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Shaping the Inheritance of the Spanish Civil War on the British Left, 1939-1945 a Thesis Submitted to the University of Manches

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Shaping the Inheritance of the Spanish Civil War on the British Left, 1939-1945 a Thesis Submitted to the University of Manches Shaping the Inheritance of the Spanish Civil War on the British Left, 1939-1945 A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Master of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2017 David W. Mottram School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Table of contents Abstract p.4 Declaration p.5 Copyright statement p.5 Acknowledgements p.6 Introduction p.7 Terminology, sources and methods p.10 Structure of the thesis p.14 Chapter One The Lost War p.16 1.1 The place of ‘Spain’ in British politics p.17 1.2 Viewing ‘Spain’ through external perspectives p.21 1.3 The dispersal, 1939 p.26 Conclusion p.31 Chapter Two Adjustments to the Lost War p.33 2.1 The Communist Party and the International Brigaders: debt of honour p.34 2.2 Labour’s response: ‘The Spanish agitation had become history’ p.43 2.3 Decline in public and political discourse p.48 2.4 The political parties: three Spanish threads p.53 2.5 The personal price of the lost war p.59 Conclusion p.67 2 Chapter Three The lessons of ‘Spain’: Tom Wintringham, guerrilla fighting, and the British war effort p.69 3.1 Wintringham’s opportunity, 1937-1940 p.71 3.2 ‘The British Left’s best-known military expert’ p.75 3.3 Platform for influence p.79 3.4 Defending Britain, 1940-41 p.82 3.5 India, 1942 p.94 3.6 European liberation, 1941-1944 p.98 Conclusion p.104 Chapter Four The political and humanitarian response of Clement Attlee p.105 4.1 Attlee and policy on Spain p.107 4.2 Attlee and the Spanish Republican diaspora p.113 4.3 The signal was Greece p.119 Conclusion p.125 Conclusion p.127 Bibliography p.133 49,910 words 3 Abstract Complexities and divisions over British left-wing responses to the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939 have been well-documented and much studied. This thesis takes forward perspectives from that debate to the aftermath of the Spanish war. It explores the impact of ‘Spain’, and responses to the defeat, by political parties, individuals, and other groups. It sets these within the framework of disjunctions in British politics between 1939 and 1941, and a decline in political and public discourse on Spain during the Second World War. It finds evidence of the dislocation of lives after the Civil War, but also a determined endeavour to apply the ‘lessons’ to promote the British war effort, illustrated in the case of Tom Wintringham. The Labour leader, Clement Attlee, emerges as demonstrating personal solicitude for Republican exiles, accompanied by a limited commitment to challenge the Franco regime. The thesis is based on archival sources for the British labour movement, left-wing political parties, and supporters of the Spanish Republic. Responses to the Spanish Civil War were complicated by conflict between the Communist Party, and the leadership of the Labour Party and trade union movement. The defeat of the Republic in spring 1939, and the new urgency of the threat from Germany, changed the calculus. This gave importance to the shaping of early political responses to the end of the Spanish war by the Communist and Labour parties in 1939 and 1940. It was followed by a series of calls on the memory of ‘Spain’ by these parties, and by Common Wealth from 1942. The continuing threads of ‘Spain’ in British wartime politics included a diversity of adjustments to the defeat of the Republic by individual International Brigaders, nurses, and other supporters. This was accompanied by fresh responses to the Spanish war. Tom Wintringham secured influence in developing a model of guerrilla warfare for the defence of Britain in 1940-41, drawing on Spanish political and military experience. He was unable to achieve a corresponding impact in proposals for defending India in 1942, or for European liberation after 1941. Clement Attlee, translated from opposition leader to War Cabinet minister in 1940, developed his own nuanced personal and political response to the inheritance of ‘Spain’. Attlee demonstrated a strong personal and humanitarian commitment to aid Spanish Republican exiles. He subordinated residual loyalty to the Spanish Republic to support Churchill’s policy of conciliating Franco, but pressed a more open view in War Cabinet debates. In late 1944, the signal for left-wing Labour dissent on Coalition government policy was Greece, not Spain. Responses to the defeat in Spain after early 1939 reflected both the diverse character of preceding political engagement during the Civil War, and the new political priorities of the Second World War. They can be characterized as representing a normalization of the experience of the Spanish war. The importance of these developments from 1939 to 1945 has previously been overlooked. 4 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree of qualification in this or any other university of other institute of learning. Copyright statement The author of this thesis owns certain copyright or related rights in it (‘Copyright’) and he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the ‘Intellectual Property’) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, foe example graphs and tables (‘Reproductions’), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=24420), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/regulations/) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses. 5 Acknowledgements My return to academic history, after a gap of forty years, was encouraged and very ably supported by my supervisors, Professors Stuart Jones and Penny Summerfield. My first acknowledgement must be to them. Professor Peter Gatrell also contributed helpful insights. Secondly, it is right to acknowledge the professional commitment and public service ethos demonstrated by all the archivists and librarians who helped to facilitate the research. In particular, the paid and volunteer staff of the Marx Memorial Library at Clerkenwell Green, London, and the Working Class Movement Library, Salford, provided exemplary support. Thirdly, my thanks are due to a number of other individuals for their advice and practical help: Bob Cant and Gary Cox shared their experiences of completing research degrees; John Moore regularly provided hospitality for research visits to London; Julian Batsleer read the final draft and offered valuable feedback; and, my partner, Ian Massey, contributed support throughout. 6 Introduction A personal memory from November 1975 is a poster from the Cambridge University Hispanic Society advertising a disco: ‘Come and celebrate Franco’s death’, it said.1 Decades after the end of the Spanish Civil War, this signalled the fierce hostility to the Spanish dictatorship amongst a younger generation. In the 1960s and 1970s a recrudescence of interest in the Spanish Civil War in Britain was evident.2 It was reflected in a growing body of oral testimony from the surviving volunteers and new memorials to individual International Brigaders. The Spanish Civil War was represented on the British left as an exemplary fight against European fascism, to be acknowledged and celebrated. One historian suggested in the late 1990s that ‘In ways both explicit and implicit, “Spain” [has] served as a “text” that gave an illumination to the shape and densities of my own experiences’.3 In this case, the writer was referring to the impact of ‘Spain’ in shaping his participation in Nicaraguan solidarity work during the 1980s. The potency of the history and memory of the Spanish Civil War for later generations served to highlight questions about the experience of the defeat of the Spanish Second Republic in the immediate aftermath. A number of studies of ‘Britain and the Spanish Civil War’ have addressed the period of the war, from July 1936 to March 1939, with a central focus on the support of the political left for the Republic.4 Passionate commitments to ‘Spain’ on the British left before 1939 contrasted, though, with its small place in writings about British left-wing politics during the Second World. The early political and personal residue of the Spanish war appeared generally to have been occluded in the historiography. This seemed to be an enigma. One explanation for a contemporary shift of attention from the experience of ‘Spain’ was the opening of the Second World War, within six months of the defeat of the Republic, but this did not appear sufficient cause. 1 Franco died on Friday 20 November 1975. 2 Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1961): this was the first authoritative historical study to be published in any language, and has remained continuously in print.
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