Central Europe Germany Italy Spain (Spanish Civil War) Albania Austria Baltic states Belgium Bulgaria Burma China Czechia Denmark France Germany Greece Italy Japan Jewish Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Poland Romania Slovakia Spain Soviet Union Yugoslavia Germany Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States The British Independent Labour Party sent a small contingent to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
The contingent fought alongside the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) and included George Orwell, who subsequently wrote about his experiences in his personal account Homage to Catalonia.
The main body of the ILP contingent consisting of about 25 men departed from England on 1 January 1937, under the leadership of Bob Edwards, later a Member of Parliament for the Labour Party.
However, the day after the contingent left, the British government announced that it would prosecute anyone going to fight in Spain and the ILP did not try to recruit any more volunteers.
[1] On arriving in Barcelona, they had two weeks of very basic training, and were joined by Bob Smillie, grandson of the well-known Scottish socialist and miners' leader of the same name.
Smillie had been in Barcelona working with John McNair as the representative Youth section of the International Bureau for Revolutionary Socialist Unity.
Members were recorded as coming from South Africa (Buck Parker[2]), the United States (Harry Milton,[2] Wales, Belfast (Paddy O'Hara), Chorley, Larkhall, Glasgow (Charles Doran), Anglesey, Manchester, Bristol (Tom Coles), Dartford, Bingley, Twickenham and Golders Green.
Four had fought in the First World War: Martin, who had gone to Spain driving the ambulance with Edwards and who, because of his experience in artillery, had stayed on; Doran; Harry Thomas of London and Arthur Chambers, who died in 1938 after transferring to a CNT unit.
The main descriptions of fighting against the Nationalists which appears both in Homage to Catalonia and in the New Leader, concerned a night attack in which some of the contingent took part resulting in injuries to Reg Hiddlestone, Paddy Thomas and Douglas Thompson.
Immediately after the events the Communist press began to attack POUM, claiming they were solely responsible for the fighting and were in league with the fascists in doing so.
The press published two interviews with former contingent member Frank Frankford claiming he had witnessed fraternisation at the front with the enemy, that Kopp was receiving his orders from Huesca and that the Nationalist faction even supplied the POUM with arms.
Here was this brave and gifted boy, who had thrown up his career at Glasgow University in order to come and fight against Fascism, and who, as I saw for myself, had done his job at the front with faultless courage and willingness; and all they could find to do with him was to fling him into jail and let him die like a neglected animal.
To be killed in battle--yes, that is what one expects; but to be flung into jail, not even for any imaginary offence, but simply owing to dull blind spite, and then left to die in solitude--that is a different matter.
I fail to see how this kind of thing--and it is not as though Smillie's case were exceptional--brought victory any nearer.Smillie, the first foreigner associated with the POUM to become a mortal victim of the Stalinist repression, had been detained at the French border accused of "carrying arms" - a dud hand-bomb was found among the various souvenirs he had with him.
The Right Opposition and other marxist groupings organised an international campaign in solidarity with the POUM prisoners which probably saved their leaders from a similar fate to Nin’s.
The IBRSU also sent several delegations to Spain to visit the party’s prisoners and try to secure their release, the first headed by its General Secretary, Fenner Brockway.
Chambers was the only member of the ILP contingent to be killed in combat in Spain when he was shot by a sniper in August 1938 after transferring to a Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) unit.