50 o H rr The Spanish Civil War and the War Today o LL O 2 O 0- < Our Guernica UJ

Guernica, painting by Pablo Picasso, 1937, after the German bombing of the town by that name during the Spanish Civil War.

By S.K. There could be no doubt that the spirit, that there are times when cour• The Spanish Civil War — battles of 1936-1939 in Spain are still age is not its own reward. It is this, Dreams + Nightmares part of many lives today, no longer as without a doubt, which explains why memory, except for a handful, but in so many men throughout the world An exhibition at the Imperial War the different summaries, conscious regard the Spanish drama as a per• Museum in London, 18 October and otherwise, that play an important sonal tragedy." It was in the end, part in people's ideas about politics. Preston tells us, "the last great cause". 2001 to 28 April 2002 It is worth pondering why that Of course it was nothing like the period, so apparently far from us last great cause, but it was great, not A recent exhibition at the now, has such persistent resonance. because it was lost but because of Imperial War Museum in London The main figure associated with what it was a part of and represented. covered one of the most inspiring this show, historian Paul Preston, This exhibition's greatest strength internationalist events of the twen• wrote a catalogue essay attempting was that it brought out just how tieth century - the Spanish civil war, to fit together all the elements that much that cause meant to the people when men and women from around made up the exhibition, including of Spain and the millions of people the world came to Spain to fight side- photos, film footage, audio around the world who in one way or by-side with its people against a fasc• recordings, posters, letters, another came to their defence. ist coup that was meant to crush their documents and the innumerable A thorough political (including revolutionary upsurge and artefacts, the soldiers' kit bags, military) summation of the Spanish aspirations. flags, buttons and other souvenirs civil war is a task still pending for the The power of this important that in the context provided by the international communist movement. exhibition was plain to see, not only displays turn out to be surprisingly Some comrades have made a in the huge and highly varied crowds moving. Because of Preston's close significant initial investigation. Here it attracted, but in their faces as well. association with this exhibition, his we will sketch out only some broad Maybe the most fitting praise one essay makes explicit the thinking in outlines and concentrate on the could give the organisers is that visit• the choice and layout of displays. issues best served by the show itself. ors' excitement, awe, animated He begins by quoting Albert Far from being only of historical conversation and tears were in Camus: "It was in Spain that men concern, they involve vital lessons proportion with the historic learned that one can be right and still for the great struggles we need to be importance of the events themselves. be beaten, that force can vanquish building right now. 51 m > O

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Both photos by Robert Capa, a renowned photographer who took many memorable photos of this war. Above, two comrades relax in the sun. Left, the American writer Ernest Hemingway helping a Republican soldier to unjam his rifle during the battle of Teruel, December 1937.

ers and the monopoly capitalists. The of the countryside. Revolutionary Popular Front government elected on sailors in Spain's Mediterranean fleet 16 February was not at all revolution• mutinied, arrested and in some cases ary and never claimed to be. But the executed their officers and took over electoral defeat of the Church-backed the ships. The bulk of the fascist forces, fascist party and the victory of a both Spaniards and Moroccans, were coalition whose most popular bottled up in North Africa. But the After all, today's Guernica may promise was to free the prisoners from Republican government opposed be a village wedding party in the 1934 miners' revolt in Asturias offensive naval action. Why? Because Afghanistan or almost anywhere in gave encouragement to land seizures, that would not be tolerated by Britain, Iraq. (Guernica, the iconic image of demonstrations and other radical which considered itself master of the the Spanish Civil War thanks to activities that the government itself Mediterranean. As for the idea that the Picasso's famous painting, was a hated and feared. Preston writes that Republic should side with the Basque village devastated by Nazi one of the main reasons why the nationalist movements and sentiments bombers on 26 April 1937 in the first generals were out to overthrow the in Morocco against the Spanish army massive use of airpower against Republic, less than five years old, and and declare that Spain would renounce civilians in history.) It is always replace it with an open military all its colonies, that was considered out misleading to transpose the past onto dictatorship was that, "The new re• of the question because it would enrage the present. Neither the Taliban nor gime raised inordinate hopes among France, the master of North Africa, Saddam Hussein are the Spanish the most humble members of society." including the rest of Morocco. Nazi Republic; in fact, there is nothing The core of the fascist insurrection Germany and Mussolini's fascist good about them at all. But the was the Army of Africa, based in the government in Italy provided aircraft to bombings the US and its accomplices Spanish-controlled part of Morocco. ferry Spanish troops across the straits have carried out and are preparing Army garrisons on the peninsula itself and save what Preston calls "a coup for in the near future are not smaller had some initial successes in south• gone wrong". The Spanish ruling crimes, and the need for western, north-western and central classes could count above all on the impassioned, organised, fighting Spain, and controlled a third of the support of Italy, which sought to extend outrage today is no less either. country. But that was not enough to its influence in North Africa and The Spanish armed forces rose up effect, what the US today calls a Europe against its French and British on 17 July 1936 because the elected "regime change". The coup plotters, rivals. The Popular Front government government failed to repress a mass with Generalissimo Francisco Franco counted on help from Britain and upsurge that threatened the Catholic soon their undisputed leader, failed to France to put down the fascist Church, the Army, the big landown• take the main industrial cities and much rebellion. Here we can see one of the 52 CO o H fascists' greatest strengths and one of ber was only one of many breath• following months, the International rx the Republic's greatest weaknesses. taking battles fought in the civil war, Brigades played a major role in o The British ruling class was pro- but it was certainly one of the most beating back several offensives at the u. telling. The Republican forces O Franco almost down to the last man. approaches to the capital. Their z That was true of both those then in stopped Franco's advancing troops in losses were terrible. More than half o office, like Prime Minister Baldwin, the city's western suburbs. There was of the members of the British and Q. who were trying to negotiate a deal hand to-hand fighting from one American battalions were killed, < LU with Germany and Italy to turn them building to another on the university many of them in the fighting at the 5 against the then socialist Soviet campus and in a park popular for battle of the Jarama River in Union, and those, like Churchill, who Sunday picnics. Factory workers, February 1937, and almost all of the believed that a showdown between railwaymen, laundry workers, rest were wounded at least once. The Britain and its main rival Germany barbers, waiters, men and women Republican army grew stronger. But could not be avoided. France, with its took streetcars or walked to the front so did the fascist armed forces. own Popular Front newly installed in lines straight from work. Miners government, at first made the Spanish came from the region of Asturias THE COMMUNISTS Republic some promises and then with dynamite charges and formed broke them. In the guise of ensuring anti-tank units. Taxi drivers climbed Few people who have studied the Spain's "neutrality", Britain imposed into tanks sent by the USSR. The Spanish civil war have disputed the an Atlantic naval blockade to stop Communist Party organised a fact that the Communist Party was arms supplies to the Republic. Franco regiment of its own troops and led in the mainstay of the war against could receive all the support he organising the entire population for Franco. Preston does not do that, but needed from Germany and especially defence and support work. he does say that his sympathy lies Italy, which sent 50,000 troops. The They were joined by something with "the antifascist struggle of the Republic got help from only two new in history - the International Spanish Republic" and not "the countries, Mexico and the USSR. The Brigades, organised by the Com• crimes of Stalinism". This is not a US supported the blockade whole• munist International (Comintern). tenable position. He himself would heartedly and did everything it could They came illegally across the probably admit that if it hadn't been to make things difficult for supplies or French border, only a trickle at first, for the Communist International volunteers to reach the Republic. mainly revolutionary refugees from under Stalin's leadership and for the After the Second World War the US Germany, Eastern Europe and Italy, Spanish Communist Party that was a became Franco's main backer. and then very soon a torrent. There part of the Comintern, the Spanish The Spanish generals expected were 40,000 people from more than Republic would have collapsed the whole thing to be over in a few 50 different countries in all over the almost immediately. days. Wherever they were able to next few years, half of them workers, In the same eclectic spirit seize control they executed workers, according to Preston's statistics. perhaps, Preston also points out that poor and landless peasants and They were more than just willing the civil war was an overlay of many intellectuals by the thousands. arms. Many of them were veterans of different contradictions: "It was not People from these classes were revolutionary street battles and one but many wars. It was a war of considered potential terrorists unless insurrections, and of First World War landless peasants against rich proven otherwise. But Franco was or peacetime military service. They landowners, of anti-clericals against unable to inflict a decisive blow on taught the militia men and women Catholics, of regional nationalists the Republic. Troops loyal to the how to use ammunition sparingly, against military centralists, of government were joined overnight how best to deploy machine guns, industrial workers against factory by militias organised by the unions how to take advantage of cover and owners." This is true. But the fact and political parties. The Republican above all how to fight as organised was that the war, as wars tend to do, government, based on weak pro- units. They were invaluable in many tied all these contradictions up in one British Spanish bourgeois forces and ways, not least in the vision and spirit knot. This was an enormous the bourgeoisies of oppressed they brought with them. Although on advantage for the Spanish proletariat. the whole they fought in separate nationalities within Spain in the Those who saw the working class battalions according to nationality Basque region and especially as only capable of fighting for its and language, in Madrid, Preston Catalonia, was ready to concede own immediate interests against "the points out, they were sprinkled defeat again and again. When bosses", such as the Trotskyists and among the defenders at the rate of Madrid was surrounded the anarchists in Spain, never grasped one to 30. ministers fled, until an anarchist this point. If the proletariat united column intercepted them and At that moment the government most closely with all the masses of dragged them back to the capital. had little more than the people's people whose interests favoured Then, for a while, the tide seemed determination to fight, and the thoroughgoing revolution and also about to turn. people gave full proof of their with all those opposed to Franco, it The battle for Madrid in Novem• courage and creativity. In the could lead the war and the revolution 53 through whatever necessary steps or revolutionary war. It was in summing increasingly demoralised. Top stages and transform both the people up both Chinese and international officers often became paralysed and and itself. experience that Mao drew the lesson many eventually deserted. In his succinct essay, Preston that "people, not weapons, are It may have been correct for the refers to "opposing beliefs over decisive in waging war". He pointed Communist Party to carry the banner whether to give priority to the war or out that each class has its own of the Republic and the alliance revolution". (This idea is also specific forms of war, with its against Franco it represented, and prominent in Land and Freedom, specific character, goals and means. this certainly would make British film director Ken Loach's He remarked that all military logic adjustments in the class struggle movie about the Spanish civil war.) If can be boiled down to the principle necessary, but why did it mean that the question is posed this way, it 'you fight your way, I'll fight my the proletariat had to subordinate its cannot really be answered - you end way', and that the proletariat must fundamental interests to those of the up with the idea that "the good fight" forge military strategy and tactics bourgeoisie? The fatal weakness of is always lost. That is in fact the which can bring into play its the Communist Party's military line lesson many people draw from the particular advantages, by unleashing flowed from its wrong political Spanish civil war, a view that is often and relying on the initiative and understanding. disguised as romanticism but is enthusiasm of the masses. A particularly painful moment in basically cynical and paralysing. This is not the kind of people's the war came with a famous incident In Spain, if there was to be a war that was fought in Spain. in Barcelona in 1937, where what revolution, it had to take the form of Preston calls "a mini-civil war" a war against Franco, and everything CONFUSED STANCE within the civil war broke out. had to be subordinated to winning (Again, Land and Freedom takes this that war. The Spanish Communist Following the line of the Com• as a central moment.) Barcelona had Party and the Communist munist International, the Spanish been a hotbed of workplace seizures, International were the only forces Party took a confused stance on the revolutionary committees and determined to fight war through to content of the civil war, tending to militias, and it became a focus for the end. That is why the Communist make an absolute of the difference discontent with the government's Party grew so mightily in numbers between bourgeois democracy and attempts to return social life to its and influence. The Trotskyists were fascism instead of recognising them pre-war order. When workers led by not revolutionary at all, even though as, ultimately, two forms of bourgeois the more or less Trotskyite POUM they tried to appear more "left" than dictatorship, and subordinated itself and some anarchists took over the the Communist Party by focusing on to vacillating big bourgeois allies. In telephone exchange that controlled workers' economic demands against Spain, the communists also communications between Barcelona the Catalonian capitalists and farm increasingly subordinated their efforts and the rest of Spain, the local owners who were actually allies to the attempt to protect socialism in government run by the Communists against Franco. Nor were those the USSR, by drawing Britain and and other Republicans simply sent in anarchists (by no means all of them) France into an alliance against the troops to clear them out. (Many other who let their quest for personal Axis powers. The conduct of the war anarchists denounced the takeover as freedom blind them to the need for as a whole, including where and when helpful to Franco.) Because the military discipline and organisation, to fight, was waged on the basis of Communists relied on the Catalan including not only militias but an what might please England and and international bourgeoisie rather army capable of taking the offensive France, whose duplicitous and often than enlightening the workers and and actually winning the war, not just contradictory designs were often hard relying on them to play their leading defending some territory. Political to guess. The communists built a new role in a united front, a dangerous power was up for grabs and war bourgeois army that waged situation was created, and the would decide the issue. conventional warfare. Soldiers fought reactionaries took advantage of it. with enormous heroism (or at least The result was a further dampening But if the main form of the men soldiers -women were sent back of the mass movement in Barcelona revolution had. to be war - and that is from the front lines after the initial and throughout Republican Spain. true for all revolutions at some point, fighting), an enthusiasm in the face of since no revolutionary state can be By March 1939, as Franco's death that could not be matched by established without smashing the forces moved to finally crush fighters for a reactionary cause, but state and the armed forces of reaction Madrid, two and a half years after they were not utilised in a fully - then the politics of this war had to their initial attempt failed, revolutionary manner that could draw determine the way it was fought. At Republican generals and ministers on all their resources, including their the same time as the Spanish civil fled or tried to capitulate. According initiative, creativity, military insights war, and also as a part of the to Preston's figures, in addition to the and ability to oversee the politics of Communist International, Mao 400,000 people killed in the war, their own officers. The civilian Tsetung was leading the Chinese Franco had another 200,000 shot population found itself left out and revolution through another after the war was over and a million 54 were imprisoned or put in labour While this exhibition would not They also sent ambulance drivers camps. Hundreds of thousands of be particularly helpful to someone and medical personnel, as well as refugees faced bombardment and seeking an understanding of some of fighters, men and women who did strafing as they trudged into exile in the knottier issues involved, it did not worry about how they would get France, where they were also in• succeed in strongly spotlighting the home. An aged widower describes terned in camps, although in less glorious aspects of the Spanish civil how in his youth he and his wife harsh circumstances. Many ended up war by the simple and effective went to Spain to fight for their ideals, in Mexico or the USSR, the only method of letting the masses and leaving their children behind with countries that welcomed them. others who gave their hearts to the relatives. After hearing him describe Speaking of the experiences of the masses speak. This was done using their experiences and her death there international proletariat as a whole, film footage, documents and most and then conclude that it was all Mao said that there were experiences powerfully "oral history", audio worth it, you begin to understand that we should praise and experiences recordings of first-hand accounts that more clearly what a powerful force that make us weep. There were plenty visitors paused to listen to on tele• revolutionary internationalism can of both in Spain. It was not a "lost phone handsets installed amongst the be. cause" any more than it was "the last displays. This was a history museum This is also brought out in a great cause". As events themselves so at its best. When you hear Spanish stunning way by the artwork, written dramatically illustrated, Spain was not working men and women concretely documents, recordings and other an isolated country but a weak link in describe their treatment as beasts of material produced in support of the the world imperialist system. The burden and how they began to raise Spanish Republic by artists and weaknesses of reactionary rule and their heads in the war, you begin to intellectuals of that day. The opportunities for revolution were get a concrete sense that no matter international proletariat was not only integrally linked with the tumultuous what else was going on, this really leading the Spanish civil war, it was unfolding of global contradictions, was a clash between a murderous old also leading, to one degree or both the contradictions between the world and a new one struggling for its another, and not always directly, a imperialists and the struggle between life. The war photography on view vast contingent of painters, sculptors, revolution and counter-revolution. was also remarkable, reflecting not poets, actors, musicians, composers But it is not helpful to see the Spanish only the development of lighter and artists of every kind. They civil war as "a rehearsal for a bigger cameras and faster shutter speeds and produced both works needed world war,to come", as if everything film, which allowed the action to be immediately to popularise the cause that happened was inevitable or as if captured "live", but also the stand and and works of enduring, timeless the war was not revolutionary in courage of a generation of photog• quality. content. Whether it was won or even raphers who set a moral as well as a Never before in all of history had if it was lost, the advance of the technical standard for decades to the world seen such a global greatest revolutionary upsurge in come. movement. It could not have existed Europe since the Russian revolution without the Comintern and its parties would have had an inestimable impact and the masses who gave so unstint- on the international class struggle and GLOBAL SOLIDARITY ingly in every country. its subsequent unfolding as world war approached against a background of Probably because of the Of course it is true that many of crisis in all the imperialist countries. exhibition organisers' own views, as those involved had confused ideas, well as for practical reasons, the spontaneously as well as due to Again, in opposition to the exhibition was particularly strong on mistakes on the part of leaders, but pseudo-romanticism of lost causes, describing the solidarity movement we need to see the essence of what the point is that things might have in the UK. In fact, in many ways the was happening. There is a letter to gone differently and that, at any rate, question of world solidarity and what his mother by a young English more could have been won. The that really meant was a core theme musician. He writes that he and his revolutionaries might have lost no here. The interviews with people wife have seen "unemployed lads matter what, but unfortunately the who organised material support for from the Clyde, and frightened clerks way the war was fought and the line Spain in factories, neighbourhoods from Willesden stand up (without associated with it left a confused and pubs create an amazing picture fortified positions) against an legacy for the people at that time and of the extent to which working artillery barrage that professional in the future. people gave their food, money and soldiers could not stand up to. And Those of us who are the heirs of lives for this cause. There were 150 they did this because to hold the line the Comintern and are working to groups in the UK dedicated to here and now means that we can unite the workers of the world once helping the Spanish Republic and prevent this battle being fought again again in a communist international of almost none to aiding Franco's later on Hampstead Heath or the hills a new type have a responsibility to forces. They filled 29 chartered ships of Derbyshire...." Many people felt draw all the necessary lessons and act with food, clothing, medical supplies that way, or at least thought it was accordingly. and ambulances and other vehicles. necessary to argue like that to win 55 others over. It certainly was an ed transactions in those days. desperate gamble and bring into illusion to think that victory against Couldn't this just as easily be written motion forces they cannot control. Franco could avoid a world war that about our world now? Also at the end Franco's move to reimpose order Britain's rulers were determined to of the exhibition, a song by a young created more disorder and drew the wage in the most favourable contemporary band contrasts those "ordinary" people, who in ordinary circumstances for themselves. In days to our times, when, "The future times often seem almost immune to fact, Britain needed (and still needs) teaches you to be alone/The present to politics, into unbridled political life a revolutionary civil war on Hamp- be afraid and cold/Gravity keeps your and unbottled their enthusiasm for stead Heath and the hills of Derby• head down...." Now, no less than in revolutionary change. It created shire, amongst other places. But that the 1930s, the Spanish civil war more conditions for uniting the is only one side of the question. continues to represent aspirations for people and defeating their enemies. This letter writer may have posed a better world, and no less than then If we look at the current world his participation in the civil war as if these aspirations can be organised and situation in this light, we can better it were motivated by self-interest or tempered in the people's struggle. grasp both the dangers and the at least simply the desire to protect opportunities that it presents. family, friends and compatriots, but POETRY AND ROMANCE Another lesson from Spain is the in fact he gave his life for something tremendous possibilities for a real much broader. The civil war in Spain Today the storm centres of the world movement of solidarity and was rooted in a revolutionary up• world revolution are in the Third resistance against our common surge and linked to the socialist World countries. There is certainly as enemies, and, no less importantly, the USSR and the Comintern and other much poetry and indeed the romance need to organise it so that it can be• revolutionary struggles, including of revolutionary transformation where come a material force. It was a the revolutionary war in China. The people's war has brought forth the complicated world in the 1930s and Republic and its supporters were up embryos of people's power as there it still is, though the world has against cynical manoeuvres on the was in the days of the Spanish civil certainly changed in many ways, part of both the Axis and Allied war. While for various reasons we including the general class powers in preparation for a world face a more uphill battle in configuration in the imperialist war that would turn out to be one of popularising those struggles, there are countries. Today we have no socialist the most towering crimes of capital• other-factors at work as well. It is countries or Comintern yet, and we ism. The masses in Britain, like the impossible to hear the slogan of face other limitations, but what we people of the world, shared common Franco's Foreign Legion, "Down with have done so far is not nearly what enemies with the Spanish people, intelligence, long live Death!" and not world events require and make including not only Hitler and think of the religious fundamentalists possible. Mussolini but the entire British and fascistic freaks grouped around A poem in this show refers to ruling class. Some writers today like George W. Bush. When we think of weeping for the Spanish civil war's to claim that the Spanish Republic the global cauldron of war that Spain "dead young poets". This is a core enjoyed so much support despite the prefigured, it seems not so very far image many people have of that war. role of the Communists. The point away from us in time at all. Why can't Indeed, as this exhibition shows so has already been made here that we, today, as part of our leadership of well, poets from all over the world, without the Communists, very the revolutionary struggle, build very including some of that century's quickly there wouldn't have been broad and dynamic unity with all sorts finest, took part in this struggle, any Republic to support, but there is of people around the world, including mostly on the side of the people, a deeper point too. Without their role, in the imperialist countries, to oppose while the few that consciously chose the civil war would not have had the the world the imperialists have the other side mainly stayed home. same revolutionary and anti- imposed on us all and especially to Two very great ones, Frederico imperialist component, and the sense fight the global rampage that Garcia Lorca and Miguel Hernandez, that this was somehow a struggle be• imperialism, with the US at its head, were executed by Franco's unpoetic tween the forces of light and is launching right now? legions. (By the way, some of those darkness would not have had as poets, including Hernandez, were much basis in fact. There was One of the lessons of the Spanish also Communists.) Today, we would confusion, but there was also a basic civil war that bears keeping in mind unite the people's poets, to put it sense of right and wrong sides. today is this: when the ruling classes find themselves rent with metaphorically, and all the people, The show moves towards a contradictions and crisis, they may but we would also reject the idea of conclusion with a poem by a civil war resort to the most desperate and beautiful losers "fighting the good veteran: "Madrid in these days of our brutal measures to unify their own fight". We want to fight good, in planet's anguish/wrought by the men ranks and crush the people at home accordance with the proletariat's, whose mock morality/begins and ends by force of arms, whilst they strive sweeping vision and ability to unite with the tape of the Stock exchange," for a redivision of the colonies and and rely on the broadest masses of referring to the ticker tape that record• the world. But such moves can be a people, and we want to win. •