After Georges Kopp had arranged for Eileen, Orwell’s wife to visit him at the front after which he had his first experience of close action, Spring brought warm days which turned to hot and with cherries forming in their clusters and bathing in the river no longer agony. He comments on the gnarled rustic looking men from Andalusia, the homeland of my maternal great grandmother and that two fellow Englishmen were laid low with sun stroke. The Andalusians were described as illiterate, simple but knew how to make cigarettes out of dried fibre.
The Republican government doubled the number of men outside of Huesca to thirty thousand, and used lots of planes to bomb and shoot but the city refused to fall. This could be said was an important turning point in the defence of the democratic republic against the nationalist forces of Franco. Then the Republic commenced to implode.
After 115 days at the front Eric Blair the combatant was given leave to join his wife in Barcelona and found that the workers’ revolution was coming to its end. The bourgeoisie were back on the streets and the workers were back to their jobs or their homes. The civilian population had lost interest in the war with voluntary enlistment dwindled.
Worse perhaps than this while the hotels and restuarnts in the city centre appeared to have no difficulty in feeding their guests able to pay, in the working class districts there were queues for bread, olive oil and other necessities one hundred yards long, and children barefooted waited all over the city clamouring for scraps of food, People went about their own business and greeting of strangers as comrades disappeared. He came across a shop full of bon bons and pastries at ridiculous prices not out of place in Bond Street or Paris and marvelled at the extremes of means now openly displayed. It was during the week that he waited for his new pair of boots that his original enthusiams came apart as the street fighting involving comrades commenced.
The sense of trouble brewing was not just between the Stalinist Communists and POUM anarcho syndicalism but between all the factions and differences in views about the kind fo society that should deveop once Franco was defeated. The spark was the arrival of several lorry loads of armed civil guards driven to the telephone exchange and taken control from the CNT workers there. Two barricades were then created by the people and the war between the government and the nationalist became an open conflict between Government supported by the Communists and Stalin and the anarchists, the Syndicalist, the Trotskyists, POUM and in particular the second city of Spain Barcelona
Civil guards occupied a cafe next to the POUM building as a prelude to attacking the headquarters. There is a disussion between a Civil guard and Georges Kopp over unexploded bombs lying in the street. Orwell fires his only shot of these “troubles” in a failed attempt to explode one of them. He worries about his wife back at the hotel. There is chat between Orwell’s comrades at the top of one building and Civil guards occupying another and who explained that they did not want to shoot at them because they were all workers.
Orwell, the writer describes the changed atmopshere in the city from May5th with very few pedestrians on the street. One of main papers called for everyone to return to work. There was rumours of Government forces and POUM men coming to the city to fight it out. After sixty hours without sleep he is in a “ghastly state of mind.”
Back at the hotel spy mania gripped everyone. There was only one sardine each for one meal, also mentioned in the radio programme. He and his wife breakfasted only on goats cheese three mornings in succession and the hotel had no bread for days and nothing to drink. There was a chorus of there is no more food, we much “go back to work.”
The rumour of government troops, Assault Guards, from Valencia proved accurate and suddenly they appeared taking control of the streets, with the outbreak of street fighting giving the government the opportunity to assume fuller control of Catalonia. In the press POUM was declared a Fascist organisation in disguise.
After describing his personal experience Blair used the next chapter, the longest in the book, to try and explain what was happening in terms of the wider picture but makes the point that working out what happened accurately is impossible because there are no records, either not made, or destroyed. Frustration and disappointment on the part of the working class once it was appreciated that the former gulf between wealth and poverty was continuing coupled with the Government orders for personal weapons to be handed in and the growth of non political well armed government forces from which trade unionists were excluded were among the factors he lists.
He describes the tactics of the Communists but not those of the secret Nationalists who would have remained in the to spy. Until he comes to writing 1984 and the role of 0’Brien Orwell, from what I have read so far, does not appear to appreciate that all sides will have undercover people joining the organisations they are against, sometimes holding major roles in an organisation and undertaking illegal action. It is rare of these individuals to become known or for the practices to be admitted while they are taking place. Both as a young man practicing non violent direct action, in later life as local authority chief officer and since in the age when what we do and say can be viewed and listened to, recorded and changed by anyone, anywhere with the technology, I quickly came to assume that this was so, acted in accordance to what I felt and believed, and regarded as fair and good, but I also sometimes laid trails so see who and how they were followed. Eric Blair to me always remained the idealist despite the realism that became his experience and never appears to have got stuck in until he went to Spain followed by World War Ii when his ingrained patriotism resurfaced and his anti totalitarianism governed his remaining years.
Orwell reports that people started to leave barricades almost as soon as they had been created. POUM leaders appeared ambivalent and unsure in that while they encouraged followers to remain at the barricades they had argued against insurrection until the war against Franco was won. He noted that the Communist press, highlighting the Daily Worker in the UK, put the entire blame for the street fighting in Barcleona on POUM as a France’s Fifth Column and goes in to considerable detail examining various articles and statements.
He also comments on Trotskyist tactics of causing disorder and bloodhsed to undermine the position of anarchists and syndicalists in Barcelona. This reminds of my single experience when I got to hear the demagogue tirade of Socialist Labour League Leader Gerry Healey at the annual meeting of the organisation at the Friends Meeting House in London in 1961( I think I have the year right). I was invited by Harry Mister, the manager of the Peace News Bookshop to spend the day looking after a Bookstall at their annual meeting as Pat Arrowsmith had been invited to talk about the role of the Direct Action Committee campaign against the possession and potential deployment of weapons of mass destruction. In order to listen to Pat I had to complete a delegate’s card and having done so and no one showing any interest in the books, I stayed inside the hall to listen to an address by Healey that went on for the rest of the morning.
He first told the delegates that the movement should support the action to reduce the power of capitalist countries but it was essential that the soviets did not reduce their position. He denounced the volunteering to go to prison as unproductive and wasteful.
As Orwell explains in Chapter 11 the Trotskyists like the SLL were little different from the Stalinist in both supporting the dictatorship of the proletariart and that their ends justified any means. The essential difference being that the SLL and similar groups believed that socialism was impossible unless it existed within every country an approach in principle, no different from the Facists, fundamenal Christians and Muslims. Without a world wide approach the capitalists would continue to do everything they could to undermine and destroy socialism.
A major part of the speech of the SLL leader was to report on progress achieved during the year and the various struggles many of them small scale that had taken place and that in the coming year the priority was to enter the machine tool industry. It was evident from what was said that known members of the League were black listed by employer organisatuions and therefore the approach was to quickly move into an area, cause as much mayhem as possible in terms of getting the employers, the capitalists to show their true colours by turning on the worker and this would have the effect of educationg the workers in to the reality of capitalism and moving them into their camp. A short time afterwards an elderly man called to see me unexpectedly at the home of the aunties first confirming that that I had attended the annual meeting. I explained the circumstances and my response to what I had heard. We argued over many issues and as I had come to appreciate from previous situations I lacked the general education and communication skills to match his eloquence although I thought I managed to hold my own as by then I had read and reflected sufficiently to be clear what I was for and what I was against. I have always wondered if the man was from the SLL or MI5!
Orwell does report that during the month of the uprising in Barcelona, the former Monarchist flag appeared on several balconies in Barcelona thus fuelling the allegations against POUM. Poum became an illegal organisation over 15th and 16th June and one of the first acts of the Negrin led government that came into power in May. The Executive Committee was imprisoned as was George Kopp.
Blair wrote his analysis six months after returning to the UK and he reports that the leadership of POUM was still in jail although within the small Spanish Cabinet they had voted by five votes to two (both Communist Ministers) to release the prisoners. There had been a number of delegations from the UK and elsewhere visiting the Republican government including one by the Socialist Labour Member of Parliament, James Maxton. And also John McGovern when he visited was told that that because they had received aid from Russia “ we had to permit certain actions which we did not like,” the words of the Spanish Minister of the Interior. McGovern had not be able to gain admission to the secret prisons held by the Communists in Barcelona despite having a signed order from the Minster of the Interior to do so,
Three days after the fighting in Barcleona ended Orwell and his comrades in Barcelona returned to the front. He found ity difficult for anyone returning to look at the war in the same way as before. He was stationed back outside of Huesca, a little to the right than previously and he had been promoted to acting second Lieutenant i.e. had he been in the British Army, an officer, and in command of about thirty men. His friend Benjamin had been officially promoted to Captain, the same rank as a cousin and Georges Kopp to Major, the same rank as one of my uncles.
It was five oclock in the morning always a dangerous time because with the dawn at their backs if you put your head above the parapet it was clearly outlined against the sky, He felt, although hard to remember or describe how he felt at the moment that a bullet went into and through his throat. What surprised him was not being in pain.
As a school boy I had entered the school House boxing competition, never having boxed or been in a fight of any kind before. I was hit and hit hard but the odd thing was I did not feel pain and considered it an odd experience and keen to have joined the school boxing club which the head of house recommended. I was stopped by the aunties.
Less than a decade later I was picked up by police as I sat at a pier across from a Polaris Submarine supply vessel and tossed in the air on top of other protestors and the action was repeated several times. I was calm as I had been when another prisoner at Stafford had taken offence at my manner when working in the prisoner Library and placed a neck lock intended to cause me harm. In these incidents there was neither fear or pain, surprise yes and in retrospect being bemused by my reaction.
He is taken to hospital where he remembers a nurse trying to feed him a large meal and two of his troop expressing relief that he was alive but then taking away his watch, revolver, knife and electric torch, all valuable at the front, knowing that even as a survivor his war was over. After a few days he was able to get up and walk with his arm in a sling which had become paralysed.
He was able to subsequently comment that hosptials near the front line were treated as cl;earing stations rather than as places of treatment which led to hundreds if not thousands of wounded dying prematurely or being disabled unnecessarily.
Doctors were too busy to examine wounds commenting that will be looked when you get to Barcelona as they rushed by. There were no trained nurses in Spain as the work of caring was undertaken by nuns with the consequence that men too ill look after themselves were shamefully neglected.
He was able to wire Eileen before departing to Barcleona via a bus to the station only to discover they were being taken to Tarragona instead presumably because that was where the train driver was prepared to go. The heat and lack of care meant that a number of the wounded died on the journey. It was ony eight or nine days after the shooting that his wound was properly looked at. The doctor told him he would never get his voice back. Although for two months he could not speak beyond a whisper, audible speech then returned.
When he returned to Barcelona, there was a special evil in the air. Sinster rumours of all kinds rebounded. There was fear that Franco force would attempt to invade Barcelona. Bands of armed Assasult gurds raopmed everywhere while Civil Guards controlled buildings and strategic places with papers constantly being requested. Fortunately he had been warned not to show his POUM doucmentation. There was a bad shortage of food. And there was no small change which meant those with large denomination currency might have wait for hours after queuing for hours to get the right change. He was taken to a sanitorium run by POUM where there were several other Englishmen.
His wife Eileen continued to stay at the Continental and he came into the city centre by day attending the General Hospital for electric shock treatment on his arm where he could move his fingers and the treatment reduces the pain. The couple decided to return to England as soon as possible, because of his desire to get away from what was happening, the atmosphere of hatred and suspicion. He had been certified by the doctors as medically unfit to continue fighting. He had to get the position confirmed by POUM at Seitamo. Georges Kopp was back from the front in a good mood believing that at last Huesca was to fall and he had received an invitation from the Government to go to Valencia for a special assignment leaving on the same day as Eric Blair.
It was five days before he got back with his discharge but at the POUM HQ in Barcelona everyone was issued with riffles and cartridges because an attack on the city was feared. He had to go from hospital place to hospital place to sort out his discharge . When his papers was eventually stamped he descided to take a look at Spain for the first time and he appears to have made visits to Lerida and Barbastro during the day or over a day before returning very late to Barcelona although it is confusing given what he said about Eileen‘s concern and the wish to return to England quickly and also because of what was happening in Barcelona. Without taxis it was too late to go to the Sanitoirum so he made his way to where Eileen was staying, stopping for dinner beforehand.
When he got to hotel he found Eileen looking relaxed in the louneg rising to greet him without emotion she put her arm tound his neck and whispered Get Out.
Get out of here at once after he had exclaimed what? Don’t stand there you must go outside quickly. She ws leading him out and going down the stairs where he met a Frenchman he knew who confirmed what Eileen had been trying to say, You must not come in here Get out and hide yourself before they ring the police. He then met a member of he hotel staff also a POUM supporter who explained that the Government had suppressed POUM, seizing the buildings and putting members in prison. “They say they are shooting people already,” he added. He and Eileen found a quiet cafe and she explained what had happened while he was away.
On June 15th the police had arrested the head of POUM in Barcelona and arrested everyone at the Hotel Falcon mostly militia men on leave. The hotel was converted into a prison. Next day POUM was declared an illegal organisation and the offices, book stalls, sanatoria and Red Aid centres were seized. The police arresting all members and associates. Almost all forty members of the Executive committee were in prison within a couple of days. Eileen had heard that some 400 hundred had been arrested in Barcelona alone. They had dragged wounded men from the hospitals. There were rumnours that some of those arrested had been shot. The arrests continued for months after he had departed and ran into thousands. He mentions one couple both arrested where the husband immediate disappeared and his wife remained in jail for two months, without a trial. She started a hunger strike for news of her husband and was told he was dead. She was released and then rearrested.
Some of their English friends and other foreigners had got immediately across the border. Others the police had taken including Georges Kopp. I will look at the role of Kopp and what happened to him later although on the run Orwell and his wife got to see Kopp in prison before they departed. They established that Kopp had returned from Valencia after visiting the Ministry of War with a letter to the commander of the Engineering operations on the eastern front. It had not occurred to him he would be arrested on his way to the front with papers for a special mission and came back to the Hotel for his kit bag, missing Eileen who was out at the time and the hotel staff had notified the police as requested.
Eileen remained at the hotel and was not arrested, the couple taking the view that she was being watched as a means of capturing Blair. Their room had been searhed by plain clothed policemen in the middle of the night. They had removed all papers except their passport and cheque book. These included his diaries, their books and press cuttings and letters. He later learned that the police had raided the sanitorium removing his possessions. It was agreed it was safer for her to remain at the hotel after this but he needed somewhere to stay for a good night’s sleep. He destroyed papers connecting him to POUM except his official discharge papers so it could not be claimed he was a deserter. He had difficulty finding somewhere to sleep and learned what is was like to be on the run. He spent time at a public bath until learning that the police had raised one and arrested a number of alleged Trotsyists with the same idea as Eric. It was a place to relax and keep warm.
The couple arranged a meeting at the British Embassy attended also by John McNair.. McNair born on Tyneside had become organising secretary of the Independent Labour Party and its International representative. In this capacity he had gone to Spain with John McGovern to investigate the role of the Catholic Church in the Civil War and stayed to run the ILP office in Barcelona, greeting Blair on his arrival and later giving a job to Eileen. Also present at the meeting was Stafford Cottman another volunteer. They learned that Bob Smillie, gradson of Robert Smillie the Labour Member of Parliament, had been arrested. He died in prison immediately after the arrest and buried, it is presumed to cover up how he died. The young man had left Glasgow Universirty where he was a student to fight Fascism His death angered Eric. It was in the afternoon they were able to see Kopp in prison. He was described as being in excellent despite assuming they were all going to be shot. Kopp explained the important of fhe letter from the War Ministry that had been taken from him. Blair went to see the Commanding officer to explain the mistake of arresting Kopp on the special government mission in an effort to retrieve the letter. Despite his limited Spanish mixed with French, the letter was duly forwarded to the Commander of the Engineers but his superiors failed to get him released from prison, as Orwell was to later find out.
That same evening Orwell, McNair and Cottman slept on the grass at the edge of a derellict building lot. He comments that the Gaudi Cathedral building was hideous and regretted that it had not been blown up by the anarchists. He and his two comrades were leading an insane existence, criminals by night and by day prosperous English visitors. A bath, shave and a shoe shine does wonder for an appearance. If I appear at my door in old clothes unshaved without my hair sorted I gain a very different reaction when in a suit, collar and tie. There was a warrant out for the arrest of Mcnair and it was presumed Blair and the others were also on a list. The British consul got their passports in order with a train arranged from Port Bou at seven thirty in the evening so an eighty thiorty start was probably the earliest time of actual departure. It was proposed to collect Eileen and pay her bill at the last possible moment as it was likely the hotel was required to notify the police of her departure. The train left at ten to seven! Fortunately they managed to warn his wife in time The three men had dinner at a small hotel near the station and find that the owner was politically friendly thay were given a three bedded room without notifying the police.
They left early the following morning meting up with his wife at the station. He wrote to the Ministry of War while they waited for the train to leave arguing that the arrest of Kopp was a mistake. In the radio play it was Eileen who pressed him about trying to release Kopp.
They cross the frontier without incident. There were detectives on the train taking the names of foreigners but seeing the group in the dining car they were assumed respectable and not questioned. On his journey to Spain he had been warned to take off his bourgeoise clothes for the anarchists would tear them off him, an exaggeration although at the broder the guards had turned back a smartly dressed couple. At the customs office they were checked on the list of the wanted but because of the general inefficiency thay had not been included. The first newspaper they saw mentioned the warrant for the arrest of John McNair for espionage.
What is the first thing you do when setting foot outside a war zone in which you have been involved? He rushed to robacco-kiosk (unaware of course that this act was far more dangerous than for much of the time he had spent in Spain. After this they had their first cup of tea with fresh milk for months. It was several days before he got used to the idea he could buy tobacco whenever and wherever he wanted. Their two companion went on to Paris which became the base of the ILP.
McNair was born in Boston Lincolnshire in 1887 and moved to here on Tyneside with his family at an early age. He left school at 13 years and became an errand boy. And my earliest memories after the war when I assisted my care mother as she struggled to work out bills and change in a various shops along the main Wallington High Street was to see errand boys with their bicycles and baskets delivering purchases all day and every day except Sundays and Wednesday afternoons.
McNair became General Secrteary of the Independent Labout Party in 1939 and held the post until 1955, the year I left school, having moved their officers to Glasgow. He then returned to Tyneside and complete a first degree at the University of Durham, studying French and English History, Greek and Roman Culture at the age of 72. He then obtained a master’s degree on the work of George Orwell
And Eric Blair, Eileen and Georges Kopp, theirs is another story
The Republican government doubled the number of men outside of Huesca to thirty thousand, and used lots of planes to bomb and shoot but the city refused to fall. This could be said was an important turning point in the defence of the democratic republic against the nationalist forces of Franco. Then the Republic commenced to implode.
After 115 days at the front Eric Blair the combatant was given leave to join his wife in Barcelona and found that the workers’ revolution was coming to its end. The bourgeoisie were back on the streets and the workers were back to their jobs or their homes. The civilian population had lost interest in the war with voluntary enlistment dwindled.
Worse perhaps than this while the hotels and restuarnts in the city centre appeared to have no difficulty in feeding their guests able to pay, in the working class districts there were queues for bread, olive oil and other necessities one hundred yards long, and children barefooted waited all over the city clamouring for scraps of food, People went about their own business and greeting of strangers as comrades disappeared. He came across a shop full of bon bons and pastries at ridiculous prices not out of place in Bond Street or Paris and marvelled at the extremes of means now openly displayed. It was during the week that he waited for his new pair of boots that his original enthusiams came apart as the street fighting involving comrades commenced.
The sense of trouble brewing was not just between the Stalinist Communists and POUM anarcho syndicalism but between all the factions and differences in views about the kind fo society that should deveop once Franco was defeated. The spark was the arrival of several lorry loads of armed civil guards driven to the telephone exchange and taken control from the CNT workers there. Two barricades were then created by the people and the war between the government and the nationalist became an open conflict between Government supported by the Communists and Stalin and the anarchists, the Syndicalist, the Trotskyists, POUM and in particular the second city of Spain Barcelona
Civil guards occupied a cafe next to the POUM building as a prelude to attacking the headquarters. There is a disussion between a Civil guard and Georges Kopp over unexploded bombs lying in the street. Orwell fires his only shot of these “troubles” in a failed attempt to explode one of them. He worries about his wife back at the hotel. There is chat between Orwell’s comrades at the top of one building and Civil guards occupying another and who explained that they did not want to shoot at them because they were all workers.
Orwell, the writer describes the changed atmopshere in the city from May5th with very few pedestrians on the street. One of main papers called for everyone to return to work. There was rumours of Government forces and POUM men coming to the city to fight it out. After sixty hours without sleep he is in a “ghastly state of mind.”
Back at the hotel spy mania gripped everyone. There was only one sardine each for one meal, also mentioned in the radio programme. He and his wife breakfasted only on goats cheese three mornings in succession and the hotel had no bread for days and nothing to drink. There was a chorus of there is no more food, we much “go back to work.”
The rumour of government troops, Assault Guards, from Valencia proved accurate and suddenly they appeared taking control of the streets, with the outbreak of street fighting giving the government the opportunity to assume fuller control of Catalonia. In the press POUM was declared a Fascist organisation in disguise.
After describing his personal experience Blair used the next chapter, the longest in the book, to try and explain what was happening in terms of the wider picture but makes the point that working out what happened accurately is impossible because there are no records, either not made, or destroyed. Frustration and disappointment on the part of the working class once it was appreciated that the former gulf between wealth and poverty was continuing coupled with the Government orders for personal weapons to be handed in and the growth of non political well armed government forces from which trade unionists were excluded were among the factors he lists.
He describes the tactics of the Communists but not those of the secret Nationalists who would have remained in the to spy. Until he comes to writing 1984 and the role of 0’Brien Orwell, from what I have read so far, does not appear to appreciate that all sides will have undercover people joining the organisations they are against, sometimes holding major roles in an organisation and undertaking illegal action. It is rare of these individuals to become known or for the practices to be admitted while they are taking place. Both as a young man practicing non violent direct action, in later life as local authority chief officer and since in the age when what we do and say can be viewed and listened to, recorded and changed by anyone, anywhere with the technology, I quickly came to assume that this was so, acted in accordance to what I felt and believed, and regarded as fair and good, but I also sometimes laid trails so see who and how they were followed. Eric Blair to me always remained the idealist despite the realism that became his experience and never appears to have got stuck in until he went to Spain followed by World War Ii when his ingrained patriotism resurfaced and his anti totalitarianism governed his remaining years.
Orwell reports that people started to leave barricades almost as soon as they had been created. POUM leaders appeared ambivalent and unsure in that while they encouraged followers to remain at the barricades they had argued against insurrection until the war against Franco was won. He noted that the Communist press, highlighting the Daily Worker in the UK, put the entire blame for the street fighting in Barcleona on POUM as a France’s Fifth Column and goes in to considerable detail examining various articles and statements.
He also comments on Trotskyist tactics of causing disorder and bloodhsed to undermine the position of anarchists and syndicalists in Barcelona. This reminds of my single experience when I got to hear the demagogue tirade of Socialist Labour League Leader Gerry Healey at the annual meeting of the organisation at the Friends Meeting House in London in 1961( I think I have the year right). I was invited by Harry Mister, the manager of the Peace News Bookshop to spend the day looking after a Bookstall at their annual meeting as Pat Arrowsmith had been invited to talk about the role of the Direct Action Committee campaign against the possession and potential deployment of weapons of mass destruction. In order to listen to Pat I had to complete a delegate’s card and having done so and no one showing any interest in the books, I stayed inside the hall to listen to an address by Healey that went on for the rest of the morning.
He first told the delegates that the movement should support the action to reduce the power of capitalist countries but it was essential that the soviets did not reduce their position. He denounced the volunteering to go to prison as unproductive and wasteful.
As Orwell explains in Chapter 11 the Trotskyists like the SLL were little different from the Stalinist in both supporting the dictatorship of the proletariart and that their ends justified any means. The essential difference being that the SLL and similar groups believed that socialism was impossible unless it existed within every country an approach in principle, no different from the Facists, fundamenal Christians and Muslims. Without a world wide approach the capitalists would continue to do everything they could to undermine and destroy socialism.
A major part of the speech of the SLL leader was to report on progress achieved during the year and the various struggles many of them small scale that had taken place and that in the coming year the priority was to enter the machine tool industry. It was evident from what was said that known members of the League were black listed by employer organisatuions and therefore the approach was to quickly move into an area, cause as much mayhem as possible in terms of getting the employers, the capitalists to show their true colours by turning on the worker and this would have the effect of educationg the workers in to the reality of capitalism and moving them into their camp. A short time afterwards an elderly man called to see me unexpectedly at the home of the aunties first confirming that that I had attended the annual meeting. I explained the circumstances and my response to what I had heard. We argued over many issues and as I had come to appreciate from previous situations I lacked the general education and communication skills to match his eloquence although I thought I managed to hold my own as by then I had read and reflected sufficiently to be clear what I was for and what I was against. I have always wondered if the man was from the SLL or MI5!
Orwell does report that during the month of the uprising in Barcelona, the former Monarchist flag appeared on several balconies in Barcelona thus fuelling the allegations against POUM. Poum became an illegal organisation over 15th and 16th June and one of the first acts of the Negrin led government that came into power in May. The Executive Committee was imprisoned as was George Kopp.
Blair wrote his analysis six months after returning to the UK and he reports that the leadership of POUM was still in jail although within the small Spanish Cabinet they had voted by five votes to two (both Communist Ministers) to release the prisoners. There had been a number of delegations from the UK and elsewhere visiting the Republican government including one by the Socialist Labour Member of Parliament, James Maxton. And also John McGovern when he visited was told that that because they had received aid from Russia “ we had to permit certain actions which we did not like,” the words of the Spanish Minister of the Interior. McGovern had not be able to gain admission to the secret prisons held by the Communists in Barcelona despite having a signed order from the Minster of the Interior to do so,
Three days after the fighting in Barcleona ended Orwell and his comrades in Barcelona returned to the front. He found ity difficult for anyone returning to look at the war in the same way as before. He was stationed back outside of Huesca, a little to the right than previously and he had been promoted to acting second Lieutenant i.e. had he been in the British Army, an officer, and in command of about thirty men. His friend Benjamin had been officially promoted to Captain, the same rank as a cousin and Georges Kopp to Major, the same rank as one of my uncles.
It was five oclock in the morning always a dangerous time because with the dawn at their backs if you put your head above the parapet it was clearly outlined against the sky, He felt, although hard to remember or describe how he felt at the moment that a bullet went into and through his throat. What surprised him was not being in pain.
As a school boy I had entered the school House boxing competition, never having boxed or been in a fight of any kind before. I was hit and hit hard but the odd thing was I did not feel pain and considered it an odd experience and keen to have joined the school boxing club which the head of house recommended. I was stopped by the aunties.
Less than a decade later I was picked up by police as I sat at a pier across from a Polaris Submarine supply vessel and tossed in the air on top of other protestors and the action was repeated several times. I was calm as I had been when another prisoner at Stafford had taken offence at my manner when working in the prisoner Library and placed a neck lock intended to cause me harm. In these incidents there was neither fear or pain, surprise yes and in retrospect being bemused by my reaction.
He is taken to hospital where he remembers a nurse trying to feed him a large meal and two of his troop expressing relief that he was alive but then taking away his watch, revolver, knife and electric torch, all valuable at the front, knowing that even as a survivor his war was over. After a few days he was able to get up and walk with his arm in a sling which had become paralysed.
He was able to subsequently comment that hosptials near the front line were treated as cl;earing stations rather than as places of treatment which led to hundreds if not thousands of wounded dying prematurely or being disabled unnecessarily.
Doctors were too busy to examine wounds commenting that will be looked when you get to Barcelona as they rushed by. There were no trained nurses in Spain as the work of caring was undertaken by nuns with the consequence that men too ill look after themselves were shamefully neglected.
He was able to wire Eileen before departing to Barcleona via a bus to the station only to discover they were being taken to Tarragona instead presumably because that was where the train driver was prepared to go. The heat and lack of care meant that a number of the wounded died on the journey. It was ony eight or nine days after the shooting that his wound was properly looked at. The doctor told him he would never get his voice back. Although for two months he could not speak beyond a whisper, audible speech then returned.
When he returned to Barcelona, there was a special evil in the air. Sinster rumours of all kinds rebounded. There was fear that Franco force would attempt to invade Barcelona. Bands of armed Assasult gurds raopmed everywhere while Civil Guards controlled buildings and strategic places with papers constantly being requested. Fortunately he had been warned not to show his POUM doucmentation. There was a bad shortage of food. And there was no small change which meant those with large denomination currency might have wait for hours after queuing for hours to get the right change. He was taken to a sanitorium run by POUM where there were several other Englishmen.
His wife Eileen continued to stay at the Continental and he came into the city centre by day attending the General Hospital for electric shock treatment on his arm where he could move his fingers and the treatment reduces the pain. The couple decided to return to England as soon as possible, because of his desire to get away from what was happening, the atmosphere of hatred and suspicion. He had been certified by the doctors as medically unfit to continue fighting. He had to get the position confirmed by POUM at Seitamo. Georges Kopp was back from the front in a good mood believing that at last Huesca was to fall and he had received an invitation from the Government to go to Valencia for a special assignment leaving on the same day as Eric Blair.
It was five days before he got back with his discharge but at the POUM HQ in Barcelona everyone was issued with riffles and cartridges because an attack on the city was feared. He had to go from hospital place to hospital place to sort out his discharge . When his papers was eventually stamped he descided to take a look at Spain for the first time and he appears to have made visits to Lerida and Barbastro during the day or over a day before returning very late to Barcelona although it is confusing given what he said about Eileen‘s concern and the wish to return to England quickly and also because of what was happening in Barcelona. Without taxis it was too late to go to the Sanitoirum so he made his way to where Eileen was staying, stopping for dinner beforehand.
When he got to hotel he found Eileen looking relaxed in the louneg rising to greet him without emotion she put her arm tound his neck and whispered Get Out.
Get out of here at once after he had exclaimed what? Don’t stand there you must go outside quickly. She ws leading him out and going down the stairs where he met a Frenchman he knew who confirmed what Eileen had been trying to say, You must not come in here Get out and hide yourself before they ring the police. He then met a member of he hotel staff also a POUM supporter who explained that the Government had suppressed POUM, seizing the buildings and putting members in prison. “They say they are shooting people already,” he added. He and Eileen found a quiet cafe and she explained what had happened while he was away.
On June 15th the police had arrested the head of POUM in Barcelona and arrested everyone at the Hotel Falcon mostly militia men on leave. The hotel was converted into a prison. Next day POUM was declared an illegal organisation and the offices, book stalls, sanatoria and Red Aid centres were seized. The police arresting all members and associates. Almost all forty members of the Executive committee were in prison within a couple of days. Eileen had heard that some 400 hundred had been arrested in Barcelona alone. They had dragged wounded men from the hospitals. There were rumnours that some of those arrested had been shot. The arrests continued for months after he had departed and ran into thousands. He mentions one couple both arrested where the husband immediate disappeared and his wife remained in jail for two months, without a trial. She started a hunger strike for news of her husband and was told he was dead. She was released and then rearrested.
Some of their English friends and other foreigners had got immediately across the border. Others the police had taken including Georges Kopp. I will look at the role of Kopp and what happened to him later although on the run Orwell and his wife got to see Kopp in prison before they departed. They established that Kopp had returned from Valencia after visiting the Ministry of War with a letter to the commander of the Engineering operations on the eastern front. It had not occurred to him he would be arrested on his way to the front with papers for a special mission and came back to the Hotel for his kit bag, missing Eileen who was out at the time and the hotel staff had notified the police as requested.
Eileen remained at the hotel and was not arrested, the couple taking the view that she was being watched as a means of capturing Blair. Their room had been searhed by plain clothed policemen in the middle of the night. They had removed all papers except their passport and cheque book. These included his diaries, their books and press cuttings and letters. He later learned that the police had raided the sanitorium removing his possessions. It was agreed it was safer for her to remain at the hotel after this but he needed somewhere to stay for a good night’s sleep. He destroyed papers connecting him to POUM except his official discharge papers so it could not be claimed he was a deserter. He had difficulty finding somewhere to sleep and learned what is was like to be on the run. He spent time at a public bath until learning that the police had raised one and arrested a number of alleged Trotsyists with the same idea as Eric. It was a place to relax and keep warm.
The couple arranged a meeting at the British Embassy attended also by John McNair.. McNair born on Tyneside had become organising secretary of the Independent Labour Party and its International representative. In this capacity he had gone to Spain with John McGovern to investigate the role of the Catholic Church in the Civil War and stayed to run the ILP office in Barcelona, greeting Blair on his arrival and later giving a job to Eileen. Also present at the meeting was Stafford Cottman another volunteer. They learned that Bob Smillie, gradson of Robert Smillie the Labour Member of Parliament, had been arrested. He died in prison immediately after the arrest and buried, it is presumed to cover up how he died. The young man had left Glasgow Universirty where he was a student to fight Fascism His death angered Eric. It was in the afternoon they were able to see Kopp in prison. He was described as being in excellent despite assuming they were all going to be shot. Kopp explained the important of fhe letter from the War Ministry that had been taken from him. Blair went to see the Commanding officer to explain the mistake of arresting Kopp on the special government mission in an effort to retrieve the letter. Despite his limited Spanish mixed with French, the letter was duly forwarded to the Commander of the Engineers but his superiors failed to get him released from prison, as Orwell was to later find out.
That same evening Orwell, McNair and Cottman slept on the grass at the edge of a derellict building lot. He comments that the Gaudi Cathedral building was hideous and regretted that it had not been blown up by the anarchists. He and his two comrades were leading an insane existence, criminals by night and by day prosperous English visitors. A bath, shave and a shoe shine does wonder for an appearance. If I appear at my door in old clothes unshaved without my hair sorted I gain a very different reaction when in a suit, collar and tie. There was a warrant out for the arrest of Mcnair and it was presumed Blair and the others were also on a list. The British consul got their passports in order with a train arranged from Port Bou at seven thirty in the evening so an eighty thiorty start was probably the earliest time of actual departure. It was proposed to collect Eileen and pay her bill at the last possible moment as it was likely the hotel was required to notify the police of her departure. The train left at ten to seven! Fortunately they managed to warn his wife in time The three men had dinner at a small hotel near the station and find that the owner was politically friendly thay were given a three bedded room without notifying the police.
They left early the following morning meting up with his wife at the station. He wrote to the Ministry of War while they waited for the train to leave arguing that the arrest of Kopp was a mistake. In the radio play it was Eileen who pressed him about trying to release Kopp.
They cross the frontier without incident. There were detectives on the train taking the names of foreigners but seeing the group in the dining car they were assumed respectable and not questioned. On his journey to Spain he had been warned to take off his bourgeoise clothes for the anarchists would tear them off him, an exaggeration although at the broder the guards had turned back a smartly dressed couple. At the customs office they were checked on the list of the wanted but because of the general inefficiency thay had not been included. The first newspaper they saw mentioned the warrant for the arrest of John McNair for espionage.
What is the first thing you do when setting foot outside a war zone in which you have been involved? He rushed to robacco-kiosk (unaware of course that this act was far more dangerous than for much of the time he had spent in Spain. After this they had their first cup of tea with fresh milk for months. It was several days before he got used to the idea he could buy tobacco whenever and wherever he wanted. Their two companion went on to Paris which became the base of the ILP.
McNair was born in Boston Lincolnshire in 1887 and moved to here on Tyneside with his family at an early age. He left school at 13 years and became an errand boy. And my earliest memories after the war when I assisted my care mother as she struggled to work out bills and change in a various shops along the main Wallington High Street was to see errand boys with their bicycles and baskets delivering purchases all day and every day except Sundays and Wednesday afternoons.
McNair became General Secrteary of the Independent Labout Party in 1939 and held the post until 1955, the year I left school, having moved their officers to Glasgow. He then returned to Tyneside and complete a first degree at the University of Durham, studying French and English History, Greek and Roman Culture at the age of 72. He then obtained a master’s degree on the work of George Orwell
And Eric Blair, Eileen and Georges Kopp, theirs is another story
No comments:
Post a Comment