Australians and the Spanish Civil War

by

Amirah Inglis

Sixty four years ago in 1937, when I was rising eleven years old, the International Brigades arrived into my life with a letter that landed in our Melbourne letter box from my mother’s youngest and favourite brother, had been posted in Spain and revealed that Haim was there to fight for the Republic.

“We are proud of you” my loving mother telegraphed back. We remained so and as I told it in my un Australian story, we attended meetings organised by the Melbourne Spanish relief committee and I donated money with a note which was published in the Communist Workers Weekly and later in Spain. The Spanish Civil War became part of my dreaming then and remained so, as it remained headline news in the daily papers until it receded before the manoeuvres leading to the Second world War.

Those were the days before common airmail and well before television wrenched Australians into the horrors of war.

About twenty years ago, when the fiftieth anniversary of the Generals’ revolt was coming up the publisher John Iremonger asked me if I would write a book on Australia’s part in the Spanish civil war, it moved again into the forefront of my life and, as before, broadened my horizons and introduced me to wonderful new people here and in other parts of the world. One of those was Judith Keene who was herself working on the topic. Outstanding among the others were three of the four nurses sent from Sydney, May Macfarlane, Agnes Hodgson and Mary Lowson. May was romantic, straightforwardly lovely, Agnes more complicated and unhappy and Mary, the unreconstructed pre 20th congress communist so brave and welcoming in her blind solitariness.

My book Australians in the Spanish Civil War didn’t come out for the fiftieth anniversary because I had been alerted during my research to the pile of letters written from Spain by Aussie volunteer Lloyd Edmonds, and I persuaded John Iremonger to publish their vivid, honest first hand account first.

None of the Australian Brigaders still around could be persuaded, alas, to attend the inspiring 50th anniversary Homenajes held in Spain during 1986 when La Passionaria’s moving words at the Brigaders’ departure at last came true and the survivors were welcomed with grateful tears by hundreds of Spaniards. Netta Burns and I went alone. Both our lives were profoundly affected by the company of so many simple heroes and the friendships we made there. The memorial where we are celebrating today is one result.

In those days we could still bring home the gifts handed out and give them to the aged volunteers. Today sadly that is no longer the case.

My book came out in 1987 and Judith’s Last Mile to Huesca, in 1988. At the time articles in magazines, taped interviews with Brigaders broadcast on Radio National both reflected and spread the continuing interest in the war.

Since then the civil war has been argued and the character of the IBs disputed in Australia by old fashioned anti-communist and catholic journalists like Gerard Henderson and BA Santamaria by revisionist historians like Michael Jackson who following George Orwell and more recently Ken Loach ignore every other aspect of the Civil war but the May days of 1937 and focus only on the nasty facets of the Soviet Union’s role.

After the Cominform’s Archives were opened in Moscowscholars all over the world have descended on them and found much new material. New and fascinating information about Australian brigaders turned up in these archives, including two new names. I included this in a paper I prepared for an international conference in Lausanne. And read a couple of weeks ago in London.

I will include these and more in a new edition of my out of print book. Long overdue and more urgent than ever today as the Spanish Civil War is interesting more and more young people and foreign wars again leap into the headlines and onto our screens.

This became very clear a couple of days ago when I asked the splendid Google to search for “International Brigades in Spain” and, 0.17 seconds later, more than 5000 sites appeared. More than 2000 came up when I asked for “Australians in the Spanish civil war”. Even allowing for duplications and errors, that’s a lot of sites and indicates the great interest which exists. I found that you can take an on- line Tafe course on the Spanish civil war and that Yahoo supports an active newsgroup on the subject, where people of different ages from all over the world exchange information and views. I found too that with a click on <www.skp.com.au/memorials/00024.html> you - and anyone else in the world - can examine our own memorial to the Australians who went from the other end of the earth to assist the Republic

Clearly, more than ever, you need the stories and information in my out of print book Australians in the Spanish Civil together with the new material that has turned up since its publication.