The IBMT’s 2024 AGM will be held on 5 October from 2.30pm-4pm in The Stable Games Room, 129 High St, Weston-super-Mare BS23 1HN.

All members can attend and take part in proceedings.

The AGM is part of a weekend of commemorative, educational and social activities in Weston-super-Mare and Bristol from the evening of Friday 4 October to Sunday 6 October, ending around midday.

Provisional programme^*

Friday
7pm: Reception at The Stable (see above).
8pm: Evening entertainment, including a flamenco performance.

Saturday
11am: Talks about local volunteers and the Spanish Civil War.
1pm: Time to explore Weston.
2.30pm: AGM (see agenda below) in The Stable (see above).
4.30pm: Performance by Spanish guitarist.
5pm: Buffet.
6pm: Musical performance about West Country volunteers and the Basque children evacuees at the Clark’s family home in Street, Somerset, featuring poetry, live music, song and dance.
7pm: Social in the bar until late.

Sunday
9.50am: Meet at Weston-super-Mare station, Station Approach, Weston-super-Mare, BS23 1XY for 10.10am departure to Bristol Temple Meads station, Station Approach, off Bath Road, Bristol, BS1 6QF (journey time 34 minutes).
11.15am: Commemoration at the memorial in Castle Park, Broad Weir, Bristol, BS1 3XB (51.45558, -2.5895).

* Times may be subject to change. Details to be confirmed.

Agenda

1. Chair’s opening remarks
2. Approval of the minutes of the 2023 AGM
3. Matters arising from the minutes not otherwise on the agenda
4. Executive Committee’s annual report
5. Finance report, including 2023-2024 accounts
6. Election of two scrutineers
7. Election of four Executive Committee members (see below) 
8. Date and place of 2025 AGM
9. Any Other Business (previously notified)
10. Scrutineers’ report of election results
11. Chair’s closing remarks

Nominations for the Executive Committee

Nominations are invited for candidates to fill four vacancies on the Executive Committee. If necessary, a ballot will be held among members attending the AGM.

The vacancies arise because Alan Lloyd, Dolores Long and Luke O’Riordan will have completed their terms of office by the AGM. In addition, there is another vacancy because of an earlier resignation.

All IBMT members may nominate fellow members to serve on the EC. The EC members who are stepping down are permitted to stand for election along with other IBMT members.

Nominations must be made in writing and received by the Secretary by 8am on Saturday 21 September. The names of the candidates will be published on the IBMT website in advance of the AGM. Proposed agenda items must be received by the Secretary by 8am on Saturday 28 September.

Nominations and proposed agenda items sent by email will be acknowledged. Otherwise send them by post to: IBMT Secretary, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU.

Hotels

The Grand Atlantic is a 10-minute walk from The Stable, where the AGM will be held. Other options include the Lauriston, five minutes from the venue, and Premier Inn Weston-Super-Mare (Seafront), 10 minutes from the venue.

Published 13 August 2024 and updated 26 August.

Jim Jump reviews ‘Spanish Sky Spreads Its Stars: The story of the Thälmann Battalion and the first Germans in armed struggle against fascism’ by Ewald P Schulz (International Brigade Commemoration Committee, Belfast, 2024).

More than 4,000 Germans fought in the International Brigades or in the anti-fascist militias and other Spanish military units during the Spanish Civil War. Over 1,000 of them gave their lives.

Their story is recounted in this booklet by Ewald P Schulz, a Berlin-based lawyer and journalist who is active in the KFSR, the IBMT’s sister organisation in Germany. The booklet’s title is taken from the song ‘The Thälmann Column’ by composer Paul Dessau and his wife Gudrun: ‘Spain’s sky spreads its stars over our trenches / And the morning already greets from afar’.

Usually known as the Thaelmann Battalion in Spain, the battalion was named after Ernst Thälmann, leader of the KPD German Communist Party. He was arrested as soon as Hitler took power in 1933 and executed on the Führer’s personal orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944.

As Schulz points out, the German volunteers differed from their British, Dutch, French and Scandinavian counterparts in that they were effectively homeless. Many were already in exile from Nazism and those who travelled to Spain from Germany could also not return home.

The same was true for the battalion’s Austrians following the Anschluss of March 1938, when Germany marched into Austria.

The decision to fight fascism in Spain – on occasions pitted against the airborne Condor Legion sent by Hitler to help Franco’s rebels – had a special meaning for the German volunteers.

‘For the first time they had the opportunity to stand up to the fascists and to oppose their violence,’ he writes. 

Between 60 and 70 per cent of the German volunteers were communists, the rest mostly social democrats, anarchists or supporters of other left organisations. ‘They were all united by the conviction that Spain should not suffer the same fate as Germany.’

Three Germans are given brief biographies. Hermann Drumm, a miner from Saarland in south-west Germany, was a member of the SPD social democrats and became a company commander before being killed, aged 38, at Belchite in September 1937.

Käthe Hempel (1911-1966) was originally from Waldheim, a town west of Dresden. In the summer of 1936 she was living in Switzerland, from where she cycled to Barcelona to take part in the planned People’s Olympiad, which was being organised as an anti-fascist alternative to the Berlin Olympics. She was a communist and served as a nurse in Spain.

Alois Weisberger (1904-?) was another miner from Saarland and was one of the few members of the Catholic Centre Party to join the Thälmann Battalion. The party, indeed, had voted in favour of Hitler’s Enabling Act that gave the Nazi leader untrammelled powers. After the war in Spain, Weisberger was interned in France and in 1943 handed over to the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp.

The German volunteers fought in all the great battles of the war in Spain: the defence of Madrid, Jarama, Guadalajara, Brunete, Teruel and the Ebro. Having no homes to go to after the International Brigades were stood down in September 1938, the Germans, along with the Austrians and Czechs, took up arms again in January 1939, bravely covering the flight of refugees towards the French border as Franco’s forces advanced through Catalonia.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the booklet is the account of what happened to the surviving Thälmanns after the war. Interned by the French in a network of camps, some managed to secure visas to Britain, Mexico, the Soviet Union and the US. Others were recruited to French labour battalions. Those still in the camps following the French surrender to the Germans in 1940 were sent to concentration camps, where many perished, or escaped to join the French Resistance.

After the defeat of Nazism in 1945, contrasting receptions awaited the veterans in West and East Germany. In the Federal Republic, they fell foul of the state’s official anti-communist ideology, which included the banning of the KPD in 1956.

While former members of the Condor Legion received pensions for their service in Spain, there was no such recognition for those who had fought fascism and Nazism in Spain.

In the GDR the International Brigade veterans were officially honoured. They served in leadership roles in the East German army as well as in the country’s police and in government positions. 

Some, Schulz acknowledges, were regarded with suspicion during the Stalin era, above all any who had lived in Western countries before returning to Germany. A few lost their jobs and were unjustly persecuted, such as prominent writer Walter Janka.

In contrast with West Germany, however, the volunteers in Spain entered the cultural canon of the GDR. ‘Countless books, songs and films were published. Streets were named after Spanish fighters. Medals were awarded and every child learned about the war in Spain at school.’

Born in 1968 in West Germany, Schulz says he only found out about the Thälmanns after 2000. Most older left-wingers in the FRG first came across their story through the songs of singer-composer Ernst Busch, two albums of which were released in the 1980s.

The songs had been recorded in Barcelona in 1938 with the help of an International Brigade choir. Some of the recordings were released in New York in 1940 under the title ‘Six Songs for Democracy’, with American actor, singer and civil rights campaigner Paul Robeson writing in the sleeve notes: ‘Valiant and heroic was the part played by the International Brigade in the glorious struggle of the Spanish Republic.’ 

Schulz’s text for this booklet is based on a talk he gave in 2023 as part of Belfast’s annual Féile an Phobail (People’s Festival). The event was hosted at the Shankill Library by the IBMT-affiliated International Brigade Commemoration Committee. The booklet also includes tributes to Manus O’Riordan, the son of Cork Brigader Michael O’Riordan, and Belfast-born volunteer Paddy McAllister.

Copies of the booklet can be ordered from the IBCC for £6 plus £2.50 p&p within the UK. Contact Lynda Walker of the IBCC for more details.

The IBMT's commemoration at the International Brigade memorial in Jubilee Gardens on London's South Bank on Saturday 6 July saw speeches by PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote and historian Richard Baxell.

As is customary and led by IBMT President Marlene Sidaway, wreaths were laid and there was a minute's silence in honour of the more than 500 volunteers from Britain and Ireland who gave their lives in Spain and in memory of the 2,500 volunteers who served in the International Brigades.

Led by folk duo Na-Mara, everyone sang 'Valley of Jarama' and the event ended with a rousing rendition of 'The Internationale'.

In her contribution, Fran Heathcote noted the worrying rise of the racist far-right in Britain, in the form of the Reform party, which had gained 4 million votes in the general election held two days previously. The anti-fascist example of the International Brigades was therefore needed today more than ever.

'Europe and indeed the UK are heading at a startling rate towards fascism,' she said, 'with far-right parties sweeping up millions of votes. We need to get out into our communities and workplaces to spread the resistance to fascism. The parallels with the 1930s are there for all to see.'

Fran Heathcote.

IBMT Historical Consultant Richard Baxell spoke about the experience of the International Brigade prisoners during the Spanish Civil War.

In particular, he drew from the biography of Battersea volunteer George Wheeler, 'To Make the People Smile Again', which, among other things, describes the appalling conditions endured in the San Pedro de Cardeña prison camp.

The mood was lightened when he recounted the way that Wheeler and the other prisoners, were forced by violent guards to chant 'Fran-co! Fran-co!'. They did so with gusto, but chorusing 'F*** you! F*** you!' instead.

Camilo Morán, aged 4, and mother Noelia laying a wreath on behalf of the Spanish Communist Party. Looking on is Richard Baxell.

There was an emotional send-off for Na-Mara – Paul McNamara and Rob Garcia – who have announced they are giving up touring and playing live gigs and 16 years of doing so. As this would be their final performance at Jubilee Gardens, IBMT Secretary Megan Dobney presented them with flowers in the colours of the Spanish Republic.

One of the songs performed by Na-Mara was 'The Bite'. Introducing it, McNamara explained that the words were inspired by a reference in George Wheeler's autobiography to the small piece of wood he would put in his mouth before going into battle as something to clench while bombs and bullets landed around him.

IBMT Chair Jim Jump rounded off proceedings by underlining the importance of the IBMT's work, pointing out that memorials in Spain were still subject to attack and, more generally, there were moves to erase the role of the Brigaders from the 20th century's long war against fascism.

'In the IBMT we're fighting back with our schools project, providing teaching aids and lesson plans so that pupils can be taught about the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War.'

Thanking the wreath-layers, he singled out Isabel García, Deputy Consul at the Spanish embassy in London. He said the IBMT applauded the efforts of the current Spanish government, through its Law of Democratic Memory, to recognise the crimes committed against the supporters of the Spanish Republic.

He went on: 'I was struck by the words of your prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, while visiting Franco's grotesque former mausoleum at the Valley of Cuelgamuros earlier this year, when he said "Sin memoria no hay democracia" – there can be no democracy without memory.'

Among those present in Jubilee Gardens were family and descendants of International Brigaders Felicia Browne, Jimmy Burns, Noel Carritt, John Cornford, Len Crome, Jack Edwards, Otto Estensen, Harry Fraser, George Green, Nan Green, Edwin Greening, Jimmy Jump, Lou Kenton, Johnny Longstaff, David Marshall, Patrick O’Sullivan, Cyril Sexton, Hugh Slater, Alex Tudor-Hart, Rob Wardle and Tom Wintringham.

All photos are © Andrew Wiard. See this link for more photos from the commemoration.

Jim Jump applauds the publication of a new booklet about the rail and maritime workers who first fought fascism.

They say the past never goes away and is still with us. That couldn’t be more true of the rise of fascism last century.

Everyone hoped this evil creed had been stamped out for good with the defeat of the Nazi war machine in 1945. But the fascist beast and its toxic ideology of race-hate, ethno-nationalism, militarism and hostility to organised labour has not gone away. 

Sadly, this makes the RMT’s new booklet, ‘They Shall Not Pass’, all the more relevant and important today.

Published in conjunction with the IBMT, it tells the story of the railway workers and seafarers who in the 1930s resisted fascism at home and, in the case of the Spanish Civil War, took up arms to stop Hitler, Mussolini and General Franco crushing the elected government of Spain. 

What stands out is that these workers recognised the true threat of fascism well before their political masters did.

It was ordinary people who stopped the British Union of Fascists (BUF) from marching through our towns and cities.

And it was ordinary people, including scores of members of the NUR and NUS rail and seafaring unions, who joined the International Brigades to fight the fascists in Spain. There’s a plaque with 120 names on it proudly on display at RMT’s head office.

Within the British establishment there was considerable sympathy for the way Europe’s fascist dictators banned trade unions and violently suppressed political parties of the left.

BUF leader Sir Oswald Mosley was an aristocratic former Labour cabinet minister with rich and powerful friends.

As ‘They Shall Not Pass’ describes, Britain’s would-be führer came unstuck when he sued NUR general secretary John Marchbank for slander. The BUF leader won a technical victory, but was awarded a laughable farthing (a quarter of a penny) in damages and was left with a massive legal bill.

Mosley’s High Court humiliation came in 1936. Things got worse in October of that year at the Battle of Cable Street. This was when the Jewish population of Whitechapel joined forces with local dockers, trade unionists, communists and socialists to prevent the BUF’s antisemitic Blackshirts from parading through London’s East End.

The cry of the anti-fascists was ‘They shall not pass!’, the same one used by the defenders of Madrid, ‘¡No pasarán!’. Many of the protesters at Cable Street were among more than 2,000 volunteers from Britain who joined the International Brigades to fight in Spain.

IBMT Chair Jim Jump (centre) with RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch (left) and RMT Assistant General Secretary Eddie Dempsey at the union's annual general meeting in Hull in July. Jump is one of the co-authors of 'They Shall Not Pass', along with Brian Denny and Steve Silver.

This was no gap-year jaunt. More than 500 of them made the ultimate sacrifice. NUR member Ginger McElroy from Wishaw was killed at the Battle of Jarama in February 1937 after being hit by a dum-dum bullet. The bloody battle saw the British Battalion lose more than 150 men. But they held the line to stop Franco taking Madrid.

Fellow railwayman Alwyn Skinner from Neath lost his life in the Battle of the Ebro in the summer of 1938, when Hitler’s bombers pummelled the British Battalion on the rocky slopes around Gandesa. The battalion suffered 90 fatalities.

Readers of this 36-page booklet will be moved and inspired by the exploits of many individuals described in it.

Jim Prendergast, one of the leaders of the Irish contingent in the International Brigades, fought bravely at Córdoba, Jarama and Brunete. In the 1960s he was the NUR’s Marylebone branch secretary and led the campaign that broke British Rail’s colour bar that excluded black workers from senior posts.

Jack Coward, one of several Liverpool seamen to fight in Spain, was captured at Calaceite in 1938 but escaped and fought behind the lines with Spanish guerrillas. When he was re-captured, he pretended to be deaf and dumb and eventually made his way home from enemy Spain on a British ship.

Spike Robson, a ship’s fireman from South Shields, led the NUS crew of the Linaria on strike in Boston, Massachusetts, to stop explosive materials being shipped to Franco’s Spain. 

‘We will not take out the ship if it means helping to kill people in Spain,’ Robson declared.

Arrested on their return home, the men ended up in court, charged under the Merchant Shipping Act and facing prison sentences. Robson was blacklisted from the shipping industry as a result

It’s often said that union members stand on the shoulders of giants – in other words our predecessors who fought for the rights we enjoy today and the principles that still guide us. Delve into this booklet and meet some of those giants from the RMT’s past.

Jim Jump is the chair of the IBMT and a former editor of the NUS/RMT journal, The Seaman.

‘The Shall Not Pass’ can be ordered from the IBMT Shop for £5 plus p&p.

Here’s an update from the Madrid-based Association of Friends of the International Brigades (AABI) on the campaign to stop Madrid City Council from building a waste recycling facility on top of a mass grave adjacent to Fuencarral cemetery (pictured above). The site is thought to contain the remains of some 451 International Brigaders, including several Britons.

We believe it is very important to keep you up-to-date on the activity that our association is deploying in relation to this issue. 

As we suppose you know from the great repercussion it has had in the press and the information we have been updating you with, a few months ago we determined the possibility of confirming the burial place of the 451 brigadistas originally buried in the cemetery of Fuencarral and whose graves were desecrated by the fascists after the war, and their bodies hidden in the area behind the enclosure. 

We got the Ministry of Democratic Memory involved, which contracted Arqueoantro to carry out archaeological tests to determine the location of the mass grave. Madrid City Council had been denying the necessary permission to carry out that operation, while requesting a geo-radar study in that area, in order, according to their own words, ‘to confirm that there was nothing’. 

According to the information that has reached us, it seems that the study confirmed that, as we have been stating, ‘there was something’. Since receiving the report in April, the city council, with Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida at the head, has denied any association or citizen access to the report, even the opposition groups (and paying no attention to the Transparency Law that requires them to make the report public). 

The excuses have included ‘the official in charge of these documents is not here’, as if they themselves were not in charge of the report.

Last week the council delegate of urban planning, Francisco de Borja Carabante, stated in plenary session that the conclusions drawn by some municipal technicians based on the data received from the geo-radar company ruled out the existence of earthworks in the area. 

The same was repeated by the mayor the following day. However, both the original report and the conclusions of these technicians have still not been made public or available to anyone except, apparently, to a journalist from El Mundo, who published some paragraphs that he says are original because he had access to the conclusions of the city council. 

Of course, the possibility of carrying out tests by the ministry, a much more effective and decisive technique, continues to be vetoed.

Given these facts and this repeated lack of transparency, we are forced to turn to the Prosecutor's Office of Democratic Memory to take action on what we consider a crime against the Law of Democratic Memory committed by the mayor of Madrid, the council delegate of urban planning and three other officials for concealment of data, obstructionism and prevarication. In the following link you can find information about the complaint and its terms.

This is a translation of our statement on thew matter:

The Association of Friends of the International Brigades (AABI) has denounced Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida, Council Delegate of Urban Planning Francisco de Borja Carabante, Council President of the Fuencarral District Board José Antonio Martínez Páramo, General Director of Cleaning Víctor Sarabía and Deputy Director of Cleaning Olivia Lombraña for an alleged crime of lying in order to conceal information about the existence of a mass grave of International Brigaders and for preventing the Ministry of initiating the proper testings in the field, as required by the Law of Democratic Memory.

AABI denounces the municipal council team for hiding the report prepared by the company Gama Geofísica because the results are contrary to its interest in developing a waste project in the district of Montecarmelo.

AABI argues that the five defendants are acting with ‘lack of transparency by hiding for more than 50 days’ the report of the company Gama Geofísica that was delivered on 26 April 2024 to the city council; Gama Geofísica had conducted tests with geo-radar and tomography during that same month ‘exclusively in the plot 26.2b of the Partial Plan of Montecarmelo’.

The report of Gama Geofísica concludes that there are indications detected by the geo-radar that determine a ‘high compatibility’ with the existence in that plot of a mass grave, which may contain the remains of the 451 brigadistas, and recommends archaeological testings.

For more background on this story, see these earlier reports on the IBMT website:

A Spanish newspaper is suggesting that the presence of a mass grave in Madrid containing the remains of 451 International Brigaders, including several Britons, has been confirmed.

However, the Madrid authorities are being accused of sitting on the report because of its inconvenient findings.

The site is next to Fuencarral cemetery, where the Madrid City Council, which is governed by the right-wing PP party, wants to build a waste facility.

A campaign led by Spain’s AABI friends of the International Brigades, which included a letter of protest from the IBMT, forced the council earlier this year to freeze its plans while a survey of the plot was undertaken.

The bodies of the Brigaders, which had previously been properly buried in the cemetery, were dumped outside its perimeter walls following Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War.

The El País daily reported on 28 May: ‘The possibility of the appearance of the largest mass grave found in Madrid after the civil war appears imminent in view of the report prepared by a Madrid company and delivered to the city council.’

It went on: ‘The results obtained in the geo-radar study are “highly compatible” with the probability that a mass grave exists, this newspaper has learned. The inspection was carried out on a 10,000 square metre plot where the city council plans the construction of a mega waste facility.’

Patricia Ure of the AABI demanded to know why the survey report was not being made public. 

‘Could it be that there are well-founded suspicions that the mass grave of the Brigade members exhumed and thrown into it is located there?’ she asked. ‘We think that in a short time there will be news because the city council will not be able to continue hiding the report.’

Among those who were buried at Fuencarral are the poet Julian Bell, Samuel Walsh, a cook from Newcastle, Arnold Jeans, a commercial traveller from Lancashire, and Edward Burke, from Croydon, a journalist and Unity Theatre actor.

Pictured above: a memorial plaque in Fuencarral cemetery to the British, American and Canadian battalions of the 15th International Brigade.

A major survey of where International Brigaders died in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War has established the names of 522 volunteers, including 86 from Britain and six from Ireland.

The findings were published in May by Memòria Democràtica, the Catalan government’s historical memory agency, as part of its Alvah Bessie Programme, named after a prominent US volunteer.

Details can be viewed online, with separate reports on the British and Irish volunteers who died or went missing in action. 

A comprehensive list of all 607 15th Brigade fatalities and MIAs during the 1938 Battle of the Ebro, including battlefield maps, is also available. The list includes British, Canadian, Irish, Spanish and US volunteers, as well as some from other countries.

Several volunteers were reported as having died in specific hospitals. These include, from Britain and Ireland, Daniel Boyle, Robert Glen, John McLennaghan, John Lobban, Henry McGrath and Sidney Lewis. In several cases Memòria Democràtica has uncovered fresh information about them.

Family relatives of those who died in Catalonia are meanwhile being invited to come forward and register in Memòria Democràtica’s Census of Missing People. They will have the option of providing a DNA sample for its genetic identification programme. 

IBMT Chair Jim Jump praised the excellent research being undertaken by the Alvah Bessie Programme. 

‘The Catalan government’s support for this project contrasts starkly with the attitude of the regional government of neighbouring Aragón,’ he said.

In April the IBMT joined in protests over plans by the right-wing PP-Vox coalition government to rescind the democratic memory law enacted by the previous socialist-led government. Around 150 British Battalion lives were lost in Aragón during the war.

All the findings of the Alvah Bessie Programme are published in Catalan and English on its website.

The picture above shows the plaque on Hill 666, near Gandesa, naming the British Battalion dead in the Battle of the Ebro.

The IBMT has added its name to a letter of protest to the regional government of Aragón for its decision to repeal a Law of Democratic Memory.

The law allows funding for the excavation of mass graves of the victims of Franco during Spain’s civil war and the subsequent dictatorship.

Aragón is run by a coalition of the rightwing PP and far-right Vox parties. It took office last year following elections that saw the socialist PSOE-led administration removed from office.

Enacted by the then ruling PSOE government, the region’s 2018 Law of Democratic Memory commits the government to recovery the remains of civil war victims and return them to their families.

Many International Brigaders were killed in Aragón and their remains lie in unmarked graves. More than 150 British and Irish lives were lost.

According to historian Paul Preston’s ‘The Spanish Holocaust’, 8,523 supporters of the Spanish Republic were executed behind Francoist lines between 1936-39. An unknown number of Republican soldiers were also killed in the province, which straddles the Ebro in north-east Spain.

The letter of protest to the authorities in Zaragoza, the regional capital, was coordinated early in April by the Madrid-based AABI, Friends of the International Brigades.

‘We request the restoration of the so-called Democratic Memory Law of Aragón as a means of finding a way to close the wounds of the past,’ says AABI in its letter. 

As well as the IBMT, others signatories include International Brigade memorial associations in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Serbia and the US.

The British Battalion saw action in Aragón at Belchite in the autumn of 1937, at Teruel early in 1938 and in the spring of that year in and around Caspe. At Teruel, fighting took place amid severe winter conditions (see main picture – courtesy of the Marx Memorial Library).

The 2023 Len Crome Memorial Conference, which took place on 11 November 2023, is now available to watch online.

The conversation between leading historians on the Spanish Civil War Helen Graham and Paul Preston, with Richard Baxell in the chair, charts the long roots of the Spanish Civil War.

Helen, Paul and Richard trace the conflict's origins back to the First World War – not only with attempts to wipe out the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 but also to double down on any socially levelling reform inside the developed industrial heartlands of Europe, including Britain.

Paul Preston is one of the world’s foremost historians of the causes, course and consequences of the Spanish Civil War. He is the IBMT’s Founding Chair.

Helen Graham is Emeritus Professor of modern European history at Royal Holloway University of London and is the author of ‘Interrogating Francoism' and ‘The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction’. She is also an IBMT Patron.

Richard Baxell is the author of 'Forged in Spain'. He is a research fellow at the LSE and the IBMT's Historical Consultant.

The video also features Peter Crome, who discusses his father’s life and legacy.

To watch the previous Len Crome Memorial Conferences online, go to the IBMTNews Len Crome playlist on YouTube.

Cover: Sean Cooney, member of folk trio The Young'uns.

Issue 1-2024 of the IBMT digital magazine, ¡No Pasaran!, has gone out to all paid-up members by email.

On the cover is Sean Cooney, member of folk trio The Young'uns, on stage at the IBMT’s Annual General Meeting last October in Stockton-on-Tees. Behind him is an image of local Brigader Johnny Longstaff.

Lesser-known stories take centre stage in this issue with Tony Fuller and Leonie Parkes's feature on the Brigaders who served in the Republican navy and David Ebsworth's article on the violence committed by both sides during the civil war.

Other highlights include Paul Preston’s account of the horrors of the Málaga-Almería road massacre, IBMT President Marlene Sidaway's New Year message, and reviews of ‘Forged in Spain’, ‘British Battles of the Spanish Civil War: Fighting Franco’ and ‘Tomorrow Perhaps the Future’.

Print issues are available via the IBMT Shop.

Members receive three issues of the digital magazine a year. Keep up to date with your membership to ensure you get the latest digital issue as soon as it is published by renewing online.

Posted on 19 January 2024.

Members of Parliament are signing up to an Early Day Motion (EDM) marking the 85th anniversary of the return of the International Brigades from the war in Spain. 

The motion also praises the work of the IBMT in keeping alive the memory of the volunteers ‘who fought on the side of the Republican Government against fascism of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler’.

The EDM has been tabled by Beth Winter, the Labour MP for Cynon Valley in Wales, and has attracted cross-party and UK-wide support from Scottish National, Plaid Cymru and Social Democratic & Labour Party MPs.

It was on the evening of 7 December 1938 that the remaining 304 members of the British Battalion arrived at London’s Victoria Station. They received a rousing welcome from tens of thousands of well-wishers and were addressed by labour movement dignitaries, including Labour leader Clem Attlee.

Some 2,500 men and women from Britain and Ireland had volunteered to fight in Spain, and 530 of them lost their lives in a conflict that presaged the Second World War.

The International Brigades were disbanded in the final months of the Spanish Civil War as the Spanish Republic tried in vain to increase diplomatic pressure on Hitler and Mussolini to withdraw their forces from Spain.

Beth Winter.

As well as Winter, the other five sponsors of the EDM are Richard Burgon (Labour, Leeds East), Ian Byrne (Labour, Liverpool West Derby), Jeremy Corbyn (Independent, Islington North), Claire Hanna (SDLP, Belfast South) and Chris Stephens (SNP, Glasgow South West). The signatories also include several Plaid Cymru MPs.

IBMT supporters are being urged to press their own constituency MPs to sign up to the EDM.

Throughout this week, events are being staged by the IBMT around the country to commemorate the anniversary of the return of the Brigades.

The full text of the EDM 149 says:

That this House notes that 7 December 2023 marks the 85th anniversary of the return to Britain of the British and Irish volunteer members of the International Brigades who fought on the side of the Republican Government against fascism of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler in the Spanish Civil War; recalls that 304 volunteers of around 2500 who served from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth were met at Victoria Station by Labour Party leader Clement Attlee MP; regrets the 530 deaths the British and Irish volunteers suffered; notes there are now over 100 memorials to volunteers across Britain and that they continue to increase in number; and celebrates the ongoing work of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, including through its work in schools, and through its close relationship with official governmental and civic society sister organisations in Spain, to keep the volunteers memory alive.

This year’s Len Crome Memorial Conference will be an online conversation between leading historians of the Spanish Civil War, Helen Graham and Paul Preston, with Richard Baxell in the chair.

Organised by the IBMT, the free event takes place on Saturday 11 November 2023 from 2pm-3.30pm. Register here.

It is generally understood that the war of 1936-9 in Spain was a Europe-wide conflict, in terms of state power politics, the rise of fascism and ordinary people’s anti-fascist engagement. This phenomenon has been explained by a number of historians, including Paul Preston and Helen Graham as a ‘European civil war’. 

In this conversation with Richard Baxell, they chart the war’s long roots. These go back at least to the First World War – not only with attempts to wipe out the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, but also to double down on any socially levelling reform inside the developed industrial heartlands of Europe, including Britain. 

From left: Helen Graham, Paul Preston and Richard Baxell.

The First World War had meant the massive mobilisation of ordinary people across the continent as soldiers and home-front workers, and afterwards they demanded not only political change but also levelling social change. New industrial cities were growing up or expanding everywhere and were perceived as a  threat to the pre-1914  power elites of Europe/Britain, who still hoped for ‘business as usual’ after 1918.  

It is this picture which explains why, when Spain’s military tried to stifle the country’s new, democratically elected and socially reforming government, it wasn’t only Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany that wanted them to win, but also the British establishment and much of France’s too.

Paul Preston and Helen Graham and Richard Baxell will trace these developments to show how they led to a situation where not only fascist dictatorships but also democratic states in Europe largely preferred a Franco victory in the Spanish war. 

In the end this would come with a Nazi price tag, one that soon forced Britain and France to fight another world war, the one that completed the destruction of their imperial pre-eminence in the world. 

Given that the Second World War might potentially have been avoided, had Britain especially made different decisions over Spain, then we can also say that the war of 1936-39 wasn’t only European in its reach, but global too.

Len Crome, born Lazar Krom in 1909 in Latvia, then part of Imperial Russia, trained as a doctor in Edinburgh and was a GP in Blackburn in 1936 when he volunteered to go to Spain. He rose to the rank of major in the Spanish People’s Army and headed the medical services of the mainly English-speaking 15th Brigade and the mainly German-speaking 11th Brigade. He served in the British Army during the Second World War, earning a Military Cross for his bravery at Monte Cassino. After the war he became an eminent pathologist in London and, until his death in 2001, was the chair of the International Brigade Association.