Britain and the Spanish Civil War

General

Left: The flag of the British Batallion with the names of the battles they fought. It was embroidered by women in Barcelona in 1938. Now held by the Marx Memorial Library in London.

International Brigade Memorial Trust Great resource

VIDEO Voices from a Mountain  (follow the parts to watch whole thing) Documentary film about British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, focusing on the re-discovery of a memorial to English-speaking soldiers killed at the Battle of the Ebro in summer 1938.

VIDEO: The Scots who fought Franco (YouTube – in parts)

The British Batallion (wiki)

VIDEO. Gibraltar during the Spanish Civil War. Excellent.

Clive Branson’s Demonstration In Battersea

Clive Branson’s Demonstration In Battersea, London, 1939 with the Spanish Republican flag in background. Branson fought in Spain with the British Batallion but was captured and imprisoned at the terrible Francoist San Pedro de Cardeña camp. Later killed in action in 1944 in Burma

Cable street

2006 article in the British anti-fascist magazine Searchlight on the relevance of the Cable Street Battle and the Spanish Civil War published on the 70th anniversary.

Books

Book: Unlikely Warriors: The British in the Spanish Civil War and the Struggle against Fascism. By Richard Baxell (review). For my money, best book by far on British members of the International Brigades. Also very good on the Republican aid movement in the UK and British state policy towards Spain, etc.

Book: Tom Buchanan:  The Impact of the Spanish Civil War on Britain: War, Loss and Memory (2007).

For Britain’s establishment’s role in the coup See Franco’s Friends (2011) by Daily Telegraph journalist Peter Day

Sam Wild

I happened upon this to Sam Wild, last commander of British Batallion on a council house on a rainy evening in Longsight, Manchester (are there any other evenings in the city?) in 1987 when I hardly, hardly knew of International Brigades or the war in Spain Image via Mike Wild

See also

Scotland and the Spanish Civil War

Wales and the Spanish Civil War