International Brigade Memorial Trust
Activist and long-standing IBMT member Lisa Croft on her Brigader forebear…
My grandfather was Archibald Campbell McCaskill Williams, “AC” for short. He was a lifelong socialist, believing in equality and freedom for the ordinary person, and an International Brigade comrade in Spain, becoming a prisoner during the Battle of Jarama.
AC Williams, who was born in Southsea, Portsmouth, Hampshire, in 1904.
He spent his childhood in Skye and his youth in Invergordon, but spent much of his adult life away from Scotland. He returned home for the last 12 years of his life, living in Renfrewshire, and died in Glasgow Infirmary in 1972.
Many young Scots were unemployed during the 1920s and left home for work elsewhere. AC was the eldest and best educated of six sons. Aged 19, he set off for Toronto, Canada. He never saw his parents again.
After some short-lived secure employment as a bank clerk, followed by a variety of jobs as lumberjack, fur trapper and rancher, like thousands of other migrants, he found himself in one of the unemployed workers’ camps. Conditions of extreme poverty and brutality by camp guards led him and fellow inmates to organise and demonstrate against their situation.
He joined the Canadian Communist Party and, after one particular violent clash with police, he was arrested, convicted as a 'rabid agitator', and imprisoned. Following his sentence, he was deported in chains to the UK.
Unemployed in London and living in a hostel, he met and married Jane. They were both Communist Party members and politically active in the fight against the Blackshirts in the Jewish East End of London. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil Warthey became involved in the Aid Spain movement.
Supported by his pregnant wife, Jane (my grandmother), AC volunteered to join the International Brigades. He was responsible for recruiting another member, Alexander Foote, who became one of the most notorious Soviet spies of the time. They both joined a group of Brigaders who set off on 23 December 1936 for France via Dover.
From Paris, they went by train to Perpignan, then to Figueras in Spain. At Albacete, he became part of the no. 2 machine-gun company and was issued with an ancient machine-gun, as he’d had experience with firearms as a trapper in Canada.
In February, the company was involved with the rest of the British Battalion at the Battle of Jarama, where they were defending the road from Madrid to Valencia. They were ill-equipped compared with Franco’s fascists, who were supported by German and Italian soldiers and armour and on the first day of the battle, half of the battalion were killed orwounded.
AC’s machinegun company was ambushed by Moorish soldiers, who they thought were their own side’s reinforcements, having been tricked by the singing of 'The Internationale'. They were overpowered and captured, then marched off with their hands above their head. Two of them were shot in cold blood.
Captured members of the British Battalion at Jarama. Third from left on the lorry is AC Williams.
The British were the lucky ones; other prisoners were shot daily, with the Spaniards being treated the worst. AC kept a notebook while in prison, including autographs of other comrades, a score sheet and commentary for a baseball game played and a copy of a telegram to send home.
After three months at Talavera, they were transferred to Salamanca, put on trial and found guilty of 'aiding a rebellion'. Five of them were sentenced to death, and the others to 20 years. Thankfully, this did not happen, as in May 1937, they were exchanged for Italian prisoners, though not before being paraded and marched through jeering crowds of fascist supporters to the French border.
Getting to know baby Rosemary after his release from Franco’s prisons.
AC was met at Waterloo station in London by wife, Jane. While he was in prison, she had given birth to a daughter and, thinking he was dead, called her Rosemary for remembrance and Nina, the Spanish for girl.
MI5 kept a close eye on my grandparents for the rest of their lives, with their telephone bugged and letters intercepted. Their flat was also broken into, and the book he had written was stolen. I recently received a copy of his MI5 file. It included a transcript of his interrogation by the fascists while in prison in Spain.
My grandfather did not talk to his children or grandchildren about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. He was traumatised by both of his prison experiences, but mainly by the terrible events witnessed in Spain, particularly the brutality of the fascists towards the Spanish people and seeing his close comrades shot.
A photograph was taken of the prisoners on the back of a lorry after their capture; it was published in the Daily Express. The International Brigade volunteers were scorned by this rightwing paper and portrayed as misguided fools caught up in another country’s war. The 27 men were imprisoned in a makeshift jail in an old factory at Talavera, where conditions were unbearable. Their heads were shaved, many became ill,
food was scarce, they were covered in lice, and it was bitterly cold, their overcoats having been taken from them.
As a child, I do remember a group of comrades visiting my grandparents’ home, one wearing a black beret. They greeted one another with the clenched fist salute and talked into the night. My grandparents would often speak Spanish to one another; as children, we knew that 'dinero' meant they were talking about money.
AC was a popular, gregarious, charismatic and loving man. He had a gentle Highland accent with a touch of American drawl. I’m very proud of him, what he stood for and what he believed in.
