Ralph Fox’s Memorial Bench in Halifax

Ralph Fox died fighting in Spain with the International Brigades at the age of thirty-six. He was by this time one of the best-known British Communist intellectuals, and his death – alongside that of the brilliant Cambridge graduate John Cornford in the same battle – made a major impact on left-wing circles in Britain. Fox was commemorated in a book of his letters and other writings published in 1937, and more than a decade later he became the first of the British volunteers to have a physical memorial dedicated to him in his native town of Halifax, Yorkshire. 

After studying at Oxford, Fox spent long periods in the Soviet Union. He wrote prolifically: biographies of Lenin and Genghis Khan, Marxist literary criticism, a novel set in revolutionary Russia, and a column for the Daily Worker. His decision to fight in Spain was hardly surprising, given his high profile as a writer and advocate of the Popular Front against fascism. 

On arriving in Spain in December 1936 Fox was made a Political Commissar at the International Brigades’ base in Albacete. His letters home captured his excitement at being involved in what he saw as the greatest events since 1917 and relishing his meetings with Soviet personnel. Finding the work at base tedious, he joined the first British Company in action on the southern front at Lopera. Here he was killed, almost certainly (accounts differ) on 27 December 1936. The death of such a well-known figure was deeply shocking and made a far greater impression at the time than that of Cornford, who was at the start of his career. For many days the Daily Worker was awash with tributes to Fox from leading Communists, fellow-travelling intellectuals, and groups of workers. John Strachey hailed him as “the most naturally gifted of all the writers” produced by the British Communist movement, while T.A. Jackson referred to his death as a “heavy blow to British Marxism”. 

In 1949 a committee chaired by the Marxist historian E.P. Thompson raised enough money to create a memorial in Halifax. Thompson made clear that the project was intended to honour Fox’s courage and genius rather than his political views, but even so it aroused public opposition from Fox’s parents. On 29 April 1950 a memorial bench veiled in the flag of the British Battalion was dedicated at Bull Green Gardens, Halifax. Sam Russell, who had fought alongside Fox at Lopera, was amongst the participants. The simple plaque offers this unattributed phrase: “it is sad for a man to die when he is so loved by the people”. In fact, it is a quotation from Fox’s own tribute to Maxim Gorky on his death in June 1936. In 1951 G.D.H. Cole gave the first annual memorial lecture in Fox’s memory. The lectures were revived in 1986 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Fox’s death. In recent years the bench has been restored and moved a short distance to its current site outside Halifax Town Hall.