ILP Contingent facts for kids

The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a political group in Britain. During the Spanish Civil War, they sent a small team of volunteers to Spain. These volunteers fought alongside a Spanish group called the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). Famous writer George Orwell was part of this team. He later wrote a book about his experiences called Homage to Catalonia.

Joining the Fight: The ILP Volunteers

About 25 men from the ILP left England on January 1, 1937. Their leader was Bob Edwards, who later became a Member of Parliament. The ILP started looking for volunteers in November 1936. Bob Edwards had just returned from Spain after delivering an ambulance from the ILP to the POUM.

Many people wanted to volunteer, but the ILP only accepted unmarried men for this first group. So, 25 men went to Spain. However, the very next day, the British government announced that anyone going to fight in Spain would be in trouble. Because of this, the ILP stopped recruiting more volunteers.

When the volunteers arrived in Barcelona, they had two weeks of very basic training. They were joined by Bob Smillie, whose grandfather was a famous Scottish miners' leader. Bob Smillie had been working in Barcelona with John McNair, who represented a youth organization. Smillie felt he could help more at the front, so he joined the ILP team. Sadly, he later died in Valencia.

The ILP volunteers joined the English-speaking part of the POUM army, led by Georges Kopp. The first group of 25 went to the front lines near Zaragoza. There, they met other volunteers who had arrived earlier. These included Eric Blair (who later became known as George Orwell), an Australian named Harvey Buttonshaw, and an American named Wolf Kupinski. A Welshman named Bob Williams also joined with his brother-in-law. With these new members, the ILP team grew to about 30 to 35 people. In mid-February 1937, they moved with the POUM army to take part in the siege of Huesca.

The volunteers came from many different backgrounds. Eric Blair, for example, had gone to a famous school and had been a police officer in Burma. Other members came from places like South Africa, the United States, Wales, and Belfast. Four of them had fought in World War I. Most of the others had no military or medical experience.

Life at the Front: Daily Experiences

The ILP team arrived at the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona on January 10. They formed a discussion group to talk about political ideas. But they also had fun! They appointed a social secretary to plan concerts and entertainment, and a sports secretary organized a quick football match between the ILP volunteers and Spanish soldiers.

The training at the Barracks was very short. At the end of January, the ILP team, as the British part of the POUM army, began their journey to the Aragon Front near Huesca. They arrived on February 2. At the front, the team took over three advanced posts, which were connected by trenches. These posts were about 200 yards from the enemy lines.

Bob Edwards, reporting in the ILP's weekly paper, the New Leader, often wrote about the "exciting" parts of their work. He described scouting near enemy lines with Blair and dealing with enemy soldiers who deserted. The main stories of fighting against the Nationalists, found in both Homage to Catalonia and the New Leader, were about a night attack. In this attack, some volunteers were injured, including Reg Hiddlestone, Paddy Thomas, and Douglas Thompson. George Orwell himself was famously shot in the throat by a sniper.

However, the daily life for the volunteers was often less exciting. They spent a lot of time building roads and digging shelters where they could meet and get instructions. The team actually saw very little direct combat.

As George Orwell later wrote:

Meanwhile nothing happened, nothing ever happened. The English had got into the habit of saying that this wasn't a war it was a bloody pantomime.

Challenges and Difficulties: The POUM Suppression

Even though the ILP team didn't play a huge role in the fighting, they were involved in important and difficult events in Barcelona. These events, known as the Barcelona May Days, were clashes between different groups on the Republican side.

The ILP volunteers were on leave in Barcelona during these clashes. They were split into groups and none of them were deeply involved in the fighting. However, the events in Barcelona led to serious problems for the ILP. Right after the clashes, the Communist press began to attack POUM. They claimed POUM was responsible for the fighting and was secretly working with the fascists. These accusations quickly appeared in the Daily Worker newspaper.

The ILP's General Secretary, Fenner Brockway, argued that the Communists were wrong. He suggested that Communist Parties everywhere were no longer truly revolutionary. In response, the Communist Party accused the ILP of "taking part in the fascist rising."

On June 16, POUM was declared illegal, meaning it was banned. Its leaders were arrested, and one leader, Andreu Nin, was murdered. ILP leader John McNair arrived in Barcelona on June 18 to help the ILP volunteers leave the country. He was arrested as a "POUM agent" but was released after proving who he was. He then went into hiding with Orwell and another volunteer named Cottman and managed to leave Spain. Most of the other volunteers returned to Britain over the next six months.

In Britain, the Communist Party press continued to accuse both the ILP and POUM of being agents for fascism. They even published interviews with a former volunteer, Frank Frankford, who claimed he saw them talking with the enemy at the front.

Life became very difficult for the ILP volunteers still in Spain because of these attacks on POUM. The ILP worked hard to get its members home safely. Several volunteers had to sneak back home to avoid arrest. For example, Cottmann, McNair, Blair (Orwell), and his wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy escaped across the border by train, pretending to be wealthy English businesspeople.

The arrests of Georges Kopp, the team commander, and Harry Milton, an American volunteer, were especially worrying. Both were eventually released. Milton was not in jail for long, thanks to McNair's help. Kopp, however, stayed in prison for 18 months, even with the ILP trying to help him.

Most attention, both then and now, has focused on the case of Bob Smillie. He died in jail in Valencia on June 13. Officially, he died of appendicitis. But his death has been a mystery, with many people wondering if he was "done to death" by the Communists. While it's still debated, recent studies agree with the ILP's own investigation at the time. This report, by David Murray, found that the authorities were careless, rather than violent or directly harmful.

George Orwell wrote about Smillie's death in his book, Homage to Catalonia:

Of course I assumed at once that Smillie had been shot. It was what everyone believed at the time, but I have since thought that I may have been wrong. [. . .] I must say this, however. Bob Smillie was only twenty-two years old and physically he was one of the toughest people I have met. He was, I think, the only person I knew, English or Spanish, who went three months in the trenches without a day's illness. People so tough as that do not usually die of appendicitis if they are properly looked after. But when you saw what the Spanish jails were like--the makeshift jails used for political prisoners--you realized how much chance there was of a sick man getting proper attention. The jails were places that could only be described as dungeons. In England you would have to go back to the eighteenth century to find anything comparable. [. . .] Smillie's death is not a thing I can easily forgive. Here was this brave and gifted boy, who had thrown up his career at Glasgow University in order to come and fight against Fascism, and who, as I saw for myself, had done his job at the front with faultless courage and willingness; and all they could find to do with him was to fling him into jail and let him die like a neglected animal. I know that in the middle of a huge and bloody war it is no use making too much fuss over an individual death. One aeroplane bomb in a crowded street causes more suffering than quite a lot of political persecution. But what angers one about a death like this is its utter pointlessness. To be killed in battle--yes, that is what one expects; but to be flung into jail, not even for any imaginary offence, but simply owing to dull blind spite, and then left to die in solitude--that is a different matter. I fail to see how this kind of thing--and it is not as though Smillie's case were exceptional--brought victory any nearer.

Smillie was the first foreigner linked to POUM to die because of the Stalinist repression. He had been stopped at the French border and accused of "carrying arms" because a harmless hand-bomb souvenir was found with him.

By November 1937, there were about 15,000 anti-fascist prisoners in Spain's jails, with about 1,000 from POUM. Different Marxist groups started an international campaign to support the POUM prisoners. This campaign likely saved their leaders from being killed like Nin. The IBRSU also sent groups to Spain to visit the prisoners and try to get them released. These groups included ILP Members of Parliament like James Maxton and John McGovern.

Despite POUM being banned, not all ILP volunteers went home right away. Arthur Chambers, Bob Williams, and Reg Hiddlestone stayed to keep fighting. Williams returned home in December 1938 after being injured three times. Hiddleston was the last volunteer from the team left in Spain, returning home in February 1939, just hours before Barcelona was captured. Arthur Chambers was the only ILP volunteer killed in combat in Spain. He was shot by a sniper in August 1938 after joining another group called the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT).

Members of the ILP Contingent

• Agnew, John
• Avory, Lewis Ernest
• Bennett, William
• Blair, Eric (George Orwell), corporal; wounded by sniper May 20, 1937
• Braithwaite (Branthwaite), John
• Buttonshaw, Harvey
• Castle, Les
• Chambers, Bill, corporal, killed after transferring to another unit August 1937
• Clarke, William
• Clinton, Arthur, wounded in shoulder during shelling March 1937
• Coles, Tom
• Connor, Jock
• Cottman, Stafford
• Donovan, (Paddy) John, sergeant
• Doran, Charles
• Edwards, Bob, driver of ILP ambulance September 1936; POUM captain - returned to Britain in March 1937 for ILP conference, but could not return to Spain due to British anti-volunteer policy
• Evans
• Farrell, James
• Frankford, Frank
• Gross, George
• Hiddlestone, Reg, wounded in night attack April 1937
• Hunter, Philip, leg injury April 1937
• Jones, Uriah, served until early 1938; after the POUM army was disbanded, he joined a PSUC unit
• Julius
• Justessen, Charles
• Kupinsky/i, Wolf, ("Harry Milton"), in Barcelona's Modelo prison August 13, 1937 - released after pressure from US consulate
• Levin, Louis
• McDonald, Robert
• Mcneil, Hugh
• Martin, W. B. - drove ambulance from Britain to Aragon in September 1936. He had been an artillery man in World War I and was put in charge of an artillery section of 60 men
• Moyle, Douglas
• O’Hara, Patrick, first aid
• Parker, Thomas "Buck", corporal, wounded during advance April 1937
• Ramon
• Ritchie, John
• Smillie, Bob died in prison
• Smith James J
• Stearns, Douglas Clark
• "Tanky" (James Arthur Cope)
• Thomas, Harry, Welshman wounded in night attack April 1937
• Thomas, Parry
• Thompson, Douglas, wounded in night attack April 1937
• Webb, Harry
• Williams, Bob
• Wilton, Mike
• Wingate, Sybil, joined ILP contingent (she was already in Barcelona) as nurse.

See also

• In Spanish: Contingente del ILP para niños