I decided to take a break from reading and writing about George Orwell’s participation in the Spanish Civil War Homage to Catalonia. In the time between the first writing and this I reached he conclusion that because of his rush to get to the front he had no time to examine how the worker’s city of Barcelona functioned in practice and when he returned its functioning was already being dismantled. For those of us with a leaning towards non violent local based syndicalism it was the first and the last occasion that a major city on the western democracies had moved in such a direction. The only examples there has been in the UK is the way miners tended to run their communities, especially in Fife in Scotland, nut in communities in South Wales, in Yorkshire and Durham in particular miners and their families became a tribe part from the rest much like prison officers and the military and their encampments. Go to the supermarket at the centre of Catterick Camp and experience at first hand what I mean. Those engaged in direct action in the UK against weapons of mass destruction or the civil rights movement in the USA also understand the sense of being part of something yet also separate. In Spain, Eric Blair who had spent all his life feeling apart from the majority experience being one of many, perhaps the majority.
I have only visited Barcelona on day visits, at night to see the fountains, a daytime visit to a bullfight where I left at half time having seen enough to confirm my prejudices. I have visited the Gaudi Cathedral, still in its making and the site of the Olympic Games, walked the Rambalas, and driven past the magnificent Football stadium. My impression is of a city of apartments although. I saw little of the outskirts or the industrial plants to obtain any meaningful impression without having stayed in the city and walked more or engaged with its people. It is a very different place from the coastal resorts where I have stayed in the North or had one quick hot and tiring trip along the coast in the South on an escorted trip from Gibraltar.
Reflecting on what I had read and written so far my main reaction was at the Black and White which Orwell had approached the War and so far he did not appear to appreciate that this was country of man against country man, neighbour and work mate against neighbour and workmate, soldier and against soldier, catholic against catholic and division within extended families and indeed within some nuclear families. Is it surprising that the ordinary people were reluctant to try and kill each other, apart from the ideological fanatics, and personal power seekers? Is it surprising that they attempted to persuade each other to change sides rather than kill?
The fourth chapter ends with a Fascist aeroplane coming over their position and instead of dropping bombs, there was a leaflet which announced the fall of the city of Malaga. It is my understanding that the Republican forces and most of the population decided to withdraw, leaving the remaining population to the fate of the advancing Italian troops who without the same understanding that these were fellow countrymen, women and children, set about machine gunning down the civilian population including those who had already fled the city.
In mid February Blair and the others made a fifty mile truck ride to join the forces attempting to take the town of Huesca. Having taken another town in the area the promise was made that tomorrow, we will have coffee in Huesca. There had been several bloody attacks but the city had not fallen and Orwell says that if he was to return to Spain he would make a point of visiting Huesca to enjoy coffee one morning. Clearly he did not do so at the time.
It is on reading the next chapter that I find Orwell recognised the shortcomings of his original reaction to the political situation in Barcelona and the rest of Spain. He had not been interested in the political and was unaware of it. He had no notion of what kind of war it was.
The reason I have become so interested in the life as much as the writings of Eric Blair is that the more I read the more I believe there is considerable similarity between our personalities and the development of our political outlook. Like Blair I rushed into supporting the extreme end of those involved in the Gandhian Satyagraha rooted direct action protests against weapons of mass destruction and it was only after I had been to prison that I commenced to take a more in depth look at the interests involved and the motives of the individuals involved. It is a good coincidence that for different reasons I checked my birth name on Google once more and discovered that a book was published in 2011 by Sean Scalmar looking at the rise of radical Protest in the UK and the USA based on Gandhian Satyagraha which makes reference in one of his copious footnotes to the letters written to the Direct Action Committee on behalf of Peter Brown (the author of Smallcreeps Day) and I proposing a Gandhian style march ending with a direct action protest at the USA nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch and our response to the protest after it had taken place. We had the same belief and commitment as those workers in Barcelona, despite having recently volunteered to spend six months in prison rather than giving an oral undertaking not to participate in protests for a period of two years. It was only then I began to fully understand the extent of the differences between the various factions making up the leadership of the anti nuclear movement. We were both to improve our understanding and adapt our position to changed circumstances
On returning from Spain, based on his diaries and memories, Blair wrote that the revolutionary atmosphere of Barcelona “attracted me deeply but I had made no attempt to understand it,” and he was exasperated by the number of political parties and trade union with their different names which he considered tiresome. It only on arriving outside Huesca when someone said that the Socialists were positioned on their left that he queried,” I thought we were socialists? “
Orwell uses this event to introduce his understanding of the Civil War and its origins, he confirms my understanding outlined in the first part that Franco did not come to power to introduce Fascism in Spain but with help of the church and the aristocracy to return Spain to is Feudalism before the first mild democratic government had taken office. The consequence of this is that Franco had against him not just the working class but also various sections of the liberal bourgeoisie and I suspect many who would not describe themselves as liberal. Orwell incorrectly assumed that it was only the bourgeoisie who supported Fascism thus not appreciating the traditionalism, the conservatism, patriotism, anti outsider and tribalism of the working class, particularly the politicised and trade union working class. I also had found this in prison and in my work with poor families with multiple problems when I worked for a Family Service Unit in Salford throughout the summer of 1962.
What happened in Spain is that the working class opposition to the arrival of Franco was to move from accepting the democracy to engaging in revolution. Land was sized, factories seized, often by the trade unions, and churches wrecked with many priests killed. This led to the reaction by the Catholic church and their support for Franco. The opposition to Franco was not the elected government as such but the trade unions. Blair reports that in the street fighting 3000 people were killed in a single day. Once the blood letting starts it is difficult to stop. For purposes of propoganda to the outside world the civil war was represented as Christian patriots versus blood letting Bolsheviks, which in many respects it was, or at least became, and good republicans (Orwell says gentlemanly) quelling a military revolt against the democratic government, which it also was. The reality was that not just the western capitalist countries but Stalinist Russia was opposed to the kind of workers revolutuion that had taken place. More recently we have seen how this kind of revolt in Egypt although brought down one regime has been quickly replaced by another with the help of a other countries whose systems and motives are often in conflict. Importantly In Egypt the revolt was non violent and therefore the leaders who emerged remain whereas in Spain it was more easy to get rid of them because they has used force and committed atrocities.
Through the various phases of Government during the first year of the Spanish civil war it had moved more and more to the right ending with a right wing socialists Liberals and the Stalinist communists. POUM, the syndicalists and the anarchists were moved out. This appears to be part of the deal with Russia as they commenced to supply weaponry to the official government for its defence. The arms were made available through the Communist party and those allied to the Communist Party and the Communists openly said they were non revolutionary in their approach and thus gained support from many on the left who were also not revolutionaries. By the autumn of 1937 the Socialists organisations were claiming that they respected private property, When the tide turned and even after Franco won, it was the Communists who led the hunt to track down and eliminate the revolutionaries.
POUM which Orwell was part of its forces because of the ILP links was not just fully behind the revolution that had taken place in Barcelona, and elsewhere, but rightly in my view believed that any comrpomise on what they had achieved would be their doom. They resisted the “bourgeoisifying” of the workers militia and police force. If the workers did not control the armed forces the armed forces would control the workers.
Orwell then explains the problem with people calling themselves anarchists and belonging to organisations and groups which the pure anarchist will argue is contradiction. Orwell explains that the two million strong grouping of the anarchist was largely made up of former socialists against the centralised state, whether a capitalist or socialist state, and were more interested in workers controls than parliamentary government. Orwell argues that the anarchism of liberty and equality was so deep rooted in Spain that it would outlive Communism. I wonder what in fact happened to this significant anarchist movement and what the position is now.
I have only read the Wikipedia article on the subject and it is a good one making the point that the anarchism was not ideological but borne out of fhe rural economy in Spain with its Federal and individualistic history. The CNT party, now split into two groups is said to have some 50000 members. a significant number in terms of the generality of political involvement as Party members that exists today in most west European countries. This may be because of the extent to which the Communists and then Franco persecuted the anarahcists with hundreds of thousands executed or imprisoned. Apparently there were 30 attempts to kill Franco, none succeeding and violent resistence to his regime until the early 1960’s.
This was the context which Orwell says he became aware of the feuding that was going on between the different groups and interests which made up the Anti Franco coalition. Thus he came to appreciate that the Communists and those allied were saying with slogans, posters, radio propoganda that he and his comrades were Trotskyists, Fascists, Traitors, Murderers, Spies and more. He ends the chapter reflecting that he had never joined POUM as a party and given subsequent events he wishes that he had. I like that about the man.
Blair returns to his war experience in Chapter six admitting that at the time he was still of a mind to join an International Brigade and place himself under effective communist control because of the military inactivity of his front the time. He describes becoming vermin infested and the shortages and that as the end of March came he had developed a poisoned hand that had to be lanced. I had such an experienced in childhood. His infection was more serious and he spent ten days away from the line at a clearing station hospital.
And then there were the rats. Some as big as cats. They were big that they did not run away unless you shot at them. In the radio drama he is criticised for wasting a bullet attempting to shoot one. He may therefore write about rats again and this experience according to the Drama Jura about the writing of 1984 is what led to have used the rats in the room 101 torture scene at the end of the story, after his sister encountered rats on the island.
It has also remembered that the revolution that took place in Spain occurred in the countryside as much as the town and Orwell in describing the arrival of Spring noted that the “peasants” ( his word) were spring ploughing fields where the land owners had gone and fields appeared to be divided up between the agricultural workers rather than collectivised as happened in Russia and then in China, taking several decades to understand that this was a recipe for disaster. Blair`` was struck by the friendliness of agricultural workers.
So far I had also found little written about religion by Orwell but in chapter six he observes that there appeared to be little religious feeling in this part of Spain and he never saw anyone cross themselves during his whole time in Spain. He does anticipate the return of Catholicism and its Spanish Church despite its collapse and refers to the Church of England in an aside as moribund. He describes the Church of the Inquisition as having become a racket and replaced by anarchism.`
Hr describes that in May on the cold night he had experienced the line was moved, quietly to a new trench close to the Fascist line. He also mentions that ambulances would not come to the front because it was understood by both sides that they were being used carry ammunition and therefore were regarded as fair targets. We are then back to the rats which were swarming in the trench and he noted with pride being able to punch one flying.
His hand having repaired in time for participating in a small group participating in an attack for which he prepared with a hunk of bread, three inches of red sausage and a cigar which his wife had sent from Barcelona via George Kopp who come to direct action, addressing him in Spanish and then in English. In order not to shoot each other they were to wear white armbands except it was discovered these had not yet arrived.
In the radio play there is reference to the arrival of Eileen in Barcelona to work at the ILP office, the meeting with George Kopp and that her his accepted his offer to go for a meal. There was to be talk that the two had an affair, and Eric thought so accusing his wife. I speculate why Kopp chose Orwell and his group to undertake a dangerous mission to capture a Nationalist position partly up a hillside.
Meanwhile Orwell was getting his wish for action and found himself throwing not one but two grenade bombs as another landed close to him from the other side wounding those around him. He threw and then ducked quickly not looking to see where his throws had landed. The enemy was firing their riffles as were comrades behind, one going close to his position. After throwing his third grenade bomb which landed on the target the order was given to charge, although his description was that of a lumber. On arrival he found that everyone had departed with the exception of one man he chased as he successfully escaped to a higher position where his comrades provided safety.
Eric mentions using a small electric torch his wife had purchased for him in Barcelona. Although they found plenty of ammunition they wanted riffles to replace their own which jammed from the mud and general lack of good condition. More importantly they wanted the machine gun that fired at them but it had been removed leaving only the tripod. The enemy was counter attacking from above as were comrades below on several places along the line and his small group was now in the middle with their only booty a powerful telescope. He throws a grenade bomb at someone firing towards him and the cries indicated the man is wounded which causes him some regret. Then the order comes for them to go back to their line. He failed to understand why.
With Kopp anxious about an officer, his friend, who had not returned, Eric and a couple of Spanish comrades volunteer to bring the wounded or dead man back. Finding themselves under attack they retreat with finding anyone. He estimated that the Fascists had thrown a couple of hundred men into the counter attack although a deserter said the number had been six hundred. Eric Blair could now write as George Orwell he had fought in a war and survived.
I have only visited Barcelona on day visits, at night to see the fountains, a daytime visit to a bullfight where I left at half time having seen enough to confirm my prejudices. I have visited the Gaudi Cathedral, still in its making and the site of the Olympic Games, walked the Rambalas, and driven past the magnificent Football stadium. My impression is of a city of apartments although. I saw little of the outskirts or the industrial plants to obtain any meaningful impression without having stayed in the city and walked more or engaged with its people. It is a very different place from the coastal resorts where I have stayed in the North or had one quick hot and tiring trip along the coast in the South on an escorted trip from Gibraltar.
Reflecting on what I had read and written so far my main reaction was at the Black and White which Orwell had approached the War and so far he did not appear to appreciate that this was country of man against country man, neighbour and work mate against neighbour and workmate, soldier and against soldier, catholic against catholic and division within extended families and indeed within some nuclear families. Is it surprising that the ordinary people were reluctant to try and kill each other, apart from the ideological fanatics, and personal power seekers? Is it surprising that they attempted to persuade each other to change sides rather than kill?
The fourth chapter ends with a Fascist aeroplane coming over their position and instead of dropping bombs, there was a leaflet which announced the fall of the city of Malaga. It is my understanding that the Republican forces and most of the population decided to withdraw, leaving the remaining population to the fate of the advancing Italian troops who without the same understanding that these were fellow countrymen, women and children, set about machine gunning down the civilian population including those who had already fled the city.
In mid February Blair and the others made a fifty mile truck ride to join the forces attempting to take the town of Huesca. Having taken another town in the area the promise was made that tomorrow, we will have coffee in Huesca. There had been several bloody attacks but the city had not fallen and Orwell says that if he was to return to Spain he would make a point of visiting Huesca to enjoy coffee one morning. Clearly he did not do so at the time.
It is on reading the next chapter that I find Orwell recognised the shortcomings of his original reaction to the political situation in Barcelona and the rest of Spain. He had not been interested in the political and was unaware of it. He had no notion of what kind of war it was.
The reason I have become so interested in the life as much as the writings of Eric Blair is that the more I read the more I believe there is considerable similarity between our personalities and the development of our political outlook. Like Blair I rushed into supporting the extreme end of those involved in the Gandhian Satyagraha rooted direct action protests against weapons of mass destruction and it was only after I had been to prison that I commenced to take a more in depth look at the interests involved and the motives of the individuals involved. It is a good coincidence that for different reasons I checked my birth name on Google once more and discovered that a book was published in 2011 by Sean Scalmar looking at the rise of radical Protest in the UK and the USA based on Gandhian Satyagraha which makes reference in one of his copious footnotes to the letters written to the Direct Action Committee on behalf of Peter Brown (the author of Smallcreeps Day) and I proposing a Gandhian style march ending with a direct action protest at the USA nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch and our response to the protest after it had taken place. We had the same belief and commitment as those workers in Barcelona, despite having recently volunteered to spend six months in prison rather than giving an oral undertaking not to participate in protests for a period of two years. It was only then I began to fully understand the extent of the differences between the various factions making up the leadership of the anti nuclear movement. We were both to improve our understanding and adapt our position to changed circumstances
On returning from Spain, based on his diaries and memories, Blair wrote that the revolutionary atmosphere of Barcelona “attracted me deeply but I had made no attempt to understand it,” and he was exasperated by the number of political parties and trade union with their different names which he considered tiresome. It only on arriving outside Huesca when someone said that the Socialists were positioned on their left that he queried,” I thought we were socialists? “
Orwell uses this event to introduce his understanding of the Civil War and its origins, he confirms my understanding outlined in the first part that Franco did not come to power to introduce Fascism in Spain but with help of the church and the aristocracy to return Spain to is Feudalism before the first mild democratic government had taken office. The consequence of this is that Franco had against him not just the working class but also various sections of the liberal bourgeoisie and I suspect many who would not describe themselves as liberal. Orwell incorrectly assumed that it was only the bourgeoisie who supported Fascism thus not appreciating the traditionalism, the conservatism, patriotism, anti outsider and tribalism of the working class, particularly the politicised and trade union working class. I also had found this in prison and in my work with poor families with multiple problems when I worked for a Family Service Unit in Salford throughout the summer of 1962.
What happened in Spain is that the working class opposition to the arrival of Franco was to move from accepting the democracy to engaging in revolution. Land was sized, factories seized, often by the trade unions, and churches wrecked with many priests killed. This led to the reaction by the Catholic church and their support for Franco. The opposition to Franco was not the elected government as such but the trade unions. Blair reports that in the street fighting 3000 people were killed in a single day. Once the blood letting starts it is difficult to stop. For purposes of propoganda to the outside world the civil war was represented as Christian patriots versus blood letting Bolsheviks, which in many respects it was, or at least became, and good republicans (Orwell says gentlemanly) quelling a military revolt against the democratic government, which it also was. The reality was that not just the western capitalist countries but Stalinist Russia was opposed to the kind of workers revolutuion that had taken place. More recently we have seen how this kind of revolt in Egypt although brought down one regime has been quickly replaced by another with the help of a other countries whose systems and motives are often in conflict. Importantly In Egypt the revolt was non violent and therefore the leaders who emerged remain whereas in Spain it was more easy to get rid of them because they has used force and committed atrocities.
Through the various phases of Government during the first year of the Spanish civil war it had moved more and more to the right ending with a right wing socialists Liberals and the Stalinist communists. POUM, the syndicalists and the anarchists were moved out. This appears to be part of the deal with Russia as they commenced to supply weaponry to the official government for its defence. The arms were made available through the Communist party and those allied to the Communist Party and the Communists openly said they were non revolutionary in their approach and thus gained support from many on the left who were also not revolutionaries. By the autumn of 1937 the Socialists organisations were claiming that they respected private property, When the tide turned and even after Franco won, it was the Communists who led the hunt to track down and eliminate the revolutionaries.
POUM which Orwell was part of its forces because of the ILP links was not just fully behind the revolution that had taken place in Barcelona, and elsewhere, but rightly in my view believed that any comrpomise on what they had achieved would be their doom. They resisted the “bourgeoisifying” of the workers militia and police force. If the workers did not control the armed forces the armed forces would control the workers.
Orwell then explains the problem with people calling themselves anarchists and belonging to organisations and groups which the pure anarchist will argue is contradiction. Orwell explains that the two million strong grouping of the anarchist was largely made up of former socialists against the centralised state, whether a capitalist or socialist state, and were more interested in workers controls than parliamentary government. Orwell argues that the anarchism of liberty and equality was so deep rooted in Spain that it would outlive Communism. I wonder what in fact happened to this significant anarchist movement and what the position is now.
I have only read the Wikipedia article on the subject and it is a good one making the point that the anarchism was not ideological but borne out of fhe rural economy in Spain with its Federal and individualistic history. The CNT party, now split into two groups is said to have some 50000 members. a significant number in terms of the generality of political involvement as Party members that exists today in most west European countries. This may be because of the extent to which the Communists and then Franco persecuted the anarahcists with hundreds of thousands executed or imprisoned. Apparently there were 30 attempts to kill Franco, none succeeding and violent resistence to his regime until the early 1960’s.
This was the context which Orwell says he became aware of the feuding that was going on between the different groups and interests which made up the Anti Franco coalition. Thus he came to appreciate that the Communists and those allied were saying with slogans, posters, radio propoganda that he and his comrades were Trotskyists, Fascists, Traitors, Murderers, Spies and more. He ends the chapter reflecting that he had never joined POUM as a party and given subsequent events he wishes that he had. I like that about the man.
Blair returns to his war experience in Chapter six admitting that at the time he was still of a mind to join an International Brigade and place himself under effective communist control because of the military inactivity of his front the time. He describes becoming vermin infested and the shortages and that as the end of March came he had developed a poisoned hand that had to be lanced. I had such an experienced in childhood. His infection was more serious and he spent ten days away from the line at a clearing station hospital.
And then there were the rats. Some as big as cats. They were big that they did not run away unless you shot at them. In the radio drama he is criticised for wasting a bullet attempting to shoot one. He may therefore write about rats again and this experience according to the Drama Jura about the writing of 1984 is what led to have used the rats in the room 101 torture scene at the end of the story, after his sister encountered rats on the island.
It has also remembered that the revolution that took place in Spain occurred in the countryside as much as the town and Orwell in describing the arrival of Spring noted that the “peasants” ( his word) were spring ploughing fields where the land owners had gone and fields appeared to be divided up between the agricultural workers rather than collectivised as happened in Russia and then in China, taking several decades to understand that this was a recipe for disaster. Blair`` was struck by the friendliness of agricultural workers.
So far I had also found little written about religion by Orwell but in chapter six he observes that there appeared to be little religious feeling in this part of Spain and he never saw anyone cross themselves during his whole time in Spain. He does anticipate the return of Catholicism and its Spanish Church despite its collapse and refers to the Church of England in an aside as moribund. He describes the Church of the Inquisition as having become a racket and replaced by anarchism.`
Hr describes that in May on the cold night he had experienced the line was moved, quietly to a new trench close to the Fascist line. He also mentions that ambulances would not come to the front because it was understood by both sides that they were being used carry ammunition and therefore were regarded as fair targets. We are then back to the rats which were swarming in the trench and he noted with pride being able to punch one flying.
His hand having repaired in time for participating in a small group participating in an attack for which he prepared with a hunk of bread, three inches of red sausage and a cigar which his wife had sent from Barcelona via George Kopp who come to direct action, addressing him in Spanish and then in English. In order not to shoot each other they were to wear white armbands except it was discovered these had not yet arrived.
In the radio play there is reference to the arrival of Eileen in Barcelona to work at the ILP office, the meeting with George Kopp and that her his accepted his offer to go for a meal. There was to be talk that the two had an affair, and Eric thought so accusing his wife. I speculate why Kopp chose Orwell and his group to undertake a dangerous mission to capture a Nationalist position partly up a hillside.
Meanwhile Orwell was getting his wish for action and found himself throwing not one but two grenade bombs as another landed close to him from the other side wounding those around him. He threw and then ducked quickly not looking to see where his throws had landed. The enemy was firing their riffles as were comrades behind, one going close to his position. After throwing his third grenade bomb which landed on the target the order was given to charge, although his description was that of a lumber. On arrival he found that everyone had departed with the exception of one man he chased as he successfully escaped to a higher position where his comrades provided safety.
Eric mentions using a small electric torch his wife had purchased for him in Barcelona. Although they found plenty of ammunition they wanted riffles to replace their own which jammed from the mud and general lack of good condition. More importantly they wanted the machine gun that fired at them but it had been removed leaving only the tripod. The enemy was counter attacking from above as were comrades below on several places along the line and his small group was now in the middle with their only booty a powerful telescope. He throws a grenade bomb at someone firing towards him and the cries indicated the man is wounded which causes him some regret. Then the order comes for them to go back to their line. He failed to understand why.
With Kopp anxious about an officer, his friend, who had not returned, Eric and a couple of Spanish comrades volunteer to bring the wounded or dead man back. Finding themselves under attack they retreat with finding anyone. He estimated that the Fascists had thrown a couple of hundred men into the counter attack although a deserter said the number had been six hundred. Eric Blair could now write as George Orwell he had fought in a war and survived.
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