‘CONCLUSION’ Lewis H Mates The final version of this was published in The Spanish Civil War and the British Left: Political Activism and the Popular Front (I.B. Tauris, 2007), pp.209–226 The consequences of the popular frontist left‟s view that the conflict in Spain and the popular front at home were inextricably bound, were immense. While the popular front was certainly „an irrelevance‟ as far as much of the labour movement were concerned, it was very relevant to explaining a good deal of the politics – or lack thereof – of the Spanish aid campaigns and the reasons for the lack of a serious, sustained and coherent challenge to the movement‟s national leadership over the issue of action on Spain. [1 It is clear that in many ways, the popular front, as it applied to the thinking and praxis of the Labour left and CP, was actually inimical to providing the Spanish Republic with what it needed to fight Franco. Essentially, the Republic needed arms. As a Spanish anarchist, León Filipe, was prevented from telling a European labour movement congress on Spain in Paris in spring 1937: „We Spaniards are greatly thankful for your charity and the lint and ointments which you send us to repair Don Quixote‟s wounds; but we should be much more thankful if you were to outfit him with a new lance and an up-to-date shield”. [2 The best way of procuring arms was for the Republic to be able to buy them on the open market; i.e. for Non-Intervention to be lifted. As Lt. Comm. Fletcher MP said at a Seaham CLP meeting in January 1939: „when history came to be written, if the Spanish government lost it would be said that it was not Italian and German intervention which finally turned the scale, but the economic intervention of this country, under the Non-Intervention committee‟. 3 Before this time, too, this message was sometimes clear from the public platform. The resolution passed at a Unity Campaign meeting at Marsden Miners‟ Hall in March 1937, for example, demanded that „immediate steps be taken to help the Spanish people to get the guns and materials to enable them to inflict a crushing defeat upon the Fascist armies now invading Spain‟. [4 Yet, in various ways, aspects of the popular front served, over time, to divert activists from this simple truth. Those who fought in Spain from the north-east certainly did not represent a popular front in terms of their social and political backgrounds: they were drawn largely from the CP‟s sphere in the NUWM. However, the idea of the popular front‟s uniquely fashioned ability to combat fascism contributed to them not agitating for the end of Non-Intervention as they might have on the home front. When, in January 1939, ex-brigader Frank Graham argued for „Arms for Spain‟ and opposition to the National Government, he continued: „If I thought that we could save Spain without introducing politics into it then I would certainly refrain from doing so‟. [5 The desire to avoid introducing an audience to „politics‟ from the platform of a Labour Party meeting – a party that was also opposed to Non-Intervention – was symptomatic of the kind of rhetoric that the popular front had come to demand from its left-wing advocates, and certainly in regard to much of the activity on Spain. By this time, Graham had spent many weeks at home campaigning on the issue, much of it in the strictly humanitarian based Tyneside foodship 1 campaign. Indeed, in this respect the issue of Spain (humanitarian aid) distracted from Spain (the campaign against Non-Intervention). There was so much humanitarian campaigning going on during the time of the foodship that there was barely anything overtly political in terms of pro-Republic, anti-Non-Intervention demonstrations. Did activists in the foodship campaign even want to change government foreign policy on Spain? Some did, but many others, especially in this, the last and in some regards most impressive campaign, did not. In one respect, the negative influence of the popular front; i.e. the fear of it, may have yielded some limited benefits for the Republic‟s cause. Certainly, the County Durham demonstrations on the issue in June 1938 came in the context of a circular against the popular front. Yet, here Spain did not feed the popular front but distracted from it. But, like the national leadership, the regional leadership of the County Durham movement must have known that they had nothing to fear from the popular front. [6 A crucial problem for popular fronters was not being able firstly to determine whether to deploy the popular front as a strategy or a tactic, and, secondly, if a strategy, what was it a strategy for? If it was a tactic as applied to many of the Spanish aid campaigns; i.e. to eliminate as much as possible any revealing signs of partisanship in order to maximise the money raised, then there was a prima facie case in its favour. However, the tactic failed in that money appeared for the most part to come from those who were likely to have been pro-Republic and have donated anyway, with those hostile, and the middle-classes in general, broadly remaining so. (This changed to a degree in the Tyneside foodship campaign, partly because it was obvious to many of its opponents by this time that the Republic could not win). However, as a strategy for helping the Republic, the popular front was clearly counterproductive in this regard, as almost all of the politics of the Republic‟s struggle had been eliminated from most of the campaigns (and certainly the Tyneside foodship campaign, the most successful). In this respect, many of the Spanish aid campaigns bore comparison with the Jarrow March. The non-political march was tremendously successful in securing mainstream publicity, but in achieving this it had sacrificed its political message almost completely, to the extent of allowing Conservatives to become involved and even to emerge appearing as though they cared. [7 In both cases, Faust had done fairly badly on the deal. While the Tyneside foodship campaign, at least, mobilised impressive numbers of people, and reached many others (in terms of a charity asking for help), it and certain other Spanish aid campaigns‟ contribution to „antifascism‟ was more questionable. Certainly, a good deal of the rhetoric emerging from these campaigns was not capable of doing much to „awaken public opinion to the ineffectiveness of the National Government‟s foreign policy, and to the implications of the spread of Fascism‟. [8 Indeed, to a significant extent, the neutral humanitarian language of these campaigns served to detract from even a simple „fascism against democracy‟ understanding of what was going on in Spain. Clearly, in the case of these Spanish aid campaigns, it was not, contrary to what Cripps told Northumberland miners in 1937, „worth sacrificing everything to preserve unity in the face of united capitalism‟. [9 If these campaigns were the popular front in action, then it was not an honest policy: it deceived some of those who donated (admittedly probably very few) who genuinely thought that the aid went impartially to both 2 sides. It also deceived those making these claims, in that they convinced themselves that their actions were having some form of significant political impact. As secretary of Ashington ILP branch Chas Cole said „it was far better to do a little work honestly than an impressive looking amount of work and not be particular about its honesty‟. [10 Advocacy of the popular front within the labour movement also distracted many on the left from the Republic‟s cause. The popular frontist left used the situation of Spain as an example of where the labour movement was going wrong at that moment, and asserted that Spain could only be saved by a popular front. Thus, the popular frontist left did not particularly engage the Labour leadership specifically on the issue of Spain within the movement: it invariably became an argument about the popular front. Somewhat ironically, when popular fronters got their labour movement debate on the popular front, they often did not seem to want it. Certainly, Cripps did not take his chance to debate the issue when defending himself at the 1939 Whitsun Labour conference. [11 Likewise, speaking at a Wansbeck CLP meeting, while in the process of being expelled from the Labour Party over the issue, C.P. Trevelyan complained to his wife that he could not keep the debate „to the expulsion of Cripps. The debate would go on to the merits of the Popular Front‟. [12 Presumably, on these occasions popular fronters knew that their cause was not actually that popular amongst the rank-and-file, and recognised that their arguments had been, and remained, unconvincing. Associating the Republic‟s cause with the popular front project within the party played into the leadership‟s hands as the battleground shifted from the issue of Spain, where many rank-and-filers did want more action; to the popular front, which never had anything like a majority following within the constituencies. Due to the popular front‟s association with the CP, the leadership could easily play the anti-Communist card, neutralising most objections in an instant. The national leadership thus pointed to the association of some activities on Spain with popular fronters as an excuse not to act. Nevertheless, this was simply an excuse. The leadership knew that it had far more to fear from its own membership who were not popular fronters but who wanted more concerted action on Spain. For left popular fronters, the campaigns around Spain served to show how the cooperation they advocated might work in practice. But this was a mirage, and must have been recognised as such by Labour leaders, at least those at a regional level. Alternatively, was the popular front a tactic for political campaigning; i.e. to build as broad-based a movement as possible around an issue? It was certainly viable for this, if only those on the popular frontist left had not insisted on rigidly applying the humanitarian message in many of the Spanish aid campaigns. True, any campaign with a clear pro-Republican message was unlikely to have attracted the patronage of figures like C.V.H. Vincent, but surely, the Republic could do without friends like him. Any such campaign would have been based on a „fascism against democracy‟ discourse and been able to employ only democratic methods, but it would still have been something akin to a popular front: i.e. a mass cross-party, cross-class alliance with a specific „political‟ aim. However, with a handful of exceptional cases – some (a very few) of the Spanish aid campaigns that demonstrated about Non-Intervention to a limited extent – this popular front pro-Republican movement did not exist in the north-east. Perhaps the popular front was best understood as a strategy for 3 achieving parliamentary power by building a progressive alliance? If so, this would detract from the campaign for the Republic as it demanded the building of close links on a sufficient number of foreign and domestic issues in order to create a programme that could be put before the electorate. Ending Non-Intervention no longer became the sole issue around which to act; it was only one of very many that needed to be agreed on. Furthermore, it postponed the possibility of doing much about NonIntervention until a general election had been held and won. Indeed, Labour popular fronters like G.D.H. Cole criticised Cripps‟ memorandum for weakening the popular front‟s case by depicting it as an electoral strategy rather than as a way of immediately mobilising public opinion against government foreign policy. This allowed the NEC to retort that Cripps was „surrendering socialism‟. [13 Thus, the short-term goal of saving Spain was likely to be lost from sight in the wrangling over agreeing a programme for the longer-term. As a strategy for achieving parliamentary power, the popular front demanded an even more strictly constitutional approach; there could be no talk of industrial direct action and other unconstitutional action to force the government to lift Non-Intervention if the force making the demands was planning to take power constitutionally. In this respect, popular fronters and some non-popular fronters in the labour movement agreed. W.J. Stewart MP, for example, told a „Spanish relief fund‟ meeting that there was „no greater crime‟ than preventing the Spanish government from getting arms, and commented on the need to get people in the Commons who „understand the workers‟ position‟. [14 However, other Labour parliamentarians like Nye Bevan recognised „There was only one way to bring Tories to reason – by trouble outside‟. [15 Yet the popular front only allowed for certain kinds of „trouble outside‟: the acceptable forms of protest such as demonstrations that the government could, and did, ignore (as in the well publicised case of the Jarrow marchers). Some popular fronters claimed that their cause was both an electoral alliance and a way of creating a mass movement against government support for Non-Intervention. But these were two quite distinct projects that demanded different types of language, institutional forms and levels of political understanding and commitment in order to work. In the event, popular fronters‟ efforts often fell between the two poles; they certainly did not achieve a campaigning movement for the Republic against NonIntervention (due to the humanitarianism). The extent to which the popular front (in terms of Liberal-Labour cooperation) could have worked at a parliamentary election was a separate question. Even ILPer Fenner Brockway argued that the popular front was a useful temporary tactic for purely electoral purposes in countries like France and Spain with proportional second ballot voting systems. [16 In the north-east, certainly, a „progressive‟ electoral alliance was highly unlikely. However, Martin Pugh has shown that in some constituencies local popular front pacts were likely in the event of a 1939 or 1940 general election. [17 But these fundamentally entailed cooperation between Labour and Liberals, the Communists were only an annoyance and generally regarded as a hindrance in electoral terms. Still, they undermine Fyrth‟s claim that the Spanish aid campaigns were the closest thing to a popular front in Britain. It seems a popular front as defined as a progressive electoral alliance of Labour and Liberal was viable in some localities. The Spanish aid campaigns were perhaps the closest that the CP came to involvement in a British popular front, which illustrated 4 merely how politically isolated the party remained, in spite of all its post-1935 efforts. Some subsequent commentators on the popular front have gone even further and claimed not only was it the right way to defeat fascism, but that it was also the correct strategy for achieving socialism. [18 This seems untenable. Certainly, the evidence suggests that very few were brought to a pro-Republican viewpoint by their involvement in the predominantly humanitarian Spanish aid campaigns. If they could not achieve even this limited form of consciousness, then to expect some to convert to Communism seems to be asking too much. Indeed, the popular front has taken on an almost mythic quality for some commentators who were active at the time. It is treated as a kind of political nirvana, a golden age when the CP had all the answers; it was apparently the „most fruitful period in the history of the British left and of the Communist Party in particular‟. [19 Indeed, in much of this treatment the unhelpful reality that the Republic lost, and did so in large part because of the British government‟s foreign policy, seems almost forgotten. But lose the Republic did, and the extent to which the British left (and the British people) had, in Jim Atkinson‟s words, „the blood of these [Franco‟s] victims on our own heads‟ as a result of the political choices made, was, and remains, an important matter for debate. [20 Michael Foot wrote: „Maybe the Popular Front was always a desperate, forlorn bid. But what other card in the Socialist hand was there left to play? Better this than the infuriating inertia of official Labour in the face of calamity‟. [21 John Saville commented similarly. [22 Yet there were other choices between the „unpopular front‟ and inertia. [23 Indeed, advocacy of the popular front actually helped to bolster that inertia, certainly when it came to the mainstream movement‟s role on Spain. The labour leadership certainly could have done a good deal more than it did. But poor, uninspired and short-sighted leadership was no excuse for failings on the part of much of the left, which was awestruck by the Soviet achievement and keen to support any policy that carried the international Communist movement‟s endorsement. Clearly, a strong case could be made that the British labour movement leaders would never have supported strike action as in 1920 or 1926; or perhaps, that the British working-class was too conservative to have gone along with such a policy; or that it might have done, but not in 1936 when so much of the (minority organised) working-class was apathetic, its fighting spiriting crushed by defeat in 1926 and the depression and unemployment that followed. [24 Even in South Wales, Hywel Francis‟ work suggests that the miners were not in a position to challenge the government with a political strike, even had the CP encouraged them to try rather than scuppered their efforts. Yet much of the Labour left made little concerted effort to force the issue of what to do about Spain within the labour movement without accompanying it with calls for a popular front. At the same time a good degree of the popular fronters‟ efforts were dedicated not to forming grassroots alliances within the movement to push a call for radical action against Non-Intervention on Spain, but rather in attempting to build the illusive „People‟s Front from below‟ by inspiring essentially humanitarian campaigns. [25 These collected, in some instances, impressive sums of money, but nothing like what the labour movement could raise if it put its mind to it. Furthermore, the energy spent and the political sacrifices made in no way justified the sums raised which could at best help to 5 feed a starving population, or poorly armed soldiers, while the Republic succumbed to a far better armed and supported enemy. As with the Spanish Republic, the popular front policy, as it applied to activism on Spain, did not do much for the CP in the north-east. The district party recruited during the period, but it remained in strictly numerical terms far weaker than it had been even in September 1927, when the majority of the miners‟ lockout recruits had come and gone. The calibre of north-east recruits to the party after July 1936 was unclear, though, unlike pre-1935 members, many were unlikely to have regarded the popular front as merely a temporary expedient to defeat fascism in the short-term. What was clear was the calibre of those the party had lost, both permanently and in the shorter-term, in Spain. Permanently, it lost two well-known activists and several other committed militants, all of whom were irreplaceable for a party of such scant means. But it also lost many more activists, especially from the NUWM, momentarily, and the decline of the NUWM in this period must have had a deep relationship with it losing many of its dedicated members. Many of those who went to Spain had inspiring and life changing experiences. Many, of course, did not return. Of those who did, some then dedicated their lives to the CP. Others remained dedicated to the memory of what happened in Spain, but could not reconcile themselves to what the CP then did in the short-term (the Hitler-Stalin pact and then declaring the war with Germany an „imperialist war‟ that was to be opposed) or the longer-term (Hungary 1956, Prague 1968, and so forth). Their families often suffered from losing loved ones, or having the main breadwinner return incapacitated. A handful within brigaders‟ families may have been politicised to a degree, but others were angered and alienated by their ordeals at the hands of complex and confused bureaucratic structures that often could not tell them for long periods of time if their loved ones were alive or dead. At home, while the sacrifice was „respected‟, it did not automatically translate into any kind of improved relations with Labour. Indeed, if anything the sacrifices that Communist activists were prepared to make in Spain merely served to underscore the vast differences in political outlook between them and many in the mainstream of the Labour Party. The party tried, as well, to engage Labour at home on solidarity efforts but these almost always came to nothing where there was not already a history of cooperation between the parties (in places like Blaydon). Indeed, the issue of solidarity work was as likely to cause division, especially when popular fronters attacked the official movement for doing very little on Spain. On occasion, these attacks appeared to stimulate official activity, but this was never with the „aggressor‟ party. When it did happen, the CP had undermined its own case that labour would not act alone and that only a popular front could save the Spanish Republic. (C.P .Trevelyan performed a similar role in his Labour Party: his activism on the issue appeared to absolve many other activists from taking action on the issue). If local labour wanted to act on Spain then this certainly did not lead it, ineluctably, into the arms either of the CP or of the popular front. In fact, much of the official movement was, and remained, hostile to cooperation with liberals (as were most north-east liberals hostile to cooperation as well) and in this sense the popular front policy was something of a millstone around the CP‟s neck in the region. It meant that, when the official labour movement was contemplating radical action on Spain in the summer 6 of 1938, the CP was in no position to be able to channel and inform these discussions. It remained muted and sidelined as much of the regional movement momentarily occupied a political space where the CP might have been had it not had to tone down its rhetoric in order to appeal to liberals. At a time when the CP was devoting a great deal of energy to the „non-political‟ humanitarian Spanish aid campaigns that yielded it so little, a policy openly calling for industrial direct action could have resonated through a significant section of the regional labour movement; in the same way its stance critical of the Durham miners‟ leadership in 1926 had chimed with many disenchanted miners. It is difficult to determine if the CP at district, branch and individual activist levels regarded everything it did at grassroots as somehow in accordance with, and the furthering of, the popular front. If it did, then part of the way in which the popular front was applied was for Communists to become involved in, indeed to establish, many of the Spanish aid campaigns, but, at the same time, to attempt to blend into them, and to disappear. This was the result of a policy that demanded no party politics within these campaigns and, often, no kind of partisan campaigning message for the wider public. But it seemed a little perverse for the party to adopt a policy of activity but invisibility within these campaigns and then to complain when no one noticed them. [26 Like the Jarrow marchers, the northeast CP found the „politics of self-effacement‟ brought scant reward. [27 The popular front produced some bizarre scenes indeed. At a YCL dance in Sunderland in late April 1937, where there was a presentation to a „comrade from Spain‟, Communists „showed their loyalty to the English throne by having played the national anthem and standing to attention during the playing of this‟. [28 This caused some confusion, too, for a correspondent to the Sunderland Echo who asked if Sunderland Communists were as loyal as their actions denoted; or were they merely being polite to guests at the dance other than themselves? „It has always been understood by the writer that Communists were definitely anti-royalist‟. [29 Similarly, in June 1937, a well-known South Shields Communist wrote to his local newspaper in praise of the Catholic Church‟s housing of Basque refugees. A. Codling, the brother of an International Brigader, called on other groups to follow the Catholic Church‟s example and to widen the support given to the children to other organisations in the area. This opened up Codling to attack and in early July, „Iconoclast‟ replied quoting the Catholic Times and other Catholic sources to argue that Catholics were solely involved in the campaign in order to stop the children getting into the hands of Communists. [30 Yet, on the whole, CP activists appeared simply to get on with the new popular front policy, as if its truth was a given and did not need to be justified. However, the full implications of the policy took some time to filter through, broadly coinciding with the CP‟s change in emphasis from agitation on the united to popular fronts in later 1937 and early 1938. Thus, the direct action that did happen on Spain, such as the Linaria dispute, and other attempts by activists within the labour movement to gain support for the tactic came in early 1937. Even then, though, left-wingers were divided over the right course of action. Thus, when Blyth left-winger „Janus‟, for example, attacked local Labour for inactivity on Spain in early January 1937, this did not accompany a call for industrial direct action, but rather for a greater degree „of working-class unity‟ and for Blyth Labour simply to „rouse‟ public opinion against Non-Intervention. [31 7 In 1938, while some popular fronters ignored industrial direct action altogether, others made overt attempts at depicting the policy in a militant light. Some saw no contradiction, in public at least, between advocacy of the popular front and industrial direct action. Yet, the popular front served merely to muddy the waters and confuse the issues when talked about in association with industrial direct action: the success of the former would surely have precluded the deployment of the latter (and vice versa). It was also clear that left-wingers who were strong advocates of the Republic spent far less time over the course of the conflict talking about the use of direct action than they did agitating for a popular front. This must surely have been because they regarded the popular front as the way to aid the Republic. That this effectively meant abandoning the possibility of using „undemocratic‟ tactics like industrial direct action was so unpalatable a truth that it was not even recognised as such, overtly at least, by some non-CP popular fronters. In general, while the reaction in the official movement to Spain at grassroots was highly complex, there was a fairly clear institutional divide. As might be expected, most trade unions at district and branch level tended to act solely on industrial matters, letting the Labour Party do the campaigning on Spain. This contrasted strongly with the national picture, of course, where, as Buchanan has shown, the unions largely determined the movement‟s stance on the issue. [32 The miners (and especially the DMA), were a significant exception to this (in terms of numbers and consequent influence), using both their industrial and political institutions to further this and other causes. Other unions mostly chose to show solidarity in the form of donations to Spain causes. There was also a good deal of diversity in the reaction of Labour Parties, too, over time, at separate institutional levels and in different localities. The local parties proved themselves to be, overall, the most dynamic and capable of donating and taking on a campaigning role before changes in national movement policy led the previously usually inactive constituency parties into (often short-lived) action. In 1936–7, many institutions on both wings of the movement appeared to consider making financial donations sufficient action on Spain. This changed in spring 1938. While most institutions continued to supply funds, many Labour Parties also began to accompany this with campaigning. Supplying funds alone after January 1938 did not appear to satisfy most parties, or the miners‟ unions, that they were doing enough. The LLP (sometimes the ward party), miners‟ lodge and, occasionally, union branch were often the units in which the individual activist could best effect their political beliefs. They were capable of giving form to political expression, albeit largely enacted through the traditional and accepted channels of demonstrations and door-to-door collections. In some regards, being closest to the grassroots, these units were the most likely to make an impact in their local geographical communities. Again, however, the response from sub-constituency sections was by no means uniform. Indeed, each separate institution at all levels had its own individual way of reacting to the conflict. These reactions could vary even between meetings, depending on who was and was not present at any given moment. Did Spain unite or divide the left? There was certainly a divide between much of the north-east rank-and-file and the national leadership, especially over the issue of a national conference in spring and summer 1938. However, this did not appear to have any long-term consequences; 8 there was no measurable exodus from the movement and certainly not into the arms of popular fronters in the region. [33 Loyalty played its part in this, coupled with the realisation that the regional movement had nowhere else to go. In the early period, too, there was a degree of anger and disenchantment at the national movement‟s support for Non-Intervention and even the DCFLP wanted a firm stance taken for a while. But, again, this did not have serious consequences. Ultimately, that the national leadership could refuse to act on repeated calls from so much of the regional movement (along with those from elsewhere in the country) and not suffer overly as a consequence, was testament both to the strength of loyalty and the perceived lack of alternatives. Other sections of the movement at grassroots level were satisfied at that time with fundraising activities, and in this albeit limited sense the movement had not completely vacated political space on the issue. Furthermore, institutions at grassroots level, and their interpenetration, often allowed those who wanted to become active on Spain to do so: if one institution they were involved in did nothing on Spain, there was often another that was active in some form. Thus, while some trades unions did, in different ways, constrain their members from working through them in meaningful ways, these individuals had other outlets, like trades councils or Labour Parties, through which to manifest their political concerns. Again, there was room to accommodate these aspirations within the structures of the official labour movement. More militant activists in elements of the north-east labour movement did not need to create „unofficial‟ rank-and-file movements in order to take action in the political sphere. The official machinery itself proved a perfectly adequate tool for the task, with the additional bonus, of course, of being „official‟. In this context, the DMA‟s stance was vital, and it actually performed a very similar institutional role on Spain to the supposedly far more militant and Communist inspired SWMF. In the north-east it donated more, and arguably campaigned more in some of the most significant ways than did any other north-east labour movement institution (though it did not endorse industrial direct action for Spain). Indeed, with a lack of internal lodge pressure from those aligned with International Brigaders (hardly any DMA members fought in Spain), the DMA‟s institutional response was in some senses more spontaneous than that of the South Wales miners. Certainly, if there was substance in Francis‟ concept of „proletarian internationalism‟ in the SWMF, then the DMA had a good claim to have been actuated by it too, notwithstanding the relative lack of internationalism manifest before 1936. [34 Official labour movement activists at local level were inhibited very little by nationally applied, supposed restrictions. They were only really constrained by their own politics, and their own view of the purpose of the institutions in which they operated. Thus, while the official movement was certainly divided as to what, if anything, to do on Spain before 1938, these divisions did not cause serious repercussions. Furthermore, the vast majority of north-east activists who wanted more action on Spain over time were never interested in the popular front and were not militant leftwingers. Thus, when the national leadership failed to organise a national conference in 1938 this was not a defeat for the left, but for „moderate‟ grassroots activists who merely wanted their movement to act more concertedly on issues that concerned them. It was also, if the north-east 9 was representative, another defeat for democracy in the labour movement; elements of which, at grassroots level, practised a form of representative democracy superior to that in operation in the main decision-making institutions of the national movement. As Buchanan wrote, the national leader‟s vision „was of an internationalism defined by and expressed through a small number of leaders; and certainly not an internationalism that could be used to mobilise and politicise the rank-and-file‟. [35 As nationally, so regionally „the labour movement was virtually unchanged in 1939 in terms of its structure and concept of political action‟. [36 Yet the official, moderate and loyal north-east movement had revealed that at times its concept of political action could include considering transgressing normal constitutional boundaries, as had occurred in more propitious times. One internal division that existed to differing degrees of intensity elsewhere in the country but not especially in the north-east was that engendered by the potential problems Spain bought for Catholic movement activists. This was due to the high degree of integration that they experienced in the region, in society generally and in the labour movement particularly. When, however, domestic issues that directly impinged on their lives emerged, Catholic activists in the regional movement did not hesitate to act in the defence of their interests. In fact, there were many factors including organisational (and therefore financial) weaknesses, apathy, deference to higher authorities within the movement (which were regarded occasionally as sufficiently active on the issue, or whose inactivity bred grassroots inactivity), other pressing charitable, local (and municipal), regional and international demands on time and resources within official institutions on both industrial and political wings that could all militate against solidarity support. In Sheffield and Birmingham, relations between the trades council and Labour Party were strained by the conflict. In Newcastle, there was an insignificant issue about which institution would foot the bill for a Spain meeting, but the more moderate party did not seek to impede the more radical trades council‟s action on Spain; indeed, the party officially supported the trades council‟s Spain initiatives. [37 In the north-east, domestic issues and personalities, often working through the divisions in the movement between the industrial and political wings, for example, were more divisive than the issue of Spain. More divisive, too, were the explicit united and popular front campaigns themselves, but even then this division was manifest in only a handful of expulsions from one CLP (Bishop Auckland). Spain had very little effect in uniting the Labour Party with the left parties outside it in the north-east. Thanks to the flexibility of their own institutions, many labour activists did not need to look outside to build cooperation on the issue. Most of those who did so were already favourable towards the CP and looking for an excuse for more joint work. While many of these activists also embraced explicit united and popular front projects, these links were not invariably made and there were cases of activists seemingly content to work with Communists on Spain who opposed all forms of formal unity with them and liberals. Spain demanded action between erstwhile comrades or parties that had acted together against fascism before (such as between the Socialist League, ILP and the CP). However, Spain appeared more prone to dividing than uniting, as it was the issue that tainted relations between the ILP and the CP in the region after the parties‟ activists had worked together so 10 effectively against home-grown fascism in the earlier 1930s. Spain also failed to prevent other divisions on the left, such as those between the Socialist League and ILP. Noreen Branson wrote that „It was clear that the anti-fascist cause in Spain was arousing more feeling among British working people than almost anything since the 1926 General strike‟. [38 She employed the example of the well-attended September 1936 Spain meeting in Newcastle to support this claim. Yet this was to downplay the anti-fascist struggle against the BUF in the earlier 1930s. Similarly, James Jupp asserted that the conflict in Spain united the left as the Republic‟s struggle was „more vital than the battles against the British Union of Fascists in the streets of London‟. [39 But the experiences of both forms of „anti-fascism‟ suggests that this was not the case in the north-east. Indeed, it is clear that the potential local threat of fascism provoked a more dynamic working-class response, both at the spontaneous street level and within some labour movement institutions. It was also clear that the „democracy against fascism‟ paradigm did not harness anything like the same forces that were at work in anti-fascism before 1935. The reasons for this contrast were partly to do with the nature of the issue. Spain was an international cause and therefore solidarity was more inclined to be manifest through official institutional channels, at the grassroots as well as nationally. It could not provoke the kind of spontaneous acts that a fascist presence on the streets facilitated in the earlier 1930s. The spontaneity that there was around Spain was evident in the creation of new institutions, but these still acted in some respect to limit and control, to channel energies often in essentially humanitarian directions. The response to some campaigns was often spontaneously generous, but that was it. Naturally, there remained room for more militant action, but the blacking of ships at an effective level had to be organised properly and as such was subject to the restricting influence of the trade unions, especially the NUS. However, a strong and clear stance maintained by militants could have facilitated the discussions over and implementation of various kinds of industrial direct action and allowed for its development in a more concerted and longer-lasting way than that which occurred. Thus, while the nature of the cause meant that the response was very different from that to the BUF in the earlier 1930s, the popular front also helped to determine these contrasts. It acted to silence or confuse most talk of militant tactics in this context and it even served to eliminate to a great extent a simple (anti-fascist), pro-Republican message from many of the Spanish aid campaigns. Its effect was to make the Spain campaigns, in significant ways, far less vital than those many activists in the region had enjoyed in the earlier 1930s. This was most obvious in the activism of the left-wingers in the Labour Party, and the CP and ILP outside it. They were united and militant in opposing the BUF before 1935, but increasingly disunited and less militant as the later 1930s progressed. [40 It was no coincidence that the acceptance and dissemination of the popular front policy occurred in between times. In this respect, the BUF‟s ability to maintain street-level activity in Battersea throughout the late 1930s offers some explanation of why Spain was better able to help unite the wider labour movement there. [41 Spain also radicalised the movement in Battersea, and it appeared to have this effect on sections of the official north-east movement too, albeit momentarily in 1938. Before 1935, north-east Labour leaders tended to 11 endorse the national leadership attitude, arguing that the BUF should be ignored in order to deny it publicity and that „socialism‟ would remedy the situation. [42 The CP‟s adoption of the popular front, combined with increasingly assertive and (potentially) militant sections of the official movement made for a good degree of role-reversal in the months after July 1936. Clearly, the north-east response to the BUF in the early 1930s was of little utility in predicting what would come after 1935. Don Watson wrote of the reaction in the north-east to Spain that „it is doubtful whether at any time before or since have so many of its people responded to an international cause‟. [43 Certainly, as far as the late 1930s were concerned, the Spain campaigns were clearly the most „popular‟ of the many international solidarity campaigns that emerged. However, this did not prevent Communist William Allan from condemning, in July 1938, the „Public indifference in this country to the plight of the people of Spain‟, which was „an indication that the claims of Englishmen to be lovers of fairplay were based upon a false legend‟. [44 Yet, Allan was complaining here of the lack of financial support for solidarity funds and the attitudes of some of those who did donate (as if „Spain‟ were a charity). In crucial respects, more important than the numbers involved were the forms this response took and their political effects. Jim Fyrth speculated that it was possible that the TUC became involved in the Basque Children‟s Committee and foodships as the „Aid Spain movement‟ had grown so large that the Labour leadership feared alienating too many activists. [45 He also claimed that the growing support for the Republic and the „Aid Spain movement‟ meant that the government was not more openly pro-Franco. [46 This latter claim seems somewhat desperate: it is difficult to see how the government could have been more pro-Franco short of actually supporting his forces militarily. British support for Non-Intervention remained because, according to Bill Moore, „the power of the appeasers was too strong in the absence of a really united working class … It was a division that was fatal to any hope of mounting a campaign strong enough to move the government…‟. [47 Yet this was unconvincing. Ultimately, the labour movement had the resources and power to tackle the government without the need for unity with the Communist Party, which only brought a few thousand activists and was, ultimately, more trouble than it was worth. The real division that mattered was most evident in the summer of 1938 when the left could have informed and furthered debates inside the labour movement about the use of direct action to save the Republic. Instead, in order to maintain „the appeal to the middle classes inherent in the Popular Front strategy‟, it remained largely silent on this issue, and the leadership could knowingly use the popular front as a stick to beat any kind of dissent. [48 In some respects, Trevelyan was right to claim that „people respond to those who believe in themselves‟. Yet the very policy he advocated when uttering these words, the popular front, suggested that he believed far more in the dictates of the Comintern than he did in the possibilities within his own movement. [49 However, in the „external‟ „Aid Spain‟ agitation, too, the popular front as applied by the CP and Labour left had problematic effects. Public opinion was clearly supportive of the Republic and activists harnessed this to some degree. The trouble was that they did so in ways that often did not particularly help the Republican cause, at least as far as undermining Non-Intervention was concerned. Indeed, the tactic of depoliticising many of the Spanish aid campaigns in order to achieve, supposedly, a popular 12 front, helped to seriously blunt these campaign‟s political edge. In many respects the Tyneside foodship campaign was emblematic of all that was inspiring about the Spanish aid campaigns and all that was wrong with them. It demanded and received tremendous amounts of energy and sacrifice from many people, but it had a negligible impact in terms of politicising those it touched and it did not, for the most part, even propagate a critique of government foreign policy. Indeed, some of the messages associated with it around neutrality on Spain probably brought negative repercussions for the Republic‟s cause. This was due in no small part to the effects of the popular front on left-wingers who ordinarily might have been expected to provide a clear militant critique of Non-Intervention and ideas for ways in which it could be attacked, as they had done for the Means Test. The popular front, as it affected the politics, rhetoric and actions of left-wing activists in Labour and the Communist Parties, went some way to explaining why a coherent, militant, politically focussed, mass movement against Non-Intervention capable of challenging the Labour movement leadership and the government never emerged in Britain. Instead, a great deal of energy, time and personal sacrifice from many who were dedicated to the Republican cause was dissipated in activities that brought this cause very little return. The popular front as operated by the Labour left and CP in the Spanish aid campaigns at grassroots in the north-east was far from fruitful for itself or for the campaign against Non Intervention; it was also highly doubtful that it yielded much in terms of advances for Labour in the post-war world. But it was, however, a strangely appropriate policy for Auden‟s „low dishonest decade‟. [50 Secondary sources cited in Conclusion Tom Buchanan, The Spanish Civil War and the British Labour Movement (Cambridge, 1991) José Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, Vol.2 (Sussex, 2005) Lewis Mates, „Debunking Myths‟, review essay of Matt Perry, The Jarrow Crusade: Protest and Legend, in North-East History, 38 (2006) James Jupp, The Radical Left in Britain, 1931–1941 (1982) Lewis Mates, „The North-east and the Campaigns for a Popular Front, 1938–39‟, Northern History, XLIII (2) (2006) G.D.H. Cole, A History of the Labour Party from 1914 (New York, 1969) G.D.H. Cole, The People‟s Front (1937) Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan 1897–1945 Vol. One (1962) Fenner Brockway, The Workers‟ Front (1938) Martin Pugh, „The Liberal Party and the Popular Front‟, English Historical Review, CXXI, 494 (2006) N. Branson, „Myths from Right and Left‟ in J. Fyrth (ed.), Britain, Fascism and the Popular Front (1985) J. Fyrth, „Introduction: In the Thirties‟, in Fyrth (ed.), Britain, Fascism John Saville, The Labour Movement in Britain: a Commentary (1988) Ben Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977) Jim Fyrth, „The Aid Spain Movement in Britain, 1936–39‟, History Workshop Journal, 35 (1993) Richard Croucher, We Refuse to Starve in Silence. A History of the National Unemployed Workers‟ Movement, 1920–46 (1987) Tom Buchanan, „Britain‟s Popular Front?: Aid Spain and the British Labour Movement‟, History Workshop Journal, 31 (1991) H. Francis, Miners Against Fascism. Wales and the Spanish Civil War (1984) Bill Moore, „“Aid for Spain” in Sheffield‟, in W. Albaya, J. Baxter, and B. Moore, Behind the Clenched Fist: Sheffield‟s „Aid to Spain‟, 1936–1939 (Sheffield, 1986) Peter D. Drake, „Labour and Spain: British Labour‟s Response to the Spanish Civil War with Particular Reference to the Labour Movement in Birmingham‟ (Birmingham University, M.Litt., 1977) 13 Noreen Branson, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1927–1941 (1985) N. Todd, In Excited Times. The People Against the Blackshirts (Whitley Bay, 1995) M. Squires, The Aid to Spain Movement in Battersea 1936–1939 (1994) Don Watson and John Corcoran, An Inspiring Example: the North-east of England and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (1996) W.H. Auden, „September 1, 1939‟ 14