Manchester Food Ship for Spain

The Spanish Republic faced the task of feeding large number of internal refugees and evacuated children at a time when normal food supply and distribution had been seriously disrupted. By the final months of the war it was facing widespread hunger amongst its urban population. Accordingly, over time the donation of food and other supplies became perhaps the most significant act of mass solidarity in Britain.  

Barely two weeks after the outbreak of the Civil War the Independent Labour Party called on the co-operative movement to send food ships to Spain, citing the precedent of September 1913 when English trade unionists had sent the SS Hare to Dublin, laden with supplies of food during the great lock-out. The first effective campaigns for Spain were organised by youth groups during the autumn of 1936 and spring of 1937. These activists relied on their energy and ingenuity to raise money and obtain gifts of tinned goods in door-to-door collections. Over time, however, food ship campaigns were organised on a larger basis, representing cities, entire counties or even regions such as Bristol and the West of England, or the Eastern Counties. By the final months of the Civil War these campaigns had often turned into broad civic movements, which inevitably placed less emphasis on politics and more on humanitarian sympathy. As the Mayor of Gloucester told a rally in February 1939, his philosophy was that “love and pity knew no bounds”. 

A detailed report survives of the Bradford Foodship campaign which gives an indication of the remarkable breadth of support in this Northern industrial city. The collection depot was open for three weeks in February - March 1939 and raised £360 in cash alone. Donations ranged from £20 from a millowner to 1½ d [pence] from a pensioner. Collections were taken at more than 200 licensed premises and churches, while a 12-gallon milk jar in the city centre elicited a “steady chink of coin” at all hours. Pupils at Bradford Girls’ Grammar School, under the leadership of their headmistress, collected 250 tins of food, while others provided a large patchwork quilt. Teams of collectors went house-to-house and for many it was “their first experience of this kind of work”. 

The food ships offered immense logistical challenges. Food and supplies had to be taken to a port and loaded onto a chartered vessel (dockers often gave their time voluntarily). Some ships called at a number of British ports before facing the dangerous journey to Republican Spain’s remaining ports in the Mediterranean, subject to aerial attack. Distribution was also a challenge, and Ted (later Lord) Willis, one of the principal organisers of the youth food ship campaign, spent months in Spain seeking to ensure that the donations were properly used.  

Despite these problems, the food ship campaigns mobilised thousands of British citizens behind the Republic in an impressive display of solidarity and activism.