If George Orwell was the most famous of those who volunteered with the Independent Labour Party (ILP) to go and fight in Spain, he was not the only one. John McNair for example ran the ILP’s office out in Barcelona, until the suppression of the POUM, when like Orwell he returned to Britain. In April 1938, McNair spoke about his experiences in Spain at an ILP meeting in Hastings.

John McNair

The socialist novelist Ethel Mannin and her partner, the anti-imperialist writer Reginald Reynolds also spoke at the meeting in Hastings. Mannin had thrown herself into rallying solidarity from her base in Britain during the Spanish Civil War from 1937 onwards with the return to UK from Emma Goldman, while Reginald Reynolds had helped Basque children refugees settle in Britain after 4000 arrived in Southampton, getting them housed at Stoneham.  Mannin alongside the American anarchist Emma Goldman worked closely with Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista to try and build support in Britain for the POUM and the Spanish anarchists who they felt were bearing the brunt of Stalinist repression in Spain.  Mannin spoke alongside Reginald Reynolds at many public meetings with Emma Goldman in this period and also met George Orwell after his return from fighting with the POUM, and contributed to collections such as Spain and Us (with J.B. Priestley, Rebecca West, Stephen Spender, Francis Meynell, Louis Golding, T. F. Powys, J. Langdon-Davies, Catherine Carswell) (1936) and Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War (1937).

Ethel Mannin chairing a London meeting in support of the Spanish Anarchist CNT. Jack White, the Irish anarchist from Antrim is on the left, Emma Goldman is standing on the right

On Wednesday 27 April 1938, the Eastbourne Gazette reported the following meeting that took place at the ‘Red House’ pub in Hastings on Sunday 24 April 1938:

‘Women and Fascism: Miss Ethel Mannin at Red House’
Eastbourne Gazette, 27 April 1938.

‘Disclaiming any ability as a speaker, Miss Ethel Mannin, the famous novelist, was content to occupy the chair at an Independent Labour Party meeting which was held at the Red House on Sunday evening.

In simple language she gave her reasons for urging women to take a keener interest in politics.  Stressing the lessons to be learnt from events in Europe Miss Mannin declared that if Fascism came to England in any form it would be the end of whatever liberty we enjoyed today.

‘For instance’ she said ‘women today please themselves how many children they have.  Under Fascism they would have to bear as many children as the State required.  English mothers today complain of the amount of militarism in schools, but under Fascism the teaching of militarism to the children would be intensified.’

To combat the threat of fascism it was not enough for women to link up with feminist movements.  It was necessary for them to ally themselves with the whole working class movement, and fight alongside their husbands, sweethearts and brothers for liberty.

Urging women to carry political thinking to its logical conclusion, Miss Mannin pressed the case of the Independent Labour Party, which she described as the only surviving revolutionary Socialist party.

The principal speaker at the meeting was Mr John McNair, who has had first hand experience of the war in Spain.  On this subject he spoke of the indescribable horror of the air raids on Madrid and Barcelona.  He said that the damage done by the aerial torpedoes far surpassed in death and destruction the bombs dropped by Zeppelins on London during the Great War.  One of these torpedoes was sufficient to reduce a seven or eight storey block of flats to a shambles of bricks and mortar, in which would be found mangled fragments of women and children who had thus been murdered in their beds.

The problem that faced us today, the speaker declared, was how to save what remained of civilisation.  The civilisations of Greece and Rome perished, and there was the possibility that Western civilisation would follow suit, with a reversion to barbarism.  The ancient civilisations decayed because they were built on the backs of slaves, and in all essentials, the workers today were slaves today because it was impossible for them to live unless they accepted the conditions laid down by the governing classes. This form of slavery would persist until the workers were economically free.

He went onto describe how in the past five years a wind of violence, passion and brutality had swept across Europe, destroying all the decent things in life.  He denied that there was any inherent difference between our form of democratic capitalism and Fascism, and that wherever capitalism was threatened the owning classes set up a dictator to defend and perpetuate the capitalistic system.  British capitalism had not yet needed Fascism, but if it were needed – and the portents indicated that the time might not be remote – they would not hesitate to institute some form of Fascism in this country.

Mr Reginald Reynolds, who also spoke, declared that Parliamentary democracy in this country had always been a farce because it was controlled by the ruling class.

The extraordinary life and times of Margaret Finley by Alan Lloyd, first published in the IBMT Newsletter, Spring 2012 

Nurse Margaret Finley on a fundraising mission to Nottingham in February 1939-she’s the woman on the left front.

Our thanks to Alan Lloyd for allowing us to reproduce this on this site.  One connection of Margaret Finley (1913-2003) to Sussex has been uncovered by Mike Anderson with the help of Alan Lloyd.  Margaret’s stepmother Elizabeth North was living and working in the Haddon Hall Hotel, Devonshire Place, Eastbourne in 1921. Margaret’s mother died in 1922 and her father married Elizabeth Hall in 1933 and by 1939 they were living in Hastings.  In September 1938 the Eastbourne Chronicle published this letter from ‘Margaret’, an ‘Eastbourne girl in Barcelona’ about conditions in Spain…

Letter to Eastbourne Chronicle from ‘Margaret’ in September 1938

Christopher Hamo Thornycroft (1915-2001)

Born in Hendon, London, in 1915, second of five children, the family later moved to West Sussex. Chris Thornycroft left his engineering degree course at Oxford University to volunteer for Spain. He was enrolled into the International Brigades on 12^th September 1936, some months before the British Battalion was formed. He became armourer of the Thaelmann Battalion of German anti fascists in Spain.

A trained pilot, Chris Thornycroft had initially tried unsuccessfully to join the Republican Air Force, but Thornycroft’s ability to repair weapons and engineer new parts made him a priceless asset with the Brigades. He served at Teruel and rigged up the lighting in the cave hospital near Falset, where Dr Reg Saxton worked alongside nurse Penny Feiwel.

Chris Thorneycroft featured in the Daily Express on 12 March 1937

According to niece Anna Cordon, younger brother Bill Thornycroft said he caught pneumonia and was invalided back to England in 1938. Anna also understands that he may have been wounded and then hidden by local people somewhere inland from Tarragona.

Interviewed in 2000, a year before his passing in 2001, 85 year old Thornycroft said that he thought the pro-Republic Movement made a crucial psychological difference to the outcome of the confrontation with Nazism.

“It helped develop a spirit when the spirit of countries was being trampled underfoot. We could have had concentration camps all over this country quite easily. And it didn’t happen.”

See the Guardian obituary of him here

Originally from Skibereen in County Cork, Ireland, Thomas John Sheehan, also known as Donald T. Sheehan, was a shop assistant in Brighton and a member of the Communist Party. He joined the International Brigades on 21^st February 1938 and John disappeared during the Great Retreats, presumed killed, in March 1938 age 34 on the Aragon Front.

Ernest Osbourne

Ernest Osbourne – Sussex Brigader

Born in 1901 in Walsall, Osbourne was a painter and decorator living at 31 Hazelwick Road, Three Bridges, Crawley when he volunteered for Spain. A member of the Transport & General Workers Union (now part of UNITE), and a member of the Communist Party, Osbourne attended the International Lenin School in Moscow before joining the International Brigade, arriving in Spain on 6th January 1937. Osbourne enlisted in No. 4 Company and was responsible for the kitchen and was reportedly “painstaking” in his work and that it was “mainly under his guidance that the kitchen developed into the sound organisation that was the envy and example to all battalions.” Osbourne achieved the rank of Platoon Sergeant and was wounded at Hijar in the retreat from Belchite in March 1938. He was repatriated with the rest of the British Battalion in December 1938.

Anton Miles (1911-1992) – Sussex Brigader

Born in London in 1911, Miles was a Brighton Communist Party member, and a laboratory assistant and insurance clerk who served with the International Brigade Medical Services.

Banner depicting Anton Miles on Brighton seafront in Sussex Peoples March of History, 1939

Bill Sill, Ernie Trory and Anton Miles at Brighton station on 12 December 1938 homecoming – see the film footage here

After the Second World War, in which he served as a soldier in Cairo, Egypt, he cut all links with the Communist Party and travelled to India to train as a sadhu (holy man), and then trekked penniless, around south-east Asia, before becoming initiated as a Buddhist monk in Bhutan. By 1961 Miles claimed to be Australia’s head warlock! At the time of his death in 1992, he was no longer known as Anton Miles, having become His Holiness Shri Paramahamsha Mahendranth (Dadaji) chief guru of the Adinathas.

Alan William Gilchrist (1913-1981) – Teacher and Sussex Brigader

Alan Gilchrist

Brighton born Alan Gilchrist was 25 when he arrived in Spain in May 1937. A schoolteacher and member of the National Union of Teachers (now part of the National Education Union), he was initially posted to the British Anti-Tank Battery, serving as their Political Commissar from January to April 1938 when the Unit was disbanded.

Gilchrist saw action in many of the major battles fought by the British Battalion – Jarama, Brunete, Teruel and the Ebro. He contracted malaria after Brunete but recovered to attend the Officer Training School. Commended for his bravery at Corbera on the Ebro front, Gilchrist was wounded in the chest in July 1938 and arrived back in England in December 1938.

Gilchrist was active in the International Brigade Association serving as its Vice President. He returned to teaching and in the early 50’s taught English at Hanley Castle Grammar School in Worcestershire. Alan Gilchrist died in 1981 and his ashes were scattered on Hill 481 by Christopher Smith, a close friend and fellow Anti-Tank Battery member. Hill 481 was a heavily fortified and strategic Fascist stronghold on the Ebro front overlooking Gandesa which the British Battalion had attempted to capture to great cost.

In 2012, Mike Slater of Malvern, a former pupil of Alan Gilchrist paid this tribute to his onetime English teacher.

“He (Alan) had a significant influence to the good on my life and many others. At school he was a tall imposing character, well respected by all. As pupils we were in awe of him-we knew he had been in the Spanish Civil War, but he never spoke about it and we were too fearful to ask.”

Thomas Elliott (1908-1937) – Trade Unionist and Sussex Brigader

Thomas Elliott was born in 1908 and was enrolled into the British Battalion of the International Brigades on 28^th December 1936. He was a shop assistant from Worthing, a member of the Shop Assistants’ Union and branch secretary of Worthing Labour Party. He was killed in June 1937 at Jarama aged 28. His death was reported in Worthing on 18 September 1937.

Albert Derkin (1918-2004) – Sussex Brigader

Albert Alexander Derkin was born in Brighton in 1918,  son of Albert Derkin and Lilian Mary Blake.  Known as ‘Bert’,  Derkin was a cinema projectionist.  He married Ann S Jones and died Jan 2004 in Southend-on-sea, Essex.

Frederick Cronshaw was born in 1902 and came from Sompting near Worthing. He was enrolled in the International Brigades on 24^th February 1937 and left Spain later that year. His Brigade number was 843 and as he was enrolled on the same day as Vincent Leo Deegan, whose number was 845, it is possible that they travelled together. Volunteers were often put into small groups of two or three so that they would not look as conspicuous as a large group travelling together, to evade the attention of the British or French police and secret services. Under the terms of the Non-Intervention Pact the French had closed the border between France and Spain and the UK had invoked a 19^th century law making it illegal for British subjects to fight for a foreign power.