# Chapter 11, George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, Audiobook (Bonus)

An episode of [George Orwell - 1984](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1795219843), 12 Sep 2026, 1 h 03 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75090955/chapter_11_homage_to_catalonia_george_orwell.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: CHAPTER XI. It will never be possible to get a
[0:02] Speaker 1: completely accurate and unbiased account of the Barcelona fighting, because
[0:06] Speaker 1: the necessary records do not exist. Future historians will have
[0:27] Speaker 1: nothing to go upon except a mass of accusations and
[0:31] Speaker 1: party propaganda. I myself have little data beyond what I
[0:36] Speaker 1: saw with my own eyes and what I have learned
[0:39] Speaker 1: from other eyewitnesses whom I believe to be reliable. I can, however,
[0:46] Speaker 1: contradict some of the more flagrant lies and help to
[0:49] Speaker 1: get the affair into some kind of perspective. First of all,
[0:53] Speaker 1: what actually happened? For some time past there had been
[0:57] Speaker 1: tension throughout Catalonia. In earlier chapters of this book, I
[1:01] Speaker 1: have given some account of the struggle between communists and anarchists.
[1:06] Speaker 1: By May 1937, things had reached a point at which
[1:09] Speaker 1: some kind of violent outbreak could be regarded as inevitable.
[1:14] Speaker 1: The immediate cause of friction was the government's order to
[1:16] Speaker 1: surrender all private weapons, coinciding with the decision to build
[1:21] Speaker 1: up a heavily armed, non-political police force from which trade
[1:25] Speaker 1: union members were to be excluded. The meaning of this
[1:28] Speaker 1: was obvious to everyone, and it was also obvious that
[1:32] Speaker 1: the next move would be the taking over of some
[1:35] Speaker 1: of the key industries controlled by the CNT. In addition,
[1:40] Speaker 1: there was a certain amount of resentment among the working
[1:42] Speaker 1: classes because of the growing contrast of wealth and poverty
[1:46] Speaker 1: and a general vague feeling that the revolution had been sabotaged.
[1:50] Speaker 1: Many people were agreeably surprised. when there was no rioting
[1:54] Speaker 1: on 1st May. On 3rd May the government decided to
[1:58] Speaker 1: take over the telephone exchange, which had been operated since
[2:01] Speaker 1: the beginning of the war mainly by CNT workers. It
[2:05] Speaker 1: was alleged that it was badly run and that official
[2:08] Speaker 1: calls were being tapped. Salas, the chief of police, who
[2:12] Speaker 1: may or may not have been exceeding his orders, sent
[2:15] Speaker 1: three lorry loads of armed civil guards to seize the building,
[2:19] Speaker 1: while the streets outside were cleared by armed police in
[2:21] Speaker 1: civilian clothes. At about the same time, bands of civil
[2:25] Speaker 1: guards seized various other buildings in strategic spots. Whatever the
[2:30] Speaker 1: real intention may have been, there was a widespread belief
[2:33] Speaker 1: that this was the signal for a general attack on
[2:36] Speaker 1: the CNT by the civil guards and the PSUC, communists
[2:41] Speaker 1: and socialists. The word flew round the town that the
[2:45] Speaker 1: workers' buildings were being attacked, armed anarchists appeared on the streets,
[2:49] Speaker 1: work ceased and fighting broke out immediately. That night and
[2:54] Speaker 1: the next morning, barricades were built all over the town,
[2:57] Speaker 1: and there was no break in the fighting until the
[2:59] Speaker 1: morning of 6th May. The fighting was, however, mainly defensive
[3:04] Speaker 1: on both sides. Buildings were besieged, but, so far as
[3:08] Speaker 1: I know, none were stormed, and there was no use
[3:11] Speaker 1: of artillery. Roughly speaking, the CNT FAI POUM forces held
[3:18] Speaker 1: the working-class suburbs, and the armed police forces and the
[3:22] Speaker 1: PSUC held the central and official portion of the town.
[3:27] Speaker 1: On 6th May there was an armistice, but fighting soon
[3:30] Speaker 1: broke out again, probably because of premature attempts by civil
[3:34] Speaker 1: guards to disarm CNT workers. Next morning, however, the people
[3:39] Speaker 1: began to leave the barricades of their own accord. Up
[3:42] Speaker 1: till roughly the night of 5th May the CNT had
[3:46] Speaker 1: had the better of it, and large numbers of civil
[3:49] Speaker 1: guards had surrendered. But there was no generally accepted leadership
[3:53] Speaker 1: and no fixed plan. Indeed, so far as one could judge,
[3:57] Speaker 1: no plan at all, except a vague determination to resist
[4:01] Speaker 1: the civil guards. The official leaders of the CNT had
[4:06] Speaker 1: joined with those of the UGT in imploring everyone to
[4:09] Speaker 1: go back to work. Above all, food was running short.
[4:13] Speaker 1: In such circumstances, nobody was sure enough of the issue
[4:17] Speaker 1: to go on fighting. By the afternoon of 7th May,
[4:21] Speaker 1: Conditions were almost normal. That evening, 6,000 assault guards, sent
[4:27] Speaker 1: by sea from Valencia, arrived and took control of the town.
[4:31] Speaker 1: The government issued an order for the surrender of all
[4:34] Speaker 1: arms except those held by the regular forces, and during
[4:38] Speaker 1: the next few days, large numbers of arms were seized.
[4:42] Speaker 1: The casualties during the fighting were officially given out as
[4:45] Speaker 1: 400 killed and about 1,000 wounded. 400 killed is possibly
[4:50] Speaker 1: an exaggeration, but as there is no way of verifying this,
[4:54] Speaker 1: we must accept it as accurate. Secondly, as to the
[4:59] Speaker 1: aftereffects of the fighting, obviously it is impossible to say
[5:03] Speaker 1: with any certainty what these were. There is no evidence
[5:07] Speaker 1: that the outbreak had any direct effect upon the course
[5:11] Speaker 1: of the war, though obviously it must have had if
[5:14] Speaker 1: it continued even a few days longer. It was made
[5:18] Speaker 1: the excuse for bringing Catalonia under the direct control of Valencia,
[5:23] Speaker 1: for hastening the breakup of the militias and for the
[5:25] Speaker 1: suppression of the POUM, and no doubt it also had
[5:29] Speaker 1: its share in bringing down the Caballero government, but we
[5:32] Speaker 1: may take it as certain that these things would have
[5:34] Speaker 1: happened in any case. The real question is whether the
[5:38] Speaker 1: CNT workers who came into the street gained or lost
[5:42] Speaker 1: by showing fight on this occasion. It is pure guesswork
[5:46] Speaker 1: that but my own opinion is that they gained more
[5:49] Speaker 1: than they lost. The seizure of the Barcelona telephone exchange
[5:53] Speaker 1: was simply one incident in a long process. Since the
[5:58] Speaker 1: previous year, direct power had been gradually manoeuvred out of
[6:01] Speaker 1: the hands of the syndicates, and the general movement was
[6:05] Speaker 1: away from working-class control and towards centralised control, leading on
[6:10] Speaker 1: to state capitalism or, possibly, towards the reintroduction of private capitalism.
[6:16] Speaker 1: The fact that at this point there was resistance probably
[6:20] Speaker 1: slowed the process down. A year after the outbreak of war,
[6:24] Speaker 1: the Catalan workers had lost much of their power, but
[6:27] Speaker 1: their position was still comparatively favourable. It might have been
[6:31] Speaker 1: much less so if they had made it clear that
[6:34] Speaker 1: they would lie down under no matter what provocation. There
[6:38] Speaker 1: are occasions when it pays better to fight and be
[6:40] Speaker 1: beaten than not to fight at all. Thirdly, what purpose,
[6:44] Speaker 1: if any, lay behind the outbreak? Was it any kind
[6:47] Speaker 1: of coup d'etat or revolutionary attempt? Did it definitely aim
[6:51] Speaker 1: at overthrowing the government? Was it preconcerted at all? My
[6:56] Speaker 1: own opinion is that the fighting was only preconcerted in
[6:59] Speaker 1: the sense that everyone expected it. There were no signs
[7:03] Speaker 1: of any very definite plan on either side. On the
[7:06] Speaker 1: anarchist side, the action was almost certainly spontaneous, for it
[7:10] Speaker 1: was an affair mainly of the rank and file. The
[7:14] Speaker 1: people came into the streets and their political leaders followed reluctantly,
[7:19] Speaker 1: or did not follow at all. The only people who
[7:22] Speaker 1: even talked in a revolutionary strain were the Friends of Daruti,
[7:26] Speaker 1: a small extremist group within the FAI and the POUM.
[7:30] Speaker 1: But once again they were following and not leading. The
[7:33] Speaker 1: Friends of Daruti distributed some kind of revolutionary leaflet, but
[7:37] Speaker 1: this did not appear until 5th May, and cannot be
[7:40] Speaker 1: said to have started the fighting. which had started of
[7:43] Speaker 1: its own accord two days earlier. The official leaders of
[7:47] Speaker 1: the CNT disowned the whole affair from the start. There
[7:51] Speaker 1: were a number of reasons for this. To begin with,
[7:55] Speaker 1: the fact that the CNT was still represented in the
[7:57] Speaker 1: government and the Generalité ensured that its leaders would be
[8:02] Speaker 1: more conservative than their followers. Secondly, the main object of
[8:07] Speaker 1: the CNT leaders was to form an alliance with the
[8:10] Speaker 1: UGT and the fighting was bound to widen the split
[8:13] Speaker 1: between CNT and UGT, at any rate for the time being. Thirdly,
[8:19] Speaker 1: though this was not generally known at the time, the
[8:21] Speaker 1: anarchist leaders feared that if things went beyond a certain point,
[8:25] Speaker 1: and the workers took possession of the town, as they
[8:28] Speaker 1: were perhaps in a position to do on 5th May,
[8:31] Speaker 1: there would be foreign intervention. A British cruiser and two
[8:34] Speaker 1: British destroyers had closed in upon the harbour, and no
[8:38] Speaker 1: doubt there were other warships not far away. The English
[8:41] Speaker 1: newspapers gave it out that these ships were proceeding to
[8:45] Speaker 1: Barcelona to protect British interests, but in fact they made
[8:49] Speaker 1: no move to do so. That is, they did not
[8:51] Speaker 1: land any men or take off any refugees. There can
[8:56] Speaker 1: be no certainty about this, but it was at least
[8:58] Speaker 1: inherently likely that the British government, which had not raised
[9:02] Speaker 1: a finger to save the Spanish government from Franco, would
[9:05] Speaker 1: intervene quickly enough to save it from its own working class.
[9:09] Speaker 1: The POUM leaders did not disown the affair. In fact,
[9:13] Speaker 1: they encouraged their followers to remain at the barricades, and
[9:17] Speaker 1: even gave their approval, in La Battaglia, 6th May, to
[9:21] Speaker 1: the extremist leaflet issued by the Friends of Durruti. There
[9:25] Speaker 1: is great uncertainty about this leaflet, of which no one
[9:29] Speaker 1: now seems able to produce a copy. In some of
[9:31] Speaker 1: the foreign papers, it was described as an inflammatory poster,
[9:36] Speaker 1: which was plastered all over the town. There was certainly
[9:39] Speaker 1: no such poster. From comparison of various reports, I should
[9:44] Speaker 1: say that the leaflet called for 1. The formation of
[9:48] Speaker 1: a revolutionary council, junta. 2. The shooting of those responsible
[9:53] Speaker 1: for the attack on the telephone exchange. 3. The disarming
[9:57] Speaker 1: of the civil guards. There is also some uncertainty as
[10:01] Speaker 1: to how far La Battaglia expressed agreement with the leaflet.
[10:05] Speaker 1: I myself did not see the leaflet or La Battaglia
[10:08] Speaker 1: of that date. The only handbill I saw during the
[10:11] Speaker 1: fighting was one issued by the tiny group of Trotskyists,
[10:15] Speaker 1: Bolshevik Leninists, on 4th May. This merely said, everyone to
[10:20] Speaker 1: the barricades, general strike of all industries except war industries.
[10:25] Speaker 1: In other words, it merely demanded what was happening already.
[10:30] Speaker 1: But in reality, the attitude of the POUM leaders was hesitating.
[10:35] Speaker 1: They had never been in favour of insurrection until the
[10:38] Speaker 1: war against Franco was won. On the other hand, the
[10:41] Speaker 1: workers had come into the streets and the POUM leaders
[10:45] Speaker 1: took the rather pedantic Marxist line of that when the
[10:48] Speaker 1: workers are on the streets, it is the duty of
[10:51] Speaker 1: the revolutionary parties to be with them. Hence, in spite
[10:55] Speaker 1: of uttering revolutionary slogans about the reawakening of the spirit
[10:59] Speaker 1: of 19th July and so forth, they did their best
[11:03] Speaker 1: to limit the workers' action to the defensive. They never,
[11:07] Speaker 1: for instance, ordered an attack on any building. They merely
[11:11] Speaker 1: ordered their followers to remain on guard and, as I
[11:14] Speaker 1: mentioned in the last chapter, not to fire when it
[11:17] Speaker 1: could be avoided. La Battaglia also issued instructions that no
[11:22] Speaker 1: troops were to leave the front. A recent number of
[11:25] Speaker 1: Intracorps states the exact opposite, that La Battaglia orders the
[11:30] Speaker 1: POUM troops to leave the front. The point can easily
[11:33] Speaker 1: be settled by referring to La Battaglia of the date named.
[11:38] Speaker 1: As far as one can estimate it, I should say
[11:40] Speaker 1: that the responsibility of the POUM amounts to having urged
[11:44] Speaker 1: everyone to remain at the barricades. and probably to having
[11:48] Speaker 1: persuaded a certain number to remain there longer than they
[11:52] Speaker 1: would otherwise have done. Those who were in personal touch
[11:56] Speaker 1: with the POUM leaders at the time, I myself was not,
[12:00] Speaker 1: have told me that they were in reality dismayed by
[12:02] Speaker 1: the whole business, but felt that they had got to
[12:05] Speaker 1: associate themselves with it. Afterwards, of course, political capital was
[12:10] Speaker 1: made out of it in the usual manner. Gorkin, one
[12:13] Speaker 1: of the POUM leaders, even spoke later, of the glorious
[12:17] Speaker 1: days of May. From the propaganda point of view, this
[12:20] Speaker 1: may have been the right line. Certainly the POUM rose
[12:25] Speaker 1: somewhat in numbers during the brief period before its suppression. Tactically,
[12:31] Speaker 1: it was probably a mistake to give countenance to the
[12:34] Speaker 1: leaflet of the Friends of Daruti, which was a very
[12:37] Speaker 1: small organisation and normally hostile to the POUM. Considering the
[12:43] Speaker 1: general excitement and the things that were being said on
[12:45] Speaker 1: both sides, the leaflet did not in effect mean much
[12:48] Speaker 1: more than stay at the barricades, but by seeming to
[12:52] Speaker 1: approve of it, while Solidaridad Obrera, the anarchist paper, repudiated it,
[12:57] Speaker 1: the POUM leaders made it easy for the communist press
[13:00] Speaker 1: to say afterwards that the fighting was a kind of
[13:03] Speaker 1: insurrection engineered solely by the POUM. However, we may be
[13:08] Speaker 1: certain that the communist press would have said this in
[13:10] Speaker 1: any case. It was nothing compared with the accusations that
[13:14] Speaker 1: were made both before and afterwards on less evidence. The
[13:19] Speaker 1: CNT leaders did not gain much by their more cautious attitude.
[13:23] Speaker 1: They were praised for their loyalty but were leave it
[13:25] Speaker 1: out of both the government and the Generalité as soon
[13:29] Speaker 1: as the opportunity arose. So far as one could judge
[13:33] Speaker 1: from what people were saying at the time, there was
[13:36] Speaker 1: no real revolutionary intention anywhere. The people behind the barricades
[13:41] Speaker 1: were ordinary CNT workers, probably with a sprinkling of UGT
[13:45] Speaker 1: workers among them, and what they were attempting was not
[13:49] Speaker 1: to overthrow the government, but to resist what they regarded,
[13:52] Speaker 1: rightly or wrongly, as an attack by the police. Their
[13:56] Speaker 1: action was essentially defensive, and I doubt whether it should
[14:00] Speaker 1: be described, as it was in nearly all the foreign newspapers,
[14:05] Speaker 1: as arising. Arising implies aggressive action and a definite plan.
[14:11] Speaker 1: More exactly, it was a riot, a very bloody riot,
[14:14] Speaker 1: because both sides had firearms in their hands and were
[14:17] Speaker 1: willing to use them. But what about the intentions on
[14:21] Speaker 1: the other side? If it was not an anarchist coup d'etat,
[14:24] Speaker 1: was it perhaps a communist coup d'etat, a planned effort
[14:27] Speaker 1: to smash the power of the CNT at one blow?
[14:30] Speaker 1: I do not believe it was, though certain things might
[14:33] Speaker 1: lead one to suspect it, It is significant that something
[14:37] Speaker 1: very similar, seizure of the telephone exchange by armed police,
[14:41] Speaker 1: acting under orders from Barcelona, happened in Tarragona two days later.
[14:47] Speaker 1: And in Barcelona, the raid on the telephone exchange was
[14:51] Speaker 1: not an isolated act. In various parts of the town,
[14:55] Speaker 1: bands of civil guards and PSUC adherents seized buildings in
[15:00] Speaker 1: strategic spots, if not actually before the fighting started. at
[15:04] Speaker 1: any rate with surprising promptitude. But what one has got
[15:08] Speaker 1: to remember is that these things were happening in Spain
[15:11] Speaker 1: and not in England. Barcelona is a town with a
[15:14] Speaker 1: long history of street fighting. In such places things happen quickly.
[15:19] Speaker 1: The factions are ready-made, everyone knows the local geography, and
[15:23] Speaker 1: when the guns begin to shoot, people take their places
[15:27] Speaker 1: almost as in a fire drill. Presumably those responsible for
[15:30] Speaker 1: the seizure of the telephone exchange expected trouble though not
[15:35] Speaker 1: on the scale that actually happened, and had made ready
[15:37] Speaker 1: to meet it. But it does not follow that they
[15:40] Speaker 1: were planning a general attack on the CNT. There are
[15:44] Speaker 1: two reasons why I do not believe that either side
[15:46] Speaker 1: had made preparations for large-scale fighting. 1. Neither side had
[15:53] Speaker 1: brought troops to Barcelona beforehand. The fighting was only between
[15:56] Speaker 1: those who were in Barcelona already, mainly civilians and police. 2.
[16:02] Speaker 1: The food ran short almost immediately. Anyone who has served
[16:06] Speaker 1: in Spain knows that the one operation of war that
[16:10] Speaker 1: Spaniards really perform really well is that of feeding their troops.
[16:15] Speaker 1: It is most unlikely that if either side had contemplated
[16:18] Speaker 1: a week or two of street fighting and a general strike,
[16:22] Speaker 1: they would not have stored food beforehand. Finally, as to
[16:25] Speaker 1: the rights and wrongs of the affair. A tremendous dust
[16:28] Speaker 1: was kicked up in the foreign anti-fascist press. but as usual,
[16:33] Speaker 1: only one side of the case has had anything like
[16:35] Speaker 1: a hearing. As a result, the Barcelona fighting has been
[16:39] Speaker 1: represented as an insurrection by disloyal anarchists and Trotskyists who
[16:44] Speaker 1: were stabbing the Spanish government in the back and so forth.
[16:48] Speaker 1: The issue was not quite so simple as that. Undoubtedly,
[16:51] Speaker 1: when you are at war with a deadly enemy, it
[16:54] Speaker 1: is better not to begin fighting among yourselves, but it
[16:57] Speaker 1: is worth remembering that it takes two to make a quarrel,
[17:00] Speaker 1: and that people do not begin building barricades unless they
[17:03] Speaker 1: have received something that they regard as a provocation. The
[17:07] Speaker 1: trouble sprang naturally out of the government's order to the
[17:10] Speaker 1: anarchists to surrender their arms. In the English press this
[17:14] Speaker 1: was translated into English terms and took this form, that
[17:19] Speaker 1: arms were desperately needed on the Aragon front and could
[17:22] Speaker 1: not be sent there because the unpatriotic anarchists were holding
[17:25] Speaker 1: them back. To put it like this is to ignore
[17:28] Speaker 1: the conditions actually existing in Spain. Everyone knew that both
[17:33] Speaker 1: the anarchists and the PSUC were hoarding arms, and when
[17:37] Speaker 1: the fighting broke out in Barcelona, this was made clearer still.
[17:41] Speaker 1: Both sides produced arms in abundance. The anarchists were well
[17:45] Speaker 1: aware that even if they surrendered their arms, the PSUC,
[17:48] Speaker 1: politically the main power in Catalonia, would still retain theirs,
[17:53] Speaker 1: and this in fact was what happened after the fighting
[17:55] Speaker 1: was over. Meanwhile, actually visible on the streets, there were
[17:59] Speaker 1: quantities of arms which would have been very welcome at
[18:02] Speaker 1: the front, but which were being retained for the non-political
[18:05] Speaker 1: police forces in the rear. And underneath this, there was
[18:10] Speaker 1: the irreconcilable difference between communists and anarchists, which was bound
[18:15] Speaker 1: to lead to some kind of struggle sooner or later.
[18:18] Speaker 1: Since the beginning of the war, the Spanish Communist Party
[18:21] Speaker 1: had grown enormously in numbers and captured most of the
[18:24] Speaker 1: political power, and there had come into Spain thousands of
[18:27] Speaker 1: foreign communists, many of whom were openly expressing their intention
[18:32] Speaker 1: of liquidating anarchism as soon as the war against Franco
[18:36] Speaker 1: was won. In the circumstances, one could hardly expect the
[18:40] Speaker 1: anarchists to hand over the weapons which they had got
[18:43] Speaker 1: possession of in the summer of 1936. The seizure of
[18:47] Speaker 1: the telephone exchange was simply the match that fired an
[18:50] Speaker 1: already existing bomb. It is perhaps just conceivable that that
[18:54] Speaker 1: those responsible imagined that it would not lead to trouble. Compagny,
[19:00] Speaker 1: the Catalan president, is said to have declared laughingly a
[19:02] Speaker 1: few days earlier that the anarchists would put up with anything,
[19:06] Speaker 1: new statesman, 14th of May. But certainly, it was not
[19:10] Speaker 1: a wise action. For months past, there had been a
[19:13] Speaker 1: long series of armed clashes between communists and anarchists in
[19:17] Speaker 1: various parts of Spain. Catalonia, and especially Barcelona, was in
[19:21] Speaker 1: a state of tension that had already led to street affrays,
[19:25] Speaker 1: assassinations and so forth. Suddenly the news ran round the
[19:28] Speaker 1: city that armed men were attacking the buildings that the
[19:31] Speaker 1: workers had captured in the July fighting, and to which
[19:35] Speaker 1: they attached great sentimental importance. One must remember that the
[19:39] Speaker 1: civil guards were not loved by the working class population.
[19:43] Speaker 1: For generations past, La Guardia had been simply an appendage
[19:47] Speaker 1: of the landlord and the boss, and the civil guards
[19:50] Speaker 1: were doubly hated because they were suspected, quite justly, of
[19:53] Speaker 1: being of very doubtful loyalty against the fascists. At the
[19:58] Speaker 1: outbreak of war, the civil guards had everywhere sided with
[20:02] Speaker 1: the stronger party. On several occasions later in the war, e.g.
[20:06] Speaker 1: at Santander, the local civil guards went over to the
[20:09] Speaker 1: fascists' inner body. It is probable that the emotion that
[20:13] Speaker 1: brought people into the streets in the first few hours
[20:16] Speaker 1: was much the same emotion as had led them to
[20:19] Speaker 1: resist the rebel generals at the beginning of the war.
[20:23] Speaker 1: Of course, it is arguable that the CNT workers ought
[20:26] Speaker 1: to have handed over the telephone exchange without protest. One's
[20:31] Speaker 1: opinion here will be governed by one's attitude on the
[20:33] Speaker 1: question of centralised government and working-class control, More relevantly, it
[20:38] Speaker 1: may be said, yes, very likely the CNT had a case,
[20:43] Speaker 1: but after all there was a war on and they
[20:45] Speaker 1: had no business to start a fight behind the lines.
[20:48] Speaker 1: Here I agree entirely. Any internal disorder was likely to
[20:52] Speaker 1: aid Franco, but what actually precipitated the fighting? The government
[20:57] Speaker 1: may or may not have had the right to seize
[20:59] Speaker 1: the telephone exchange. The point is that in the actual
[21:03] Speaker 1: circumstances it was bound to lead to a fight. It
[21:07] Speaker 1: was a provocative action, a gesture which said in effect
[21:10] Speaker 1: and presumably was meant to say, your power is at
[21:13] Speaker 1: an end, we are taking over. It was not common
[21:17] Speaker 1: sense to expect anything but resistance. If one keeps a
[21:21] Speaker 1: sense of proportion, one must realise that the fault was not,
[21:24] Speaker 1: could not be in a matter of this kind, entirely
[21:27] Speaker 1: on one side. The reason why a one-sided version has
[21:31] Speaker 1: been accepted is simply that the Spanish revolutionary party's have
[21:35] Speaker 1: no footing in the foreign press. In the English press
[21:38] Speaker 1: in particular, you would have to search for a long
[21:41] Speaker 1: time before finding any favourable reference at any period of
[21:45] Speaker 1: the war to the Spanish anarchists. They have been systematically
[21:49] Speaker 1: denigrated and, as I know by my own experience, it
[21:53] Speaker 1: is almost impossible to get anyone to print anything in
[21:56] Speaker 1: their defence. I have tried to write objectively about the
[22:00] Speaker 1: Barcelona fighting, though. Obviously, no one can be completely objective.
[22:05] Speaker 1: on a question of this kind. One is practically obliged
[22:09] Speaker 1: to take sides, and it must be clear enough which
[22:11] Speaker 1: side I am on. Again, I must inevitably have made
[22:15] Speaker 1: mistakes of fact, not only here but in other parts
[22:18] Speaker 1: of this narrative. It is very difficult to write accurately
[22:21] Speaker 1: about the Spanish War because of the lack of non-propagandist documents.
[22:26] Speaker 1: I warn everyone against my bias, and I warn everyone
[22:29] Speaker 1: against my mistakes. Still, I have done my best to
[22:32] Speaker 1: be honest. but it will be seen that the account
[22:34] Speaker 1: I have given is completely different from that which appeared
[22:37] Speaker 1: in the foreign and especially the communist press. It is
[22:41] Speaker 1: necessary to examine the communist version, because it was published
[22:45] Speaker 1: all over the world, has been supplemented at short intervals
[22:48] Speaker 1: ever since, and is probably the most widely accepted one.
[22:52] Speaker 1: In the communist and pro-communist press, the entire blame for
[22:56] Speaker 1: the Barcelona fighting was laid upon the POUM. The affair
[23:00] Speaker 1: was represented not as a spontaneous outbreak, but as a
[23:04] Speaker 1: deliberate planned insurrection against the government, engineered solely by the POUM,
[23:09] Speaker 1: with the aid of a few misguided uncontrollables. More than this,
[23:14] Speaker 1: it was definitely a fascist plot, carried out under fascist
[23:18] Speaker 1: orders with the idea of starting civil war in the
[23:20] Speaker 1: rear and thus paralysing the government. The POUM was Franco's
[23:25] Speaker 1: fifth column, a Trotskyist organisation, working in league with the fascists.
[23:31] Speaker 1: According to the Daily Worker, 11th May, the German and
[23:35] Speaker 1: Italian agents who poured into Barcelona ostensibly to prepare the
[23:39] Speaker 1: notorious Congress of the Fourth International had one big task.
[23:44] Speaker 1: It was this. They were, in cooperation with the local Trotskyists,
[23:48] Speaker 1: to prepare a situation of disorder and bloodshed in which
[23:52] Speaker 1: it would be possible for the Germans and Italians to
[23:55] Speaker 1: declare that they were unable to exercise naval control of
[23:59] Speaker 1: the Catalan coasts effectively, because of the disorder prevailing in Barcelona,
[24:05] Speaker 1: and were therefore unable to do otherwise than land forces
[24:08] Speaker 1: in Barcelona. In other words, what was being prepared was
[24:12] Speaker 1: a situation in which the German and Italian governments could
[24:16] Speaker 1: land troops or marines quite openly on the Catalan coasts,
[24:20] Speaker 1: declaring that they were doing so in order to preserve order.
[24:24] Speaker 1: The instrument for all this lay ready to hand for
[24:26] Speaker 1: the Germans and Italians in the shape of the Trotskyist
[24:29] Speaker 1: organisation known as the POUM. The POUM, acting in cooperation
[24:35] Speaker 1: with well-known criminal elements and with certain other deluded persons
[24:39] Speaker 1: in the anarchist organisations, planned, organised and led the attack
[24:44] Speaker 1: in the rearguard, accurately timed to coincide with the attack
[24:48] Speaker 1: on the front at Bilbao, etc., etc. Later in the article,
[24:54] Speaker 1: Barcelona fighting becomes the POUM attack, and in another article
[24:59] Speaker 1: in the same issue, it is stated that there is
[25:01] Speaker 1: no doubt that this is at the door of the POUM,
[25:05] Speaker 1: that the responsibility for the bloodshed in Catalonia must be laid. Impracor,
[25:11] Speaker 1: 29th May, states that those who erected the barricades in
[25:14] Speaker 1: Barcelona were only members of the POUM, organised from that
[25:19] Speaker 1: party for this purpose. I could quote a great deal more,
[25:24] Speaker 1: but this is clear enough. The POUM was wholly responsible,
[25:29] Speaker 1: and the POUM was acting under fascist orders. In a
[25:33] Speaker 1: moment I will give some more extracts from the accounts
[25:35] Speaker 1: that appeared in the communist press. It will be seen
[25:39] Speaker 1: that they are so self-contradictory as to be completely worthless.
[25:43] Speaker 1: But before doing so, it is worth pointing to several
[25:46] Speaker 1: a priori reasons why this version of the May fighting
[25:49] Speaker 1: as a fascist rising engineered by the POUM, is next
[25:53] Speaker 1: door to incredible. 1. The POUM had not the numbers
[25:58] Speaker 1: or influence to provoke disorders of this magnitude. Still less
[26:02] Speaker 1: had it the power to call a general strike. It
[26:05] Speaker 1: was a political organisation with no very definite footing in
[26:09] Speaker 1: the trade unions. And it would have been hardly more
[26:12] Speaker 1: capable of producing a strike throughout Barcelona than, say, the
[26:18] Speaker 1: English Communist Party would be at producing a general strike
[26:21] Speaker 1: throughout Glasgow. As I said earlier, the attitude of the
[26:25] Speaker 1: POUM leaders may have helped to prolong the fighting to
[26:28] Speaker 1: some extent, but they could not have originated it even
[26:32] Speaker 1: if they had wanted to. Two, the alleged fascist plot
[26:36] Speaker 1: rests on bare assertion and all the evidence points in
[26:40] Speaker 1: the other direction. We are told that the plan was
[26:43] Speaker 1: for the German and Italian governments to land troops in Catalonia,
[26:47] Speaker 1: but no German or Italian troop ships approached the coast.
[26:51] Speaker 1: As to the Congress of the Fourth International and the
[26:54] Speaker 1: German and Italian agents, they are pure myth. So far
[26:58] Speaker 1: as I know, there had not even been any talk
[27:01] Speaker 1: of a Congress of the Fourth International. There were vague
[27:04] Speaker 1: plans for a Congress of the POUM and its brother parties,
[27:08] Speaker 1: English ILP, German SAP, etc., etc. This had been tentatively
[27:14] Speaker 1: fixed for some time in July, two months later, and
[27:19] Speaker 1: not a single delegate had yet arrived. the German and
[27:22] Speaker 1: Italian agents, have no existence outside the pages of the
[27:26] Speaker 1: Daily Worker. Anyone who crossed the frontier at that time
[27:30] Speaker 1: knows that it was not so easy to pour into Spain,
[27:33] Speaker 1: or out of it for that matter. 3. Nothing happened
[27:37] Speaker 1: either at La Rida, the chief stronghold of the POUM,
[27:41] Speaker 1: or at the front. It is obvious that if the
[27:44] Speaker 1: POUM leaders had wanted to aid the fascists, they would
[27:48] Speaker 1: have ordered their militia to walk out of the line
[27:51] Speaker 1: and let the fascists through. But nothing of the kind
[27:54] Speaker 1: was done or suggested, nor were any extra men brought
[27:57] Speaker 1: out of the line beforehand, though it would have been
[27:59] Speaker 1: easy enough to smuggle, say, a thousand or two thousand
[28:03] Speaker 1: men back to Barcelona on various pretexts. And there was
[28:07] Speaker 1: no attempt even at indirect sabotage of the front. The
[28:11] Speaker 1: transport of food munitions and so forth continued as usual.
[28:16] Speaker 1: I verified this by inquiry afterwards. Above all, a planned
[28:20] Speaker 1: rising of the kind suggested would have needed months of preparation,
[28:25] Speaker 1: subversive propaganda among the militia and so forth. But there
[28:29] Speaker 1: was no sign or rumour of any such thing. The
[28:32] Speaker 1: fact that the militia at the front played no part
[28:35] Speaker 1: in the rising should be conclusive. If the POUM were
[28:39] Speaker 1: really planning a coup d'etat, it is inconceivable that they
[28:42] Speaker 1: would not have used the 10,000 or so armed men
[28:46] Speaker 1: who were the only striking force they had. It will
[28:50] Speaker 1: be clear enough from this that the communist thesis of
[28:53] Speaker 1: a POUM rising under fascist orders rests on less than
[28:57] Speaker 1: no evidence. I will add a few more extracts from
[29:00] Speaker 1: the communist press. The communist accounts of the opening incident,
[29:04] Speaker 1: the raid on the telephone exchange, are illuminating. They agree
[29:09] Speaker 1: in nothing except in putting the blame on the other side.
[29:12] Speaker 1: It is noticeable that in the English communist papers the
[29:15] Speaker 1: blame is put first upon the anarchists and only later,
[29:19] Speaker 1: on the POUM. There is a fairly obvious reason for this.
[29:23] Speaker 1: Not everyone in England has heard of Trotskyism. Whereas every
[29:28] Speaker 1: English-speaking person shudders at the name of anarchist, let it
[29:32] Speaker 1: once be known that anarchists are implicated and the right
[29:35] Speaker 1: atmosphere of prejudice is established. After that, the blame can
[29:40] Speaker 1: safely be transferred to the Trotskyists. The Daily Worker begins thus,
[29:44] Speaker 1: 6th May. A minority gang of anarchists, on Monday and Tuesday,
[29:49] Speaker 1: seized and attempted to hold the telephone and telegram buildings
[29:54] Speaker 1: and started firing into the street. There is nothing like
[29:57] Speaker 1: starting off with a reversal of roles. The civil guards
[30:01] Speaker 1: attack a building held by the CNT, so the CNT
[30:04] Speaker 1: are represented as attacking their own building, attacking themselves in fact.
[30:10] Speaker 1: On the other hand, the Daily Worker of 11th May states,
[30:13] Speaker 1: the left Catalan Minister of Public Security, Aiguade, and the
[30:17] Speaker 1: United Socialist General Commissar of Public Order, Rodríguez Salas, sent
[30:23] Speaker 1: the armed Republican police into the Telefónica building to disarm
[30:27] Speaker 1: the employees there. most of them members of CNT unions.
[30:32] Speaker 1: This does not seem to agree very well with the
[30:34] Speaker 1: first statement. Nevertheless, the Daily Worker contains no admission that
[30:39] Speaker 1: the first statement was wrong. The Daily Worker of 11th
[30:42] Speaker 1: May states that the leaflets of the Friends of Durruti,
[30:45] Speaker 1: which were disowned by the CNT, appeared on 4th May
[30:49] Speaker 1: and 5th May during the fighting. Imprecor, 22nd May, states
[30:54] Speaker 1: that they appeared on 3rd May before the fighting. and
[30:58] Speaker 1: adds that, in view of these facts, the appearance of
[31:01] Speaker 1: various leaflets, the police, led by the Prefect of Police
[31:04] Speaker 1: in person, occupied the central telephone exchange in the afternoon
[31:08] Speaker 1: of 3rd May. The police were shot at while discharging
[31:12] Speaker 1: their duty. This was the signal for the provocateurs to
[31:15] Speaker 1: begin shooting a phrase all over the city. And here
[31:20] Speaker 1: is Imprecor for 29th May. At three o'clock in the afternoon,
[31:24] Speaker 1: the Commissar for Public Security Comrade Salas went to the
[31:28] Speaker 1: telephone exchange, which on the previous night had been occupied
[31:32] Speaker 1: by 50 members of the POUM, and various uncontrollable elements.
[31:38] Speaker 1: This seems rather curious. The occupation of the telephone exchange
[31:42] Speaker 1: by 50 POUM members is what one might call a
[31:45] Speaker 1: picturesque circumstance, and one would have expected somebody to notice
[31:49] Speaker 1: it at the time. Yet it appears that it was
[31:52] Speaker 1: discovered only three or four weeks later. In another issue
[31:56] Speaker 1: of Imprecor, the 50 POUM members become 50 POUM militiamen.
[32:02] Speaker 1: It would be difficult to pack together more contradictions than
[32:04] Speaker 1: are contained in these few short passages. At one moment
[32:08] Speaker 1: the CNT are attacking the telephone exchange. The next they
[32:12] Speaker 1: are being attacked there. A leaflet appears before the seizure
[32:15] Speaker 1: of the telephone exchange and is the cause of it,
[32:18] Speaker 1: or alternatively appears afterwards and is the result of it.
[32:22] Speaker 1: The people in the telephone exchange are alternatively CNT members
[32:27] Speaker 1: and POUM members, and so on. And in a still
[32:30] Speaker 1: later issue of the Daily Worker, 3rd June, Mr J. R.
[32:34] Speaker 1: Campbell informs us that the government only seized the telephone
[32:38] Speaker 1: exchange because the barricades were already erected. For reasons of space,
[32:43] Speaker 1: I have taken only the reports of one incident, but
[32:46] Speaker 1: the same discrepancies run all through the accounts in the
[32:49] Speaker 1: communist press. In addition, there are various statements which are
[32:53] Speaker 1: obviously pure fabrication. Here, for instance, is something quoted by
[32:57] Speaker 1: the Daily Worker, 7th May, and said to have been
[33:00] Speaker 1: issued by the Spanish Embassy in Paris. A significant feature
[33:05] Speaker 1: of the uprising has been that the old monarchist flag
[33:08] Speaker 1: was flown from the balcony of various houses in Barcelona,
[33:12] Speaker 1: doubtless in the belief that those who took part in
[33:14] Speaker 1: the rising had become masters of the situation. The Daily
[33:18] Speaker 1: Worker very probably reprinted this statement in good faith. but
[33:21] Speaker 1: those responsible for it at the Spanish embassy must have
[33:25] Speaker 1: been quite deliberately lying. Any Spaniard would understand the internal
[33:29] Speaker 1: situation better than that. A monarchist flag in Barcelona? It
[33:34] Speaker 1: was the one thing that could have united the warring
[33:36] Speaker 1: factions in a moment. Even the communists on the spot
[33:40] Speaker 1: were obliged to smile when they read about it. It
[33:42] Speaker 1: is the same with the reports in the various communist
[33:45] Speaker 1: papers upon the arms supposed to have been used by
[33:48] Speaker 1: the POUM during the Rising. they would be credible only
[33:52] Speaker 1: if one knew nothing whatever of the facts. In the
[33:55] Speaker 1: Daily Worker of 17th May, Mr Frank Pitcairn states, There
[33:59] Speaker 1: were actually all sorts of arms used by them in
[34:02] Speaker 1: the Outer Age. There were the arms which they have
[34:04] Speaker 1: been stealing for months past, and hidden, and there were
[34:08] Speaker 1: arms such as tanks which they stole from the barracks
[34:11] Speaker 1: just at the beginning of the Rising. It is clear
[34:14] Speaker 1: that scores of machine guns and several thousand rifles are
[34:17] Speaker 1: still in their possession. Imbricor, 29th May, also states, On
[34:23] Speaker 1: 3rd May, the POUM had at its disposal some dozens
[34:27] Speaker 1: of machine guns and several thousand reins. On the Plaza
[34:31] Speaker 1: de España, the Trotskyists brought into action batteries of 75 guns,
[34:36] Speaker 1: which were destined for the front in Aragon, and which
[34:39] Speaker 1: the militia had carefully concealed on their premises. Mr Petcan
[34:43] Speaker 1: does not tell us how and when it became clear
[34:46] Speaker 1: that the POUM possessed scores of machine guns. and several
[34:50] Speaker 1: thousand rifles. I have given an estimate of the arms
[34:54] Speaker 1: which were at three of the principal P.O.U.M. buildings, about
[34:58] Speaker 1: eighty rifles, a few bombs, and no machine guns, i.e.
[35:02] Speaker 1: about sufficient for the armed guards which, at that time,
[35:06] Speaker 1: all the political parties placed on their buildings. It seemed
[35:10] Speaker 1: strange that afterwards when the P.O.U.M. was suppressed and all
[35:14] Speaker 1: its buildings seized, these thousands of weapons never came to light,
[35:19] Speaker 1: especially the tanks and field guns, which are not the
[35:21] Speaker 1: kind of thing that can be hidden up the chimney.
[35:24] Speaker 1: But what is revealing, in the two statements above, is
[35:26] Speaker 1: the complete ignorance they display of the local circumstances. According
[35:30] Speaker 1: to Mr Pitcairn, the POUM stole tanks from the barracks.
[35:34] Speaker 1: He does not tell us which barracks. The POUM militiamen
[35:38] Speaker 1: who were in Barcelona, now comparatively few, as direct recruitment
[35:43] Speaker 1: of the party militias had ceased, shared the Lenin barracks
[35:46] Speaker 1: with a considerably larger number of popular army troops. Mr
[35:51] Speaker 1: Pitcairn is asking us to believe, therefore, that the POUM
[35:54] Speaker 1: stole tanks with the connivance of the popular army. It
[35:57] Speaker 1: is the same with the premises on which the 75mm
[36:01] Speaker 1: guns were concealed. There is no mention of where these
[36:04] Speaker 1: premises were. Those batteries of guns firing on the Plaza
[36:08] Speaker 1: de España appeared in many newspaper reports, but I think
[36:12] Speaker 1: we can say with certainty that they never existed. As
[36:16] Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, I heard no artillery fire during the fighting,
[36:20] Speaker 1: though the Plaza de España was only a mile or
[36:22] Speaker 1: so away. A few days later, I examined the Plaza
[36:26] Speaker 1: de España and could find no buildings that showed marks
[36:29] Speaker 1: of shell fire, and an eyewitness who was in that
[36:32] Speaker 1: neighbourhood throughout the fighting declares that no guns ever appeared there. Incidentally,
[36:38] Speaker 1: the tale of the stolen guns may have originated with
[36:42] Speaker 1: Antonov Ovsenko, the Russian Consul General. He, at any rate,
[36:47] Speaker 1: communicated it to a well-known English journalist, who afterwards repeated
[36:52] Speaker 1: it in good faith in a weekly paper. Antonov-Ovsenko has
[36:56] Speaker 1: since been purged. How this would affect his credibility, I
[37:00] Speaker 1: do not know. The truth is, of course, that these
[37:02] Speaker 1: tales about tanks, field guns and so forth have only
[37:06] Speaker 1: been invented because otherwise it is difficult to reconcile the
[37:10] Speaker 1: scale of the Barcelona fighting with the POUM's small numbers.
[37:15] Speaker 1: It was necessary to claim that the POUM was wholly
[37:19] Speaker 1: responsible for the fighting. It was also necessary to claim
[37:23] Speaker 1: that it was an insignificant party with no following and
[37:27] Speaker 1: numbered only a few thousand members, according to Anne Precourt.
[37:32] Speaker 1: The only hope of making both statements credible was to
[37:34] Speaker 1: pretend that the POUM had all the weapons of a
[37:37] Speaker 1: modern mechanised army. It is impossible to read through the
[37:41] Speaker 1: reports in the communist press without realising that they are
[37:45] Speaker 1: consciously aimed at a public, ignorant of the facts, and
[37:49] Speaker 1: have no other purpose than to work up prejudice. Hence,
[37:53] Speaker 1: for instance, such statements as Mr Pitcairn's in the Daily
[37:56] Speaker 1: Worker of 11th May, that the rising was suppressed by
[38:00] Speaker 1: the popular army. The idea here is to give outsiders
[38:04] Speaker 1: the impression that all Catalonia was solid against the Trotskyists,
[38:09] Speaker 1: but the popular army remained neutral throughout the fighting. Everyone
[38:13] Speaker 1: in Barcelona knew this, and it is difficult to believe
[38:16] Speaker 1: that Mr Pitcairn did not know it too. Or again,
[38:20] Speaker 1: the juggling in the communist press, with the figures for
[38:22] Speaker 1: killed and wounded, with the object of exaggerating the scale
[38:26] Speaker 1: of the disorders. Díaz, General Secretary of the Spanish Communist Party,
[38:31] Speaker 1: widely quoted in the communist press, gave the numbers as
[38:34] Speaker 1: 900 dead and 2,500 wounded. The Catalan Minister of Propaganda,
[38:40] Speaker 1: who was hardly likely to underestimate gave the numbers as
[38:43] Speaker 1: 400 killed and 1,000 wounded. The Communist Party doubles the
[38:49] Speaker 1: bid and adds a few more hundreds for luck. The
[38:52] Speaker 1: foreign capitalist newspapers, in general, laid the blame for the
[38:55] Speaker 1: fighting upon the anarchists. But there were a few that
[38:59] Speaker 1: followed the Communist line. One of these was the English
[39:03] Speaker 1: News Chronicle, whose correspondent, Mr John Langdon Davis, was in
[39:08] Speaker 1: Barcelona at the time I quote portions of his article here.
[39:12] Speaker 1: A Trotskyist revolt. This has not been an anarchist uprising.
[39:18] Speaker 1: It is a frustrated putsch of the Trotskyist POUM working
[39:22] Speaker 1: through their controlled organisations, friends of Durruti and libertarian youth.
[39:29] Speaker 1: The tragedy began on Monday afternoon when the government sent
[39:32] Speaker 1: armed police into the telephone building to disarm the workers there,
[39:35] Speaker 1: mostly CNT men. Grave irregularities in the service had been
[39:40] Speaker 1: a scandal for some time. A large crowd gathered in
[39:43] Speaker 1: the Plaza de Catalunya, outside, while the CNT men resisted.
[39:48] Speaker 1: retreating floor by floor to the top of the building.
[39:52] Speaker 1: The incident was very obscure, but word went round that
[39:55] Speaker 1: the government was out against the anarchists. The streets filled
[39:59] Speaker 1: with armed men. By nightfall, every workers' centre and government
[40:04] Speaker 1: building was barricaded, and at ten o'clock the first volleys
[40:08] Speaker 1: were fired and the first ambulances began ringing their way
[40:11] Speaker 1: through the streets. By dawn, all Barcelona was under fire.
[40:17] Speaker 1: As the day wore on and the dead mounted to
[40:19] Speaker 1: over a hundred, one could make a guess at what
[40:21] Speaker 1: was happening. The anarchist CNT and socialist UGT were not
[40:26] Speaker 1: technically out in the street. So long as they remained
[40:30] Speaker 1: behind the barricades, they were merely watchfully waiting. An attitude
[40:36] Speaker 1: which included the right to shoot at anything, armed in
[40:38] Speaker 1: the open street. The general bursts were invariably aggravated by
[40:43] Speaker 1: Paco's hidden solitary men, usually fascists, shooting from rooftops at
[40:49] Speaker 1: nothing in particular, but doing all they could to add
[40:52] Speaker 1: to the general panic. By Wednesday evening, however, it began
[40:55] Speaker 1: to be clear who was behind the revolt. All the
[40:58] Speaker 1: walls had been plastered with an inflammatory poster calling for
[41:02] Speaker 1: an immediate revolution and for the shooting of republican and
[41:06] Speaker 1: socialist leaders. It was signed by the Friends of Daruti.
[41:10] Speaker 1: On Thursday morning, the anarchists daily denied all knowledge or
[41:14] Speaker 1: sympathy with it, But La Batalla, the POUM paper, reprinted
[41:18] Speaker 1: the document with the highest praise. Barcelona, the first city
[41:22] Speaker 1: of Spain, was plunged into bloodshed by agent provocateurs using
[41:27] Speaker 1: this subversive organisation. This does not agree very completely with
[41:32] Speaker 1: the communist versions I've quoted above, but it will be
[41:35] Speaker 1: seen that even as it stands, it is self-contradictory. First,
[41:39] Speaker 1: the affair is described as a Trotskyist revolt. Then it
[41:43] Speaker 1: is shown to have resulted from a raid on the
[41:45] Speaker 1: telephone building and the general belief that the government was
[41:49] Speaker 1: out against the anarchists. The city is barricaded and both
[41:53] Speaker 1: CNT and UGT are behind the barricades. Two days afterwards
[41:58] Speaker 1: the inflammatory poster, actually a leaflet, appears and this is
[42:02] Speaker 1: declared by implication to have started the whole business. Effect
[42:07] Speaker 1: preceding cause. But there is a piece of very serious
[42:10] Speaker 1: misrepresentation here. Mr Langdon Davis describes the Friends of Daruti
[42:16] Speaker 1: and Libertarian Youth as controlled organisations of the POUM. Both
[42:22] Speaker 1: were anarchist organisations and had no connection with the POUM.
[42:27] Speaker 1: The Libertarian Youth was the youth league of the anarchists,
[42:30] Speaker 1: corresponding to the JSU of the PSUC etc. The Friends
[42:35] Speaker 1: of Daruti was a small organisation within the FAI and
[42:39] Speaker 1: was in general bitterly hostile to the POUM. So far
[42:42] Speaker 1: as I can discover, there was no one who was
[42:45] Speaker 1: a member of both. It would be about equally true
[42:48] Speaker 1: to say that the Socialist League is a controlled organisation
[42:52] Speaker 1: of the English Liberal Party. Was Mr Langdon Davies unaware
[42:56] Speaker 1: of this? If he was, he should have written with
[42:59] Speaker 1: more caution about this very complex subject. I am not
[43:04] Speaker 1: attacking Mr Langdon Davies' good faith, but admittedly he left
[43:08] Speaker 1: Barcelona as soon as the fighting was over. i.e. at
[43:12] Speaker 1: the moment when he could have begun serious inquiries, and
[43:15] Speaker 1: throughout his report there are clear signs that he has
[43:18] Speaker 1: accepted the official version of a Trotskyist revolt without sufficient verification.
[43:24] Speaker 1: This is obvious even in the extract I have quoted.
[43:28] Speaker 1: By nightfall the barricades are built, and at ten o'clock
[43:32] Speaker 1: the first volleys are fired. These are not the words
[43:35] Speaker 1: of an eyewitness. From this you would gather that it
[43:38] Speaker 1: is usual to wait for your enemy to build the
[43:40] Speaker 1: barricade before beginning to shoot at him. The impression given
[43:44] Speaker 1: is that some hours elapsed between the building of the
[43:47] Speaker 1: barricades and the firing of the first volleys, whereas, naturally,
[43:52] Speaker 1: it was the other way about. I and many others
[43:55] Speaker 1: saw the first volleys fired early in the afternoon. Again
[43:59] Speaker 1: there are the solitary men, usually fascists, who are shooting
[44:02] Speaker 1: from the rooftops. Mr Langdon Davis does not explain how
[44:06] Speaker 1: he knew that these men were fascists. Presumably, he did
[44:09] Speaker 1: not climb onto the roofs and ask them. He is
[44:12] Speaker 1: simply repeating what he has been told and, as it
[44:16] Speaker 1: fits in with the official version, it is not questioning it.
[44:20] Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, he indicates one probable source
[44:23] Speaker 1: of much of his information by an incautious reference to
[44:27] Speaker 1: the Minister of Propaganda at the beginning of his article.
[44:31] Speaker 1: Foreign journalists in Spain were hopelessly at the mercy of
[44:33] Speaker 1: the Ministry of Propaganda, though one would think that the
[44:36] Speaker 1: very name of this ministry would be a sufficient warning.
[44:40] Speaker 1: The Minister of Propaganda was, of course, about as likely
[44:43] Speaker 1: to give an objective account of the Barcelona trouble as, say,
[44:47] Speaker 1: the late Lord Carson would have been to give an
[44:50] Speaker 1: objective account of the Dublin Rising of 1916. I have
[44:54] Speaker 1: given reasons for thinking that the communist version of the
[44:57] Speaker 1: Barcelona fighting cannot be taken seriously. In addition, I must
[45:02] Speaker 1: say something about the general charge that the POUM was
[45:05] Speaker 1: a secret fascist organisation. in the pay of Franco and Hitler.
[45:11] Speaker 1: This charge was repeated over and over in the communist press,
[45:14] Speaker 1: especially from the beginning of 1937 onwards. It was part
[45:19] Speaker 1: of the worldwide drive of the official communist party against Trotskyism,
[45:23] Speaker 1: of which the POUM was supposed to be representative in Spain. Trotskyism,
[45:28] Speaker 1: according to Frante Rojo, the Valencia communist paper, is not
[45:34] Speaker 1: a political doctrine. Trotskyism is an official capitalist organisation, a
[45:40] Speaker 1: fascist terrorist hand occupied in crime and sabotage against the people.
[45:45] Speaker 1: The POUM was a Trotskyist organisation in league with the
[45:49] Speaker 1: fascists and part of Franco's fifth column. What was noticeable
[45:53] Speaker 1: from the start was that no evidence was produced in
[45:56] Speaker 1: support of this accusation. The thing was simply asserted with
[46:00] Speaker 1: an air of authority and the attack was made with
[46:03] Speaker 1: the maximum of personal libel. and with complete irresponsibility as
[46:07] Speaker 1: to any effects it might have upon the war. Compared
[46:10] Speaker 1: with the job of libelling the POUM, many communist writers
[46:14] Speaker 1: appear to have considered the betrayal of military secrets unimportant.
[46:19] Speaker 1: In a February number of the Daily Worker, for instance,
[46:22] Speaker 1: a writer, Winifred Bates, is allowed to state that the
[46:25] Speaker 1: POUM had only half as many troops on its section
[46:29] Speaker 1: of the front as it pretended. This was not true.
[46:33] Speaker 1: but presumably the writer believed it to be true. She
[46:36] Speaker 1: and the daily worker were perfectly willing, therefore, to hand
[46:39] Speaker 1: to the enemy one of the most important pieces of
[46:41] Speaker 1: information that can be handed through the columns of a newspaper.
[46:46] Speaker 1: In the New Republic, Mr Ralph Bates stated that the
[46:49] Speaker 1: POUM troops were playing football with the fascists in No
[46:52] Speaker 1: Man's Land at a time when, as a matter of fact,
[46:56] Speaker 1: the POUM troops were suffering heavy casualties and a number
[47:00] Speaker 1: of my personal friends were killed and wounded. Again, there
[47:04] Speaker 1: was the malignant cartoon which was widely circulated, first in
[47:08] Speaker 1: Madrid and later in Barcelona, representing the POUM as slipping
[47:12] Speaker 1: off a mask marked with the hammer and sickle and
[47:15] Speaker 1: revealing a face marked with the swastika. Had the government
[47:19] Speaker 1: not been virtually under communist control, it would never have
[47:23] Speaker 1: permitted a thing of this kind to be circulated in wartime.
[47:27] Speaker 1: It was a deliberate blow at the morale not only
[47:29] Speaker 1: of the POUM militia, but of any others who happened
[47:32] Speaker 1: to be near them. for it is not encouraging to
[47:35] Speaker 1: be told that the troops next to you in the
[47:37] Speaker 1: line are traitors. As a matter of fact, I doubt
[47:40] Speaker 1: whether the abuse that was heaped upon them from the
[47:42] Speaker 1: rear actually had the effect of demoralising the POUM militia,
[47:47] Speaker 1: but certainly it was calculated to do so, and those
[47:50] Speaker 1: responsible for it must be held to have put political
[47:53] Speaker 1: spite before anti-fascist unity. The accusation against the POUM amounted
[47:59] Speaker 1: to this, that a body of some scores of thousands
[48:02] Speaker 1: of people almost entirely working class, besides numerous foreign helpers
[48:07] Speaker 1: and sympathisers, mostly refugees from fascist countries, and thousands of militia,
[48:14] Speaker 1: was simply a vast spying organisation in fascist pay, and
[48:19] Speaker 1: not the rank and file. But this was merely an
[48:22] Speaker 1: attempt to detach the rank and file from their leaders.
[48:25] Speaker 1: The nature of the accusation implied that ordinary members, militiamen
[48:29] Speaker 1: and so forth, were all in the plot together. for
[48:32] Speaker 1: it was obvious that if Nin, Gorkin and the others
[48:35] Speaker 1: were really in fascist pay, it was more likely to
[48:38] Speaker 1: be known to their followers, who were in contact with them,
[48:41] Speaker 1: than to journalists in London, Paris and New York. And
[48:44] Speaker 1: in any case, when the POUM was suppressed, the communist-controlled
[48:48] Speaker 1: secret police acted on the assumption that all were guilty alike,
[48:52] Speaker 1: and arrested everyone connected with the POUM, whom they could
[48:56] Speaker 1: lay hands on, including even wounded men, hospital nurses, wives
[49:00] Speaker 1: of POUM members, and in some cases even children. Finally,
[49:06] Speaker 1: on 15th to 16th of June, the POUM was suppressed
[49:10] Speaker 1: and declared an illegal organisation. This was one of the
[49:13] Speaker 1: first acts of the Negran government, which came into office
[49:17] Speaker 1: in May. When the Executive Committee of the POUM had
[49:20] Speaker 1: been thrown into jail, the communist press produced what purported
[49:24] Speaker 1: to be the discovery of an enormous fascist plot. For
[49:28] Speaker 1: a while, the communist press of the whole world was
[49:31] Speaker 1: flaming with this kind of thing. Daily Worker, 21st of June,
[49:35] Speaker 1: summarizing various Spanish communist papers, Spanish Trotskyists plot with Franco.
[49:42] Speaker 1: Following the arrest of a large number of leading Trotskyists
[49:45] Speaker 1: in Barcelona and elsewhere, there became known, over the weekend,
[49:49] Speaker 1: details of one of the most ghastly pieces of espionage
[49:53] Speaker 1: ever known in wartime, and the ugliest revelation of Trotskyist
[49:58] Speaker 1: treachery to date. Documents in the possession of the police,
[50:01] Speaker 1: together with the full confession of no less than 200
[50:05] Speaker 1: persons under arrest, prove, etc., etc. What these revelations proved
[50:12] Speaker 1: was that the POUM leaders were transmitting military secrets to
[50:15] Speaker 1: General Franco by radio, were in touch with Berlin and
[50:19] Speaker 1: were acting in collaboration with the secret fascist organisation in Madrid.
[50:25] Speaker 1: In addition, there were sensational details about secret messages in
[50:28] Speaker 1: Invisible Ink. A mysterious document signed with the letter N,
[50:33] Speaker 1: standing for Nin, and so on and so forth. But
[50:38] Speaker 1: the final upshot was this. Six months after the event,
[50:41] Speaker 1: as I write, most of the POUM leaders are still
[50:45] Speaker 1: in jail, but they have never been brought to trial.
[50:48] Speaker 1: And the charges of communicating with Franco by radio, etc.,
[50:52] Speaker 1: have never even been formulated. Had they really been guilty
[50:56] Speaker 1: of espionage, they would have been tried and shot in
[50:59] Speaker 1: a week, as so many fascist spies had been previously.
[51:03] Speaker 1: But not a scrap of evidence was ever produced, except
[51:06] Speaker 1: the unsupported statements in the communist press. As for the
[51:10] Speaker 1: 200 full confessions, which, if they had existed, would have
[51:14] Speaker 1: been enough to convict anybody, they have never been heard
[51:18] Speaker 1: of again. They were, in fact, 200 efforts of somebody's imagination.
[51:24] Speaker 1: More than this, most of the members of the Spanish
[51:26] Speaker 1: government have disclaimed all belief in the charges against the POUM. Recently,
[51:31] Speaker 1: the cabinet decided by 5 to 2 in favour of
[51:34] Speaker 1: releasing anti-fascist political prisoners, the two dissentients being the communist ministers.
[51:42] Speaker 1: In August, an international delegation headed by James Maxton MP
[51:46] Speaker 1: went to Spain to inquire into the charges against the
[51:49] Speaker 1: POUM and the disappearance of Andres Nin. Prieto, the Minister
[51:55] Speaker 1: of National Defence, Erujo, the Minister of Justice, Zuga Zagotia,
[52:02] Speaker 1: Minister of the Interior, Ortega y Gasset, the Procura General, Prat,
[52:08] Speaker 1: Garcia and others all repudiated any belief in the POUM
[52:12] Speaker 1: leaders being guilty of espionage. Irujo added that he had
[52:16] Speaker 1: been through the dossier of the case, that none of
[52:19] Speaker 1: the so-called pieces of evidence would bear examination, and that
[52:23] Speaker 1: the document supposed to have been signed by Nin was valueless, i.e.
[52:28] Speaker 1: a forgery. Prieto considered the POUM leaders to be responsible
[52:33] Speaker 1: for the May fighting in Barcelona and but dismissed the
[52:36] Speaker 1: idea of there being fascist spies. What is most grave,
[52:40] Speaker 1: he added, is that the arrest of the POUM leaders
[52:44] Speaker 1: was not decided upon by the government, and the police
[52:47] Speaker 1: carried out these arrests on their own authority. Those responsible
[52:51] Speaker 1: are not the heads of the police, but their entourage,
[52:55] Speaker 1: which has been infiltrated by the communists according to their
[52:58] Speaker 1: usual custom. He cited other cases of illegal arrests by
[53:02] Speaker 1: the police. Irujo likewise declared that the police had become
[53:06] Speaker 1: quasi-independent and were in reality under the control of foreign
[53:11] Speaker 1: communist elements. Prieto hinted fairly broadly to the delegation that
[53:17] Speaker 1: the government could not afford to offend the communist party
[53:20] Speaker 1: while the Russians were supplying arms. When another delegation, headed
[53:25] Speaker 1: by John McGovern MP, went to Spain in December, they
[53:28] Speaker 1: got much the same answers as before. Anzugo Zagoitia the
[53:33] Speaker 1: Minister of the Interior repeated Prieto's hint in even plainer terms.
[53:38] Speaker 1: We have received aid from Russia and have had to
[53:41] Speaker 1: permit certain actions which we did not like. As an
[53:45] Speaker 1: illustration of the autonomy of the police, it is interesting
[53:48] Speaker 1: to learn that even with a signed order from the
[53:50] Speaker 1: Director of Prisons and the Ministry of Justice, McGovern and
[53:54] Speaker 1: the others could not obtain admission to one of the
[53:57] Speaker 1: secret prisons maintained by the Communist Party in Barcelona. For
[54:02] Speaker 1: reports on the two delegations, see Le Populaire, 7th September,
[54:08] Speaker 1: La Leche, 18th September, report on the Maxton delegation published
[54:14] Speaker 1: by Independent News, 219 Gros Saint-Denis, Paris, and McGovern's pamphlet
[54:22] Speaker 1: terror in Spain. I think this should be enough to
[54:25] Speaker 1: make the matter clear. The accusation of espionage against the
[54:29] Speaker 1: POUM rested solely upon articles in the communist press and
[54:33] Speaker 1: the activities of the communist-controlled secret police. The POUM leaders
[54:38] Speaker 1: and hundreds or thousands of their followers are still in prison,
[54:42] Speaker 1: and for six months past, the communist press has continued
[54:45] Speaker 1: to clamour for the execution of the traitors. But Negan
[54:50] Speaker 1: and the others have kept their heads and refused to
[54:53] Speaker 1: stage a wholesale massacre of Trotskyists. Considering the pressure that
[54:57] Speaker 1: has been put upon them, it is greatly to their
[55:00] Speaker 1: credit that they have done so. Meanwhile, in face of
[55:03] Speaker 1: what I have quoted above, it becomes very difficult to
[55:06] Speaker 1: believe that the POUM was really a fascist spying organisation,
[55:11] Speaker 1: unless one also believes that Maxton, McGovern, Prieto, Irujo, Zuga
[55:17] Speaker 1: Zagoitia and the rest are all in fascist pay together. Finally,
[55:23] Speaker 1: as to the charge that the POUM was Trotskyist, This
[55:27] Speaker 1: word is now flung about with greater and greater freedom,
[55:30] Speaker 1: and it is used in a way that is extremely misleading,
[55:33] Speaker 1: and is often intended to mislead. It is worth stopping
[55:37] Speaker 1: to define it. The word Trotskyist is used to mean
[55:41] Speaker 1: three distinct things. 1. One who, like Trotsky, advocates world
[55:47] Speaker 1: revolution as against socialism in a single country. More loosely,
[55:52] Speaker 1: a revolutionary extremist. 2. a member of the actual organisation
[55:58] Speaker 1: of which Trotsky is head. 3. A disguised fascist posing
[56:03] Speaker 1: as a revolutionary who acts especially by sabotage in the USSR,
[56:09] Speaker 1: but in general by splitting and undermining the left-wing forces.
[56:14] Speaker 1: In sense 1, the POUM could probably be described as Trotskyist.
[56:19] Speaker 1: So can the English ILP, the German SAP, the left
[56:23] Speaker 1: socialists in France, and so on. but the POUM had
[56:27] Speaker 1: no connection with Trotsky or the Trotskyist Bolshevik-Leninist organisation. When
[56:33] Speaker 1: the war broke out, the foreign Trotskyists who came to Spain,
[56:37] Speaker 1: 15 or 20 in number, worked at first for the
[56:40] Speaker 1: POUM as the party nearest to their own viewpoint, but
[56:44] Speaker 1: without becoming party members. Later, Trotsky ordered his followers to
[56:49] Speaker 1: attack the POUM policy and the Trotskyists were purged from
[56:53] Speaker 1: the party offices though a few remained in the militia. Nin,
[56:58] Speaker 1: the POUM leader, after Moran's capture by the fascists, was
[57:02] Speaker 1: at one time Trotsky's secretary, but had left him some
[57:05] Speaker 1: years earlier and formed the POUM by the amalgamation of
[57:09] Speaker 1: various opposition communists with an earlier party, the Workers' and
[57:14] Speaker 1: Peasants' Bloc. Nin's one-time association with Trotsky has been used
[57:19] Speaker 1: in the communist press to show that the POUM was
[57:22] Speaker 1: really Trotskyist. By the same line of argument it could
[57:26] Speaker 1: be shown that the English Communist Party is really a
[57:29] Speaker 1: fascist organisation because of Mr John Strakey's one-time association with
[57:34] Speaker 1: Sir Oswald Mosley. In sense two, the only exactly defined
[57:39] Speaker 1: sense of the word, the POUM was certainly not Trotskyist.
[57:44] Speaker 1: It is important to make this distinction because it is
[57:46] Speaker 1: taken for granted by the majority of communists that a Trotskyist,
[57:51] Speaker 1: in sense two, is invariably a Trotskyist in sense three, i.e.
[57:56] Speaker 1: that the whole Trotskyist organisation is simply a fascist spying machine.
[58:01] Speaker 1: Trotskyism only came into public notice in the time of
[58:04] Speaker 1: the Russian sabotage trials, and to call a man a
[58:07] Speaker 1: Trotskyist is practically equivalent to calling him a murderer, agent provocateur, etc.
[58:14] Speaker 1: But at the same time, anyone who criticises communist policy
[58:17] Speaker 1: from a left-wing standpoint is liable to be denounced as
[58:20] Speaker 1: a Trotskyist. Is it then asserted that everyone professing revolutionary
[58:26] Speaker 1: extremism is in fascist pay? In practice it is or
[58:30] Speaker 1: is not, according to local convenience. When Maxton went to
[58:34] Speaker 1: Spain with the delegation, I have mentioned above Verdad, Fuente
[58:39] Speaker 1: Rojo and other Spanish communist papers instantly denounced him as
[58:44] Speaker 1: a Trotskyist fascist, spy of the Gestapo and so forth.
[58:48] Speaker 1: Yet the English communists were careful not to repeat this accusation.
[58:52] Speaker 1: In the English Communist press, Maxton becomes merely a reactionary
[58:56] Speaker 1: enemy of the working class, which is conveniently vague. The reason,
[59:01] Speaker 1: of course, is simply that several sharp lessons have given
[59:04] Speaker 1: the English Communist press a wholesome dread of the law
[59:07] Speaker 1: of libel. The fact that the... accusation was not repeated
[59:11] Speaker 1: in a country where it might have to be proved
[59:13] Speaker 1: is sufficient confession that it is a lie. It may
[59:18] Speaker 1: seem that I have discussed the accusations against the POUM
[59:21] Speaker 1: at greater length than was necessary. Compared with the huge
[59:25] Speaker 1: miseries of a civil war, this kind of internecine squabble
[59:29] Speaker 1: between parties is with its inevitable injustices and false accusations,
[59:34] Speaker 1: may appear trivial. It is not really so. I believe
[59:39] Speaker 1: that libels and press campaigns of this kind, and the
[59:42] Speaker 1: habits of mind they indicate, are capable of doing the
[59:45] Speaker 1: most deadly damage to the anti-fascist cause. Anyone who has
[59:50] Speaker 1: given the subject a glance knows that the communist tactic
[59:54] Speaker 1: of dealing with political opponents by means of trumped-up accusations
[59:58] Speaker 1: is nothing new. Today the key word is Trotsky fascist.
[1:00:03] Speaker 1: Yesterday it was social fascist. It is only six or
[1:00:07] Speaker 1: seven years since the Russian state trials proved that the
[1:00:11] Speaker 1: leaders of the Second International, including, for instance, Leon Blum
[1:00:15] Speaker 1: and prominent members of the British Labour Party, were hatching
[1:00:18] Speaker 1: a huge plot for the military invasion of the USSR.
[1:00:22] Speaker 1: Yet today the French communists are glad enough to accept
[1:00:25] Speaker 1: Blum as a leader. and the English communists are raising
[1:00:28] Speaker 1: heaven and earth to get inside the Labour Party. I
[1:00:31] Speaker 1: doubt whether this kind of thing pays, even from a
[1:00:34] Speaker 1: sectarian point of view. And meanwhile, there is no possible
[1:00:37] Speaker 1: doubt about the hatred and dissension that the Trotsky fascist
[1:00:41] Speaker 1: accusation is causing. Rank-and-file communists everywhere are led away on
[1:00:46] Speaker 1: a senseless witch-hunt after Trotskyists, and parties of the type
[1:00:50] Speaker 1: of the POUM are driven back into the terribly sterile
[1:00:53] Speaker 1: position being mere anti-communist parties. There is already the beginning
[1:00:58] Speaker 1: of a dangerous split in the world working-class movement. A
[1:01:01] Speaker 1: few more libels against lifelong socialists, a few more frame-ups
[1:01:06] Speaker 1: like the charges against the POUM, and the split may
[1:01:09] Speaker 1: become irreconcilable. The only hope is to keep political controversy
[1:01:14] Speaker 1: on a plane where exhaustive discussions is possible. Between the
[1:01:18] Speaker 1: communists and those who stand or claim to stand to
[1:01:21] Speaker 1: the left of them, there is a real difference in
[1:01:25] Speaker 1: The communists hold that fascism can be beaten by alliance
[1:01:27] Speaker 1: with sections of the capitalist class, the popular front. Their
[1:01:32] Speaker 1: opponents hold that this manoeuvre simply gives fascism new breeding grounds.
[1:01:37] Speaker 1: The question has got to be settled. To make the
[1:01:40] Speaker 1: wrong decision may be to land ourselves in for centuries
[1:01:43] Speaker 1: of semi-slavery. But so long as no argument is produced
[1:01:48] Speaker 1: except a scream of Trotsky fascist, the discussion cannot even begin.
[1:01:53] Speaker 1: It would be impossible for me, for instance, to debate
[1:01:56] Speaker 1: the rights and wrongs of the Barcelona fighting with a
[1:01:59] Speaker 1: Communist Party member, because no Communist, that is to say
[1:02:03] Speaker 1: no good Communist, could admit that I have given a
[1:02:06] Speaker 1: truthful account of the facts. If he followed his party
[1:02:10] Speaker 1: line dutifully, he would have to declare that I am
[1:02:12] Speaker 1: lying or, at best, that I am hopelessly misled and
[1:02:16] Speaker 1: that anyone who glanced at the daily worker headlines a
[1:02:19] Speaker 1: thousand miles from the scene of events... knows more of
[1:02:22] Speaker 1: what was happening in Barcelona than I do. In such
[1:02:26] Speaker 1: circumstances there can be no argument. The necessary minimum of
[1:02:31] Speaker 1: agreement cannot be reached. What purpose is served by saying
[1:02:35] Speaker 1: that men like Maxton are in fascist pay? Only the
[1:02:39] Speaker 1: purpose of making serious discussion impossible. It is as though
[1:02:43] Speaker 1: in the middle of a chess tournament one competitor should
[1:02:46] Speaker 1: suddenly begin screaming that the other is guilty of arson
[1:02:50] Speaker 1: or bigamy. The point that is really at issue remains untouched.
[1:02:55] Speaker 1: Libel settles nothing. End of chapter 11.

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