George Orwell's Spanish Civil War Memoir Is a Classic, but It's Bad History

07.05.17 * VIEWPOINT | 27 George Orwell, far left at the back, with Poum militiamen in Barcelona in 1936. In his book he describes several days and nights spent in 1937 defending Poum headquarters from the roof of the Poliorama theatre. Getty George Orwell’s Spanish civil war memoir is a classic, but it’s bad history capitalist press and nothing but libels his reign of terror. Orwell accepts themselves to fight. It was only a mat- Eighty years ago, the writer took part in the in the leftwing press.” That spirit of fair the anarchist version that portrayed ter of time before conflict would break play led to Orwell brushing over the Martín as a martyr murdered by forces out. Orwell, given his lowly position in battle for Barcelona. His Homage to Catalonia Poum’s undermining of the republic. of the Generalitat. a Poum militia, saw none of this. It seems irresponsible, given that he In Barcelona, social and political As clashes grew more violent, the shaped our understanding of the war. admitted that, prior to the May events, hostilities had been mounting for some Generalitat prohibited May Day rallies, he was trying to transfer from the months. The tension Orwell encoun- which was perceived as a provocation But, argues historian Paul Preston, his Poum to the International Brigades. tered when he arrived in April was not by the CNT. In early May the crisis That meant that he sympathised with the result of communist malevolence exploded. The immediate catalyst was account was partisan and inaccurate the view of socialists, liberal republi- but of economic and social distress. the Generalitat’s seizure of the CNT- cans and communists that an effective The Catalan population had been swol- controlled central telephone exchange war effort required state control of the len by the arrival of 300,000 refugees. in Barcelona on 3 May after an opera- nleashed on 17 July 1936 by by its assumption that the Stalinist economy and the mass mobilisation of The strain of housing and feeding a tor had interrupted a telephone call by a military coup against the suffocation of the revolution would a modern army. 40% increase in Barcelona’s popula- the president of the republic, Manuel elected government of the lead to Franco’s victory. He was in the Poum only because tion had embittered existing conflicts. Azaña. In the wake of police heavy- Second Republic, the Span- Homage to Catalonia belongs in any he had been rejected by the British Until December 1936, when the CNT handedness, elements of the CNT – ish civil war was a rehearsal list of important books on the Spanish Communist party. So he arrived with had controlled the supply ministry, the supported by the Poum – confronted for the second world war. civil war. It has informed opinion in Independent Labour party credentials. anarchist solution had been to requisi- the forces of the Generalitat and the The British, French and American the English-speaking world about Taken to the Poum’s barracks, he was tion food. As farmers hoarded stocks to PSUC. The anarchists could win only Ugovernments stood aside and permit- the war – providing the inspiration, welcomed because of his literary celeb- sell on the black market, this provoked by recalling their troops from Aragón. ted General Francisco Franco, with the for instance, for Ken Loach’s Land rity. Orwell was not popular among fel- shortages and inflation. Then the PSUC Then they would have to fight both the substantial aid of Hitler and Mussolini, and Freedom. However, limited to the low British militiamen, who resented took over the supply and implemented central republican government and to defeat the republic. To this day, the time and place of Orwell’s presence in his “cut-glass Eton accent”. One said he a more market-based approach. This the Francoists. Accordingly, with the war is remembered as “the last great Spain, it would certainly not be there disliked the “supercilious bastard” on infuriated the anarchists but did not approval of the anarchist ministers, cause”, the war of the volunteers of the as a reliable analysis of the politics of sight: “He really didn’t like the work- solve the problem. There were bread decisive police reinforcements from International Brigades, of the bombing the war. He clearly knew nothing of ers.” He had been exhilarated to find “a riots in Barcelona, and armed clashes the government in Valencia began to of Guernica and of the mini-civil war its origins or of the social crisis behind town where the working class was in arrive on 7 May. Hundreds of CNT and within the civil war fought in Barce- the Barcelona clashes. In none of his the saddle”, but the collectivist experi- Poum militants were arrested. Andreu lona as CNT anarchists and the Poum’s writings does he mention having any ments of autumn 1936 had not created Paul Preston’s Nin was murdered by a small squad quasi-Trotskyists battled forces of the prior acquaintance with Spain or ever a war machine. The May events were latest book on of NKVD agents. The revolutionary Catalan government, the Generalitat, reading a book in Spanish about the about removing revolutionary obsta- the Spanish achievements of the initial stages of the backed by the communists of the PSUC. war or anything else. Orwell himself cles to the war’s efficient conduct. He civil war, right, struggle were steadily dismantled. Eighty years ago this week, the acknowledged “my partisanship, my acknowledged this in his 1942 essay examines how Orwell never abandoned his com- Ramblas of Barcelona echoed with mistakes of fact, and the distortion Looking Back on the Spanish War: it ended in a mitment to the Spanish republic. Back gunfire. Much of what happened on inevitably caused by my having seen “The Trotskyist thesis that the war cynical military in London, in July 1937, he wrote: “The the streets during the May days is only one corner of events”. could have been won if the revolution coup in International Brigade is in some sense well known thanks to George Orwell’s Amendments to what he had written had not been sabotaged was probably besieged fighting for all of us – a thin line of Homage to Catalonia, but not why it in Homage to Catalonia were reflected false. To nationalise factories, demol- Madrid. suffering and often ill-armed human happened. Herbert Matthews, the New in his writings after later conversations ish churches, and issue revolutionary beings standing between barbarism York Times correspondent, summed in London with the exiled Spanish manifestos would not have made the and at least comparative decency.” And up the problem: “The book did more republican prime minister, Dr Juan armies more efficient. The fascists for control of food stores between yet Orwell’s book makes it too easy to to blacken the loyalist cause than any Negrín. Negrín explained why the won because they were the stronger; anarchists and the PSUC. forget that the Spanish republic was work written by enemies of the Second republic had been forced to turn to the they had modern arms and the others That conflict was just one aspect of defeated by Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Republic.” This is unfortunate since, Soviet Union as the only great power hadn’t.” a much more serious one. The Poum’s and the self-interest and pusillanimity for many people, Homage to Catalonia prepared to sell weaponry. He also However, in his book he expressed call for a revolutionary workers’ of the British, French and American is the only book on the Spanish civil outlined the problems of trying to fight pro-revolutionary views based on front with the CNT was debilitating governments. His ignorance of the war that they will ever read. a war while dealing with “the motley ignorance of the damaging impact the war effort. Moreover, the Poum’s wider picture while in Spain was An eyewitness account of two frag- conglomerate of incompatible parties, on the republic’s international image criticisms of the Moscow trials were forgivable. The problem is rather that ments of the war, the book presents labour unions and dissident groups, of the atrocities committed against seen as undermining the republic’s his judgments facilitated the book’s two priceless pieces of reportage: the and also the frequently self-appointed, priests, landowners and merchants in relationship with its only powerful subsequent use as part of a cold war first a vivid account of the experi- largely unconstitutional, local and Lérida by the Poum and in Aragón by ally. To secure Russian arms deliver- narrative. Instructions left before ences of a militiaman on “a quiet sector regional ‘governments’”. Negrín con- anarchist columns from Barcelona. ies, the Poum leader, Andreu Nin, was his death for a later edition ignored of a quiet front” in Aragón, evoking cluded that Orwell was “idealistic and For instance, he completely misun- removed. However, hostility to the his own acceptance of the need for a the fear, the cold and, above all, the weltfremd [unworldly]”. derstood the case of Antonio Martín anti-Stalinist left was not just about unified war effort in Spain. It is as if squalor, excrement and lice of the rat- Perhaps he was not so unworldly. Escudero, an anarchist smuggler who pandering to the Russians. Many the Orwell of Animal Farm, 1984 and infested trenches; the second a vibrant He had introduced himself to Negrín controlled the area of the French- Catalan anarchists were not committed suspect fellow-travellers thought he description of several days spent on the only as “an editorialist of the Observer” Catalan Pyrenean frontier known as to the war effort.

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