One of them was Charlie Hutchison, the only known black man among the approximate 2,500 antifascist volunteers from the British Isles, and the other a German-Jewish refugee called Liesel Carritt.

Alongside organisations raising funds for Spanish humanitarian causes, Oxford was a hub for anti-fascist activism, homes within the county housed hundreds of Basque refugee children.

Many of the local anti-fascist volunteers who survived and returned became influential in various professions including professors, surgeons, human rights activists and trade union leaders.

Since the monument's construction in 2017 two more historical figures have been discovered, including the German-Jewish refugee Liesel Carritt, and the black-British anti-fascist Charlie Hutchison.

[4] Much of the funding for the memorial was generated by the sale of the book No Other Way: Oxfordshire and the Spanish Civil War 1936–39, a compilation of research by several local historians with oversight from Oxford University professor Tom Buchanan.