San Pedro he sketched a series of portraits of fellow prisoners. ‘They are intimate and often moving studies. Several are on the IBMT’s website in our directory of all the British volunteers in Spain, being the only visual record we have of some volunteers.’

Noreen and Clive Branson.

Jump went on to say that Branson was also a fine poet, who wrote several poems inspired by the Spanish Civil War. 

Introducing a poem that he read out (see below), Jump noted that the poem describes the sorry state of his fellow prisoners. ‘But at the end it strikes a defiant note – one that is characteristic of those like Clive Branson and others of his generation who believed they could build a better world.’

He concluded: ‘We would do well to follow their example today.’

From left: Meirian Jump (MML), Peggy Prendeville (granddaughter of Clive and Noreen); Rosa Branson and Jim Jump (IBMT).

Marx Memorial Library (MML) Director Meirian Jump also spoke at the ceremony. She explained that Noreen Branson, like her husband, was a lifelong communist. Her roles included delivering messages to clandestine communist parties in fascist Europe. She later became a distinguished historian.

In addition, Clive and Noreen were instrumental in the MML’s foundation in 1933. ‘They started the fund that secured the library a permanent home by buying what is now Marx House, on London’s Clerkenwell Green.’

San Pedro
Clive Branson

A foreign darkness fills the air to-night.
The moon betrays this unfamiliar scene.
Strange creatures, shadow-ghosts of what had been
Live with no aim than groping through half-light,
Talk dreamily, walk wandering, delight
In trivial acts that formerly would mean
Nothing. A livid memory, this lean
Ill-clad rabble of a lost dreaded might.

Look longer, deeper, the accustomed eyes
Know more than quick appearances can tell.
These fools, this shoddy crowd, this dirt, are lies
Their idiot captors wantonly compel.
These men are giants chained down from the skies
To congregate an old and empty hell.

About 60 people attended the unveiling.