Article by IBMT Chair Jim Jump for the September/October issue of Educate, journal of the NEU education workers’ union.
Not only was the Spanish Civil War one of the major conflicts of the last century. It also has a special place in British trade union and radical history.
Yet, despite being a prelude to the Second World War, the war that devastated Spain from 1936-39 is often overlooked in history lessons.
The IBMT is making efforts to put things right. In collaboration with the history department of Leeds University and other educationalists, we have produced a range of teaching aids, including detailed lesson plans.
Mostly they are aimed at Key Stage 3 pupils, though the IBMT’s classroom resources also offer background briefings, strong visuals and oral testimonies suitable for a range of ages.
The Key Stage 3 modules will motivate pupils to find out the reasons why 2,500 men and women from the British Isles took the extraordinary decision to join the legendary International Brigades in Spain. Their sacrifice was tragically large – 530 of them died in battle.
This was a time when our leaders were appeasing Europe’s fascist dictators. Britain refused to help Spain’s elected government. And it turned a blind eye as Hitler and Mussolini sent soldiers, airplanes and weapons to help General Franco crush Spanish democracy.
Spanish towns and cities were mercilessly bombed (remember Guernica), streams of refugees fled Franco’s advancing army and terrible violence was inflicted on the civilian population – it all sounds depressingly familiar, doesn’t it?
Anti-fascists around the world were outraged that Spain was being abandoned. Tens of thousands of them crossed the Pyrenees to defend a progressive government that had given votes and legal rights to women and had built thousands of new schools and hospitals.
They warned there would be another world war unless fascism was stopped in Spain. They were proved right and, five months after Franco declared victory, the Second World War began.
Some teachers who served in Spain (clockwise from top left): Noel Carritt, from Oxford, who was wounded in the Battle of Jarama in February 1937; Londoner Alan Gilchrist, who was wounded at the Battle of the Ebro in the summer of 1938; Frank Edwards, from Belfast, who fought at Lopera and Jarama; Francesca Wilson from Newcastle, who ran a children’s hospital in Murcia; Isidore Konigsberg from London’s East End, who was captured in Aragón and released in an exchange with Italian POWs.
The International Brigade volunteers came from all walks of life. There were teachers among them, though the majority were young working-class labour movement activists.
In Spain their cry was ¡No pasarán! – They shall not pass! – the same slogan used by demonstrators who stopped fascist Blackshirts marching through the Jewish area of Whitechapel in London in October 1936. Scores of those who took part in the Battle of Cable Street went on to fight in Spain.
The IBMT’s mission is to keep alive the memory and spirit of the International Brigades, both in schools and in trade unions. We believe their example of anti-fascism and international solidarity is as inspiring and relevant today as it was in the 1930s.
Teachers and their unions have a special role to play. Just as we remember those who fought for trade union rights, for the vote and for women’s rights, so we should remember those who first resisted fascism and took up arms against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy when their own government looked the other way.
The IBMT’s teaching resources are here.