18.12.2008

Spanish civil war and the left

David Douglass reviews Lewis H Mates's 'Political activism and the popular front' Taurus, 2007, pp304, �52.50

For political activists of my (post-war) generation Spain was synonymous with the fight for freedom. Heroic anti-fascist fighters, visionary socialist revolutionaries selfless internationalism and solidarity, a broad-front left identity.

We subliminally absorbed notions of wholehearted labour and trade union movement commitment to the fight to uphold democracy and socialism in Spain. And while the anarchists and Trotskyists moaned about treachery, rifles without bolts and Stalinist betrayals, all wings of the movement, it seemed, universally acclaimed the stand in Spain, albeit subsequently a heroically futile one. Such was the popular legend.

Lewis Mates, in what is surely a masterly piece of research and scholarship, goes back 60-plus years to uncover whether the story matches the facts. To what extent did the labour and trade union movement back ‘the fight in Spain’ and if so what exactly was that fight? Lewis’s main area of research is the north-east, though with frequent cross-reference to the similar situation in south Wales and other rather dissimilar, generally northern industrial cities. He looks at the records of the dominant unions, trades councils, Labour Party, Independent Labour Party and Communist Party, as well as alliances such as the National Unemployed Workers Movement, and those ad hoc associations thrown up to campaign around the war, in particular for welfare, food and medical aid.

These latter in turn attracted the support of organisations I would have previously thought highly unlikely to make a stand with our side of the street, like The British Legion, the Women’s Institute, Towns Women’s Guilds, Children In Need and the churches. There is no initial explanation as to why such apparent pillars of society, would be joined in such an effort. I would have thought a brief explanation right at the beginning as to which forces were involved and why would have been helpful - too many of the answers to questions which occur as you go along are allowed to emerge later in the course of its journey. It is only later we discover that the solidarity and aid being sought for Spain had been largely neutered of its class-political content and context, and reframed as purely ‘neutral’ humanitarian aid, ‘to the victims of the conflict’. The pro-Franco side, through the endeavour of ‘the church’ and its paper, The Universe, in fact was doing the same for its ‘neutral’ side.

Shot through the whole pattern of events are underlying political positions to do with non-intervention (the official government and Labour Party policy), appeasement, the nature of the Spanish democracy itself and what and who the fight was about. So too the popular front, and the position of the Catholic church vis-à-vis Franco and his ‘nationalists’. It does not take long to demonstrate that all of these issues and factors weighed heavily in notions of how universally widespread solidarity of the British labour movement with the Spanish workers was - Lewis tells us that the ‘Aid Spain’ movement became the most widespread and representative in Britain, second only to the days of Chartism and the corn laws. True, too, that some 2,500 workers took their courage in both hands and marched off to put their lives on the line alongside their Spanish comrades.

There are deep questions of strategy and principle behind the issues and I think Lewis fails to clearly spell these out at an early stage of the work. A section explaining what ‘the popular front’ was, both in its actual functioning and proposed effect, might have been handy. What were the principled objections to it? How did the tactic militate against its own alleged purpose? Linked to this, what was the nature of the Spanish republican government and how far was it ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’? What was the Catholic factor in the process, how far did ‘the church’ see Franco as ‘their man’ and how far did class-conscious Catholic workers in Britain find their religion and politics at odds? The north-east has the second highest concentration of Catholics in England and they were overwhelmingly pro-trade union and socialist, although the church considered the Spanish republic communist and anti-catholic. Did religion and politics impact here? Was Catholicism a political faction both within and outside the class?

All of these things are implicitly taken up in the course of the book, but too late for many not already fully clued up to lose the plot.

Lewis does not make enough of his observation that the ‘non-intervention’ policy adopted by Britain and the ‘other democracies’ effectively damned Spain. It gave a great international boost to the future of fascism. It probably was the catalyst for World War II. Truth was the popular front (basically uniting all political and class forces against the perceived main enemy, in this case fascism) became shorthand for the debate and assumptions you held on the actual nature of capitalism and its relation to fascism:

“This discourse also critiqued popular frontism. In order to appeal to liberals the popular front required the jettisoning of the doctrine that fascism was the product of capitalist crisis. This held that any capitalist society was susceptible to fascism; a doctrine that was the desperate final attempt of the ruling class to retain its power in societies that appeared to be disintegrating through economic crisis. The popular front by contrast posited that fascism was a threat to ‘democracy’ and that all democratic (‘progressive’) forces needed to combine in order to defeat it. Crucially it rejected the idea that fascism could not be defeated without overthrowing capitalism” (p7).

There was also confusion about who comprised the popular front. Clearly a number of influential left workers, like Geordie Harvey of the Durham miners, saw it as an alliance of workers’ parties and unions, and talked of it in those terms. He was not alone. He and others talked of the popular front as a means of bringing down capitalism and fascism per se:

“The ILP’s support for the united (or workers’) front was predicated on the understanding that to eliminate fascism socialism would have to replace capitalism; thus, only socialist parties should cooperate. In contrast, communists and many on the Labour left saw the united front of ‘working class parties’ merely as a prerequisite for a successful popular front” (p8).

Nor was this simply some doctrinarian dispute: it raged in Spain in physical terms. While communist-run Catalan police attempted to seize anarchist-controlled Barcelonan telephone exchanges to assist the republican government, street fighting between government forces and anarchist military, supported by the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM), was taking place. The popular front to forestall the liquidation of capitalism took precedence over any broad left unity of purpose. Anti-fascism was confronting anti-capitalist anti-fascism. This impacted heavily in south Wales and the north-east, where political divisions at once opened out between pro-POUM supporters, particularly within the ILP and the Communist Party.

The struggle for solidarity with the Spanish workers also came up hard against the rock of non-interventionism. This policy was in part rooted in the revulsion of the bloodbath of World War I, and the embracing of an anti-war sentiment that ‘we’ should not again get involved. It was supported by the churches, particularly the influential (in campaigning terms) Quakers, on pacifist grounds - that two wrongs don’t make a right and we shouldn’t kill each other to settle differences.

While non-intervention - which seems to have been an international state response to Spain (although the book does not explore this) - stopped the democratically elected Spanish government receiving official support, the fascists were armed, equipped and funded by ‘private’ companies and bankers who saw at once the potential of fascism for breaking the workers’ movement and any danger of communist revolutions sweeping Europe. Non-intervention suited the fascists fine, since it only seemed to inhibit government-to-government support.

It also, though, caused a major contradiction with the official labour movement. To what extent could you and should you campaign to change the policy, or simply stand outside it and join in broad left support for unilateral action, solidarity, collections, aid, etc? Spain forced many in the labour movement who had subsumed the language of pacifism into their socialist belief to re-examine the nature of violence:

“Thus the republic’s struggle was a symbol of the anti-fascist fight; a theatre of war where fascism could be faced head on. As the republic was defending itself rather than seeking imperial advantage, it forced many on the Labour left to reassess their pacifism” (p2).

(This self-same process was to happen again with the Vietnam war, as hundreds of thousands of young pacifist-inspired activists in the peace movement moved with new realisation into the solidarity and ‘victory’ movements.)

Levels of involvement on Spain varied. The Durham and Northumberland miners were far above the rest of the northern movement in their commitment to the fight against Franco and fascism as such. Commitment from the other mass unions of the region were more sporadic and couched in terms of welfare humanitarian assistance, but still 75% of all union branches in the north-east were active at one level or at one time or another. This contrasted favourably to many parts of the country.

The paradigm for the majority of the left was in its declaration and pride in the republican socialist government being ‘democratic’ like Britain. Fair and balanced, moderate and democratic. Talk of industrial action in support of Spain was damned by this designation and acclamation. Striking for political reasons, in solidarity with Spain, against the policy of non-intervention and appeasement, would be undemocratic, would frighten off the nice members of the middle class and constitutional political parties who might come into the popular front.

Deeper still in this paradigm was republican Spain’s own international endeavour not to present the struggle as class on class, but only as democracy versus fascism, so as not to alienate bourgeois governments and parties around the world.

As Orwell had suggested at the time, would that they had made the call not for defence of democratic Spain, but of revolutionary workers’ Spain - then mass international support of another order might have been forthcoming. This in turn would have set domestic agendas for a workers’ red front, rather than a popular front. Truth was the Spanish government was nailing its own feet to the floor and greatly limiting the room it had for manoeuvre, and this was stamped on the nature of the international solidarity movement, perhaps damning both.

Orwell had predicted that an international workers’ solidarity movement would tap into the huge prestige of the Soviet Union and the pro-Soviet parties. Unfortunately, as he and everyone else was to find out, both were firmly wedded to the notion of the popular front. The logic was that the working class internationally was not strong enough on its own to defeat fascism. That was the logic too of the Spanish republican government. Defence of Spain was limited by its own popular front position.

To repeat, if I have any complaint at all about Lewis’s book, it is that he does not set out these contradictions earlier and then elaborate them in detail later - we are halfway through before Lewis identifies this key observation. Likewise, he ought really to have set out the principal opposing positions and strategies vis-à-vis the popular front and its alternatives, right at the beginning instead of assuming this would be common knowledge perhaps.

Nonetheless, this is comprehensive and scholarly work - hard going, but highly illuminating. At £52.50 in hardback only, maybe you will be testing Santa’s generosity in expecting a copy for Christmas.