Past Talks
Oxfordshire & the Spanish Civil War 1936-39
Date: 15th November 2021
Speaker: Liz Woolley
In the introduction to her talk, Liz outlined how her interest in a topic with local and international aspects had developed. She went on to give a background to the Spanish Civil War.
There were three facets to Oxfordshire’s involvement in the conflict. At least thirty-one individuals with Oxfordshire connections fought in Spain, worked in front-line hospitals, acted as ambulance drivers, administrators, observers and reporters, of whom six were killed.
Many people were involved in ‘Aid for Spain’ fundraising in the UK and others supported Basque refugee children when they arrived here in 1937.
These activities involved the city, county and university all, unusually, committed to a common cause.
Two and a half thousand people from Britain and Ireland served in the International Brigades.
There was a great diversity of backgrounds of those involved, ranging from workers at the Cowley car plant and Early’s in Witney to dons and students at the university. Personal details of members of the International Brigades were removed from Spain in 1939 and form part of the Moscow Archive.
Liz gave examples of participants, extending from Victor Claridge from South Leigh, a builders’ labourer and one of fifteen children. As a young man, he had travelled to America where he joined the National Guard and the International Workers of the World. On his return to the UK, he settled in East Oxford and went to Spain in late 1936, where he saw action on several fronts, ultimately being wounded and repatriated in October 1937.
At the other end of the social spectrum was Wogan Phillips (later Lord Milford). He came from a wealthy family and had been educated at Eton and Magdalen College. Although not a member of any political party at the start of the war, he was strongly anti-fascist. He travelled to Spain in 1937 as part of a British/Spanish medical aid unit, taking on the dangerous role of ambulance driver. He was injured in an attack on his ambulance and returned to Britain where he joined the Communist Party and became involved in Oxford politics.
Participants’ motivation was varied, being based on humanitarian reasons, political ideals or a desire to gain medical experience.
Two students from Ruskin College, sometimes known as the ‘working man’s college’, because it provided a higher education for adults with few or no formal qualifications, went to Spain. The college’s radical stance meant that it provided a point of contact for both ‘town’ and ‘gown’ supporters of Spain’s republican government.
Another ambulance driver was Nathan Clark of Clark’s shoemakers, who had been studying maths at The Queen’s College in Oxford when he decided to go to Spain in January 1937. Like his family, he was a Quaker. He became head of transport at the International Brigades’ hospital at Huete, where he met another Oxford volunteer, Peter Harrisson, a former pupil of the Dragon School in North Oxford and a Trinity College student.
Alec Wainman, pictured with Spanish children in Madrid in 1937/38, was a Quaker and volunteered his services to the Spanish Voluntary Aid Committee. He was one of six ambulance drivers in the first British Medical Aid Unit to reach Spain in August 1936. He was not a member of any political party, but was sympathetic to the communist cause. He had travelled extensively in America and Europe and spoke at least seven languages. Whilst in Spain, he worked for the republican government’s department of propaganda. On his return to Oxfordshire in the autumn of 1938, he continued his involvement with the war, particularly with the colony of Basque refugee children that had been set up in his home village of Shipton-under-Wychwood.
Whilst Oxfordshire people were on the front line in Spain, many local residents were showing their support for the Spanish republican government back at home. They, too, came from a wide diversity of backgrounds. Many were horrified at the prospect of the spread of fascism in Europe and others gave their support for political or humanitarian reasons. Since 1936, media coverage of the war focussed largely on the fate of the civilian population who were facing attack and starvation. So much so that, by early 1937, the National Aid Spain Campaign had been established in Britain. A wide variety of fundraising events throughout the country raised £2million by the end of 1939.
In Oxford, the 1930s had been a period of rising political awareness across the town and university. This was partly due to changing demographics. Migrant workers at Cowley car plant and Pressed Steel established trades unionism and left-wing politics in the city for the first time. The socio-economic background of the typical university student was also slowly changing. Additionally, the city had become home to a large number of academic refugees, who had escaped persecution in Germany, and who were influential in shaping Oxford’s academics’ and students’ perception of fascism.
Fundraising efforts in Oxford included a relief fund set up by the mayor; distribution of Spanish relief food stamps by the Oxford branch of the Communist Party; the selling of milk tokens by the Co-Operative Society; house-to-house collections by the British Youth Peace Assembly for funds to buy milk for Spanish babies and a shop in George Street raising money through sales and acting as a collection point for used clothes to be shipped to Spain.
Arthur Excel, pictured here, from Osberton Radiator Company (part of Morris Motors) organised his colleagues into a group making splints for Spain with the help of the university’s engineering department and the Wingfield Orthopaedic Hospital.
Student magazines at the time carried details of the huge variety of fundraising activities taking place and of meetings and lectures arranged to discuss the current situation.
In July 1938 a small delegation of Oxford students visited Madrid and Barcelona, looking in particular at the plight of Spanish students. The highly diverse political affiliations of the student group illustrate well the level of support for the Spanish republican government in Oxford.
Dennis Healey, a prominent member of the Aid for Spain Campaign and undergraduate at Balliol College, staged a fundraising exhibition of sixty-eight of Picasso’s original sketches for his painting Guernica at Oriel College in the winter of 1938.
In addition to the fundraising efforts of students, Oxford academics also showed their support, in particular the left-wing master of Balliol College, A D Lindsay. Academics were active at the packing stations set up to organise donations of tinned food and clothing. Fundraising and awareness meetings were attended by townspeople, students and academics.
Aid for Spain was not confined to the city. For example, in Witney, Patrick Early was chairman of the local Spanish aid committee and at Boars Hill knitting classes were set up and an appeal for clothing went out.
Following the attack on Guernica in April 1937, four thousand Basque children accompanied by teachers, helpers and priests were brought to the UK to live in, so called, colonies. Oxfordshire had four colonies, located in Thame, Shipton-under-Wychwood, Aston near Witney and Buscot Park. The children’s presence in the county was regularly reported in the local press which stimulated local efforts at fundraising for their upkeep. Some of the older children were adopted by local families or sponsored by the university.
People across the county continued to support the republican cause throughout the Civil War and in February 1939 twenty-two members of the British battalion of the International Brigades and two nurses who had served in Spain, were welcomed to Oxford as they toured the country to further raise awareness of the ongoing struggle.
Franco’s forces were victorious in April 1939.
Sally James