The Agony of Spain

The Spanish Civil War generated much sound and fury within Britain, but – given the supremacy of the Conservative-dominated “National Government”– change in policy terms was extremely limited. The most important debate of the war took place within the opposition Labour Party at its 1936 conference in Edinburgh, when the British government’s policy of Non-Intervention was discussed. 

A month earlier the Trades Union Congress had agreed to support Non-Intervention on the grounds that it would safeguard the European peace, support the Socialist French government, and avoid discord within the Labour movement. (TUC leader Walter Citrine, and his closest ally, Ernest Bevin, were aware not only that the left was agitating for more active support for the Republic, but also that many Catholic workers were troubled by the anti-clerical violence on the Republican side). In Edinburgh the initial debate (on 5 October) followed similar lines, and support for Non-Intervention was upheld by the casting of the trade unions’ “block votes”. 

The situation was transformed two days later following speeches by two fraternal delegates from the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE). The second delegate, Isabel de Palencia, brought the conference to its feet. De Palencia was a former actress who had worked as a Spanish diplomat during the 1930s and, born to a Scottish mother, spoke in perfect English. She opened her speech with some reflections on returning to the Scotland of Robert Burns and Walter Scott before turning to the most difficult and emotive aspects of the conflict. She denied that the Republic was anti-religious and stated that the widely-reported images of atrocities against Catholics on the Republican side were “not true”. She also presented the conflict not so much as a Civil War but rather as a struggle against the “most cruel attacks” by Franco’s Moroccan soldiers – “infidels” – who plundered churches and violated Spanish women (thereby racializing a crime that was far more widely perpetuated on the rebel side). She ended with an appeal in Scots: “Come and help us. Scotsmen, ye ken noo!” 

De Palencia’s speech electrified the conference and many rose to sing the Red Flag. Years later many who had been there believed that they had heard the fabled Republican orator La Pasionaria (Dolores Ibárruri) herself. A mission was immediately sent to Downing Street to establish the truth of the delegates’ claims, and the speeches were rushed into print by the Labour Party as a pamphlet. Behind the scenes, some senior Labour MPs were distraught that their cautious policy on Non-Intervention had been undermined by what they saw as pure, unbridled emotion.  

The Edinburgh conference was not the end of Labour’s support for Non-Intervention but it was the beginning of the end. By the middle of 1937 Labour had formally rejected Non-Intervention and was campaigning openly – but unsuccessfully - for the Republic to be supplied with arms. Isabel de Palencia fled to Mexico at the end of the Civil War where she died in 1974.