Campaign to Honour Spanish Civil War Heroes
Sculptor Frank Casey is aiming to raise £5,000 through a crowdfunding campaign to cast busts of Spanish Civil War heroes Bob Smillie and John Cornford....
The ILP, POUM and the May Days of the Spanish Civil War
With a plaque to their memory due to be re-dedicated later this month, DAVID CONNOLLY tells the story of the ILP volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and their connection to POUM....
The ILP and the Spanish Civil War
Even after 80 years the role of the ILP in the Spanish Civil War is still a controversial topic. Its role was minor, says CHRISTOPHER HALL, but the contribution and sacrifice of ILP volunteers deserves to be remembered. George Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia’ is still the most famous and most read book about the Spanish...
Taking Sides in the Spanish Civil War
The role of artists and writers in the Spanish Civil War will be the focus of next year’s Len Crome Memorial conference in Manchester on 1 March....
A digital record of the Spanish Civil War
The Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick has completed its project to digitise more than 13,000 pages of archives relating to the Spanish Civil War....
Spanish Civil War Commemoration
Seventy years after the end of the Spanish Civil War the first ever memorial plaque to the anti-fascist British and Irish volunteers who fought alongside George Orwell in the ILP Contingent will be unveiled. Two political veterans will do the honours: Sidney Robinson, an Independent Labour Party activist in the 1930s who chaired the...
Dossier Delivers New Doubt on Smillie’s Civil War Death
The long-lost prison files of Bob Smillie, one of the ILP’s most notable Spanish Civil War volunteers, have finally been unearthed in Valencia, casting new doubts on the official version of his mysterious death in 1937....
The Interwar ILP – Lessons for Today?
IAN BULLOCK assesses the record of the ILP between the wars and seeks to draw a few lessons for Labour and the left today. All in all, he says, the influence of the radical and democratic ILP on the Labour Party of the later 20th century was an extremely positive one....
Between the Wars
The period between the two world wars was one of the most turbulent in political history. The events of that time had a profound impact on the ILP and the development of British left-wing politics, as Ian Bullock describes in his important new book, Under Siege, reviewed here by HARRY BARNES. After setting the scene...
John McNair’s Spanish Diary
John McNair’s Spanish Diary is a first-hand account of the Spanish Civil War written by a lifelong ILPer who later became the organisation’s general secretary. This pamphlet contains a brief account of McNair’s life followed by his own contemporary, first-hand reporting of events in Spain in 1936. Almost eight decades later, it remains a compelling...
John McNair’s Spanish Diary
With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, John McNair became the ILP’s representative in Barcelona, channelling money and medical supplies to support the republican cause and liaising with the ILP contingent which fought alongside the POUM militia. McNair’s graphic account of the war was reprinted in the ILP’s Socialist Leader in 1974 and later...
ILP@120: Bob Edwards – A Lifetime on the Left
From Liverpool ILP to the House of Commons via Russia, Spain and the USA, Bob Edwards was politically active all his life. CHRIS HALL retraces his long journey. Bob Edwards had a remarkably long political life. He was a member of the ILP ‘Guild of Youth’, then became an ILP member and a Labour Party...