Jim Jump on the Fife coalminer, illustrator, poet and International Brigader who was ‘small in stature, large in life’ …

Born on 21 August 1912 in Denbeath, Fife, Hugh Smith Sloan was the son of Elizabeth and Richard Sloan, a pit sinker and miner. The eldest of five, from an early age he developed a talent for art. But like his father, he became a coalminer and mine workers’ union activist, taking part in many campaigns for better wages and conditions in the Fife coalfield.

In the 1930s the Communist Party was an influential force in Fife – Willie Gallacher was the Communist MP for West Fife from 1935 to 1950 – and Hugh soon became a party member. It wasn’t long either before he was producing satirical sketches for the Daily Worker, as well as for The Spark and The Flame, pit papers respectively of the Wellesley and Michael collieries. It was also at this time that he began writing poetry.

Hugh was an avid reader and a self-taught Marxist. He would joke to daughter Betty that he was a bit of a freak: ‘a working-class intellectual and there’s supposed to be no such thing.’

Going to Spain was the ‘logical development of my political ideas’, he said many years later, adding: ‘In1936, when Franco revolted against the democratically elected Republican government in Spain, it was like an inspiration to youngsters like me all over the world.’

Hugh left for Spain in April 1937. Arrested in Calais soon after setting foot in France and promptly deported to the UK, he finally entered Spain in May on his second attempt. He joined the British Anti-Tank Battery, acting as runner, secretary and paymaster, and taking part in actions at Brunete and Quinto in 1937 and Teruel in the winter of 1937/38. With the British Battalion he crossed the Ebro in the summer of 1938 at the start of the Battle of the Ebro.

Hugh Sloan, bottom left, with the British Anti-Tank Battery in Spain in 1937.

Repatriated in December 1938 with the rest of the battalion, Hugh returned to Scotland to work in the mines, where he stayed until 1964 when he was advised to quit on health grounds. He then worked as a danger, laying a pipeline to clean the River Leven, and later as a caretaker at Kirkland High School.

‘When I returned home I found that I couldn’t bear to talk about Spain and the sense of loss that I felt about it,’ he told interviewers half a century later. ‘The sense of loss was equal to the contribution that you felt you had made, and that was tremendous.’

Left: Laying a wreath at the Kirkcaldy memorial to the International Brigades in 1982 with Anne Knight, who had been a nurse in Spain. Right: Hugh’s cover sketch for ‘No to Franco: The Struggle Never Stopped 1939-1975’ by Bill Alexander, which was published in 1992.

Hugh Sloan lived long enough to be one of those volunteers who was able to return to a democratic Spain. He wrote this poem after one such visit. It was first published in ‘Poems from Spain: British and Irish International Brigaders on the Spanish Civil War’ by Jim Jump (ed), Lawrence & Wishart, London (2006).

A Tribute
Jumping the skies and time in search of our future
The plane slips evenly forward through the dark night.
Just a short flip and we are there.
Yesterday, when we were young, the trip was longer and devious
And our cause lay footsore over the mountains and through the valleys.
Like a gathering storm, we came as droplets, mountain streams then raging torrents
And the fury was heard all over the Earth and stirred its sympathy.
Fascism was striding across Europe and the brave Spanish people were breaking the shackles of feudalism.
Guernica was calling for revenge and humanity responded and sent its sons.
We became one people defending the homes of Spain and our own
Against a murdering pestilence that threatened a thousand years of enslavement
Serving in a People’s Army for a people’s cause.
There was no other way we could go.
With idealism in our minds, we were no idealists,
With passion in our hearts, we were no romantics,
With fire in our bellies, we were no warriors.
We were doing the job that life had thrust upon us.

Hugh Sloan describes his experiences in Spain in ‘Voices from the Spanish Civil War: Personal Recollections of Scottish Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War’ by Ian Macdougall (ed), Edinburgh: Polygon (1986). He was also interviewed for the Imperial War Museum’s sound archive of International Brigaders. Other sources can be found in the archives at the Marx Memorial Library in London.