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.

Hundreds gathered at the International Brigade memorial on London’s Southbank on 5 July for the annual commemoration of the 2,500 volunteers from Britain and Ireland who took part in the fight in Spain against fascism from 1936-39.

Speakers included Gawain Little, General Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions, and Meirian Jump, Director of the Marx Memorial Library in London – and a granddaughter of one the British volunteers.

IBMT Executive Officer Helen Oclee-Brown opens proceedings next to the International Brigade memorial in Jubilee Gardens, London Southbank.

There was music from Maddy Carty, and wreaths were laid from various organisations and individuals, including the Spanish embassy in London, the Basque Children’s Association UK, IB Cymru, Oxford International Brigade Memorial Committee, train drivers’ union Aslef, Marx Memorial Library, Communist Party of Britain and the London branch of the PCE Spanish Communist Party.

Gawain Little praised the heroism and sacrifice of the volunteers, along with the ambitions of that generation of activists to create a world without exploitation and class divisions.

Those who went to Spain were there to push back the tide of fascism that would soon engulf much of Europe, he said. 'They were there to defend Spanish democracy and the young Republic. But most of all they were there because of an ideal, a grand vision, a belief that the working class, united across borders, could together build something incredible – a society fit for our children and grandchildren.'

Maddy Carty.

Meirian Jump described the Marx Memorial Library’s current project to digitise its Spanish Civil War archive – the largest in the country – and eventually make the collection freely available online. There were also plans to redevelop the library itself to create space for, among other things, exhibits about the volunteers who went to Spain.

On a personal note, she told the gathering that, aged just six months, she had been present at the unveiling of the Southbank memorial along with her twin sister Clara.

Gawain Little.

Her grandfather, Brigader Jimmy Jump, had been the secretary of the appeal committee that raised the memorial and wrote a poem about the occasion.

Part of the poem said: ’When I am gone / and you are grown / here is something to boast about / to make you feel proud / something to shout out loud. / You will not recall this day / you do not remember it now / but when you are grown / when you have children of your own / you may bring them here to play and / pointing to the date carved in stone / will say / ‘My sister and I were here that day.’

Meirian Jump.

She went on: 'And so here I am—almost 40 years later—with my own child, my wonderful four-year-old son, Victor Alan Jump.’

Jump praised the vital role played by the IBMT in ensuring we continue to speak to our children—through educational resources, memorial events, conferences, and publications.
She added: ’We know history is not neutral. It is a battleground—a contested space. The terms "fascism" and “appeasement” are often cynically deployed today to justify foreign wars, and the legacy of the Brigaders is distorted by Cold War and anti-communist narratives.

Antonio Casado Rigalt lays a wreath for the Spanish embassy.

Mick Whelan, General Secretary of the train drivers' union Aslef after laying a wreath. IBMT Secretary Megan Dobney and President Marlene Sidaway (partly hidden by memorial) clap and look on.

‘But this is our history. And we must hold onto it. Understanding the past is essential if we are to change the future. History is a weapon in our hands.’

In his address, IBMT Chair Jim Jump welcomed Antonio Casado Rigalt, Political Counsellor at the Spanish embassy. He said the Trust applauded what the Spanish government was doing to help the cause of historical memory in order to heal the wounds of repression and restore posthumous justice to those whose only crime had been to support democracy.

‘There is, however, unfinished business for us in Spain,’ he added, in the form of up to 500 bodies of British and Irish International Brigaders in unknown and unmarked graves across the country.

He went on: ‘I’m happy to say we’re working well with the Catalan government in their efforts to locate and identify – with the help of family DNA – all those International Brigaders who fell in the Battle of the Ebro – more than 90 of them from the British Battalion.’

Jim Jump.

That should be a model for the rest of Spain, Jump added. Sadly it wasn’t. ‘We have a continuing stand-off with Madrid City Council over plans to build a waste facility on or near a mass grave of 450 International Brigaders, several of them British, at Fuencarral cemetery.

‘In other regions of Spain, under the influence of the ultra rightwing Vox party, Francoism is being excused and rehabilitated, and memory laws are being torn up.’

Thelma Ruby, aged 100, widow of Canadian volunteer Peter Frye, acknowledges the applause for her.

The IBMT would counter these challenges – along with rising ‘sinister trappings’ of fascism across the world, such as racism, ethno-nationalism, bans and censorship, militarism, the slaughter of civilians and genocide, by keeping alive the inspirational story of the International Brigades.

‘Their story, ‘ he declared, ‘is one of anti-fascism, of international solidarity and of men and women whose blood, in the words of Spanish poet Rafael Alberti, could sing across frontiers.

Singing 'The Internationale', from left: Stuart Walsh, Manuel Moreno and Colin Carritt.

All photos: © Andrew Wiard. More photos viewable here.