Spanish War Debates

This striking poster advertises a two-week Melbourne film festival of Spanish war cinema along with associated talks. The artist is unknown, but the work is in the arresting design and the use of vivid colour, typical of the genre of Spanish pro-Republican poster art in the decade of the 1930s.    

The Melbourne Spanish Relief Committee was an effective organisation though with a style and leadership that differed from their peers in Sydney. There, the SRC committee was managed by (male) trade unionists and members of the Communist Party of Australia. The Melbourne leadership comprised elite women, well-educated, well-off and enjoying easy access to public figures in Melbourne society. Helen Baillie, the SRC secretary, an Anglican, was an independently wealthy activist in liberal causes. Among the original founders, Mrs Marshall, was a Justice of the Peace and had been involved with the Victorian movement for penal reform. The other group, the Joint Spanish Aid Council in Melbourne was linked to the original society in Britain founded by the Scottish conservative, the Duchess of Atholl, author of the well-known Searchlight on Spain.  

A further difference between Melbourne and Sydney was that in the former much of the activism with talks and lectures was associated with Melbourne University. This is not to say that there were not concerned academics and Sydney students who followed events in Spain, but it was the case that Sydney University was not a site for significant activities. In Melbourne, one of the most memorable events was held by the Melbourne University Debating Society on the 22 March 1937 to examine the proposition that ‘the Spanish government is the ruin of Spain’. All six speakers were noted debaters with Melbourne University connections; a senior professor from the Arts Faculty occupied the chair. A Catholic activist, B A Santamaria, led the affirmative while for the Spanish Relief Committee, the writer Nettie Palmer laid out the negative case. A regular university audience had been expected but, on the night, more than a 1,000 people, students and members of the public, turned up. 

The over-crowded audience was extremely unruly: each side heckled and counted down their opponents and cheered and stamped for their own speakers. There were scuffles and shouting matches within the crowd. A student group, not known from which camp, turned on the fire hoses that flooded the corridors and only the swift intervention of the Melbourne police prevented the dousing of the entire lecture theatre. The speakers valiantly pressed on to the end. The chair, calling for a show of hands, declared the winners had made the affirmative case. At which point their majority stood and shouted ‘Vivo Christo Rey’ while the defeated opponents called for three ringing cheers for the Spanish government. It is interesting to note that eight days later, at the Sydney University Union, an attempt was made to replicate the lively debate in Melbourne. It drew a total attendance of seven among which the speakers outnumbered the audience by four.