"The Spanish Civil War: Dreams and Nightmares." Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, South London, until 28 April 2002. Admission Free. Reviewed by Andrew Kennedy The slogan above, a call T for international antifascist solidarity, recently provided the title and chorus for a single by the Manic Street Preachers. The text originally tea tured in a Spanish Civil War promobilise outrage at the bombing of Madrid by Fascist planes. A copy ofthis poster is in the current exhibition at the Imperial War Muscum. Meanwhile, serial bombardment of civilians by imperialist warmongers once again features (sporadically) in the news.
t is always entertaining to watch the contortions that non-Marxist historians have to perform when narrating the Spanish Civil War, forced as they are to contemplate the spectacle of left-wingers fighting for freedom and democracy. However, this exhibition is perhaps as true to the facts as could be achieved in the context of a bourparticular version of "balance" and "objectivity"
To their credit, the organisers have pretty clearly favoured the Republic and those who fought for it. This positioning has been made casier, of course, by the perceived collapse of the Communist project post-1989, so that the short-lived Spanish Republic becomes a gallant, albeit tragic, episode in the onward march of a "democracy" that is non-class-specific, and the Civil War becomes implicitly associated with the subsequent world war of "democracies" against fascism.
Ironically, this is not so far from the Popular Frontist position of the Communist Parties for most of the thirties and forties.
The Spanish Civil War T began in 1950 as a coun by right-wing army offiers, led by Franco and backed by the Catholic Church, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, against a left-liberal Popular been democratically elected.
Although one-third of Spain was swiftly conquered by the rebels, in Republican areas a social dynamic developed which included land seizures by peasants and elements of workers' control in the larger As in the Russian Revolution, the combination of a militant working class of recent origin, a downtrodden peasantry and the presence of oppressed nationalities within the state (particularly, here, Basques and Catalans) contributed to the creation of a potent insurrectionary cocktail.
ENUIT GRAVERENT However, the degeneration of the Communist Parties under Stalin meant that in Spain, unlike in Russia in 1917, decisive revolutionary leadership was lacking. The forces calling for restraint inciucca middie-ciass bett Republicans, moderate Socialists at least notionally in favour of a more radica, orientation included the Left Socialists, anarchists, and the small, anti-Stalinist, Marxist United Workers' Party (POUM)' ariy on in the exhibition an inscripton reads "The Republican war effort was undermined / by divisions between those whose first aim was to win the war, and those who wanted to make social revolution". Although superficially fair, this statement of the Civil War to the social revolution, when in fact those on in social revolution would make it possible to win the war, since it would he easier to ask workers and peasants to fight for a government that was unequivocally in their interests, and easier to generate international solidarity for that Belatedly, the USSR weighed in with military assistance in order to counteract the aid given to the rebeis by the Fascist powers. However, as another label correctly states: "Moscow, seeking alliances with the West against Germany; put its weight behind a centralised war chort and tae sullas or tae The Republican government, it should be said, collaborated with Moscow in this counter-revolu tionary strategy, partly in a desper. ate effort to convince Britain, France and America of the need to abandon their non-interventionist stance. The Republic eventually succumbed in carls 1939 It is not entirely fruitless to spec ulate about what misht have been At one point an inscription reads: "Fearing that a left-wing Spain might become a Soviet satellite, the Western democracies put class prejudices before strategic interests." In one sense, perhaps, this seems quite a reasonable proposition. For one thing, if Britain and America had supported the Spanish Government against Italy and Germany, a less isolated Stalin would probably not have gone through with the pact with Hitler of 1940.
However, there would have been grave dangers for British imperialism in pursuing such a step Germany was further ahead in the arms race than Britain in 1936-8, for example, compared to 1939.
fore importantly, perhaps, vid ory in Spain would have strengthened the left, including its radical wing, throughout Burope as well as strengthening the position of the ussk a carope-niac wals or a more overt class character than the conflict that was actually to take place, might have been necessary in order to repress those forces.
The statement quoted above therefore misleadingly counterposes "class prejudices", which are supposedly incidental, to "strategic interests", which apparently have nothing to do with class.
These criticisms aside, the exhibition brings together an impressive and moving assemblage of posters, photographs, documents, letters, personal effects of combatants and films, as well as multi-million pound works of art by Dali, Picasso, Magritte and Miro, among others.
For me, as an art historian, it was rather refreshing to find that the. expensive modernist artwork was generally much less striking then, Socialism on the web Socialist Outlook web site: www.labournet.org.uk/so International Socialist Group: www.3bh.org.uk/ISG the other material. Of course (lest I sbould be accused of philistinism), many of the propaganda posters owed much to modernist devices such as bold simplification, strong disconal basca compost* tions and bright colour.
Iso, the poems and quoA Stations from poems acquired extra potency other artefacts, images and texts. And, given the recent Against the War, it was interesting to see one of the Neville Chamberlain masks worn by English Surrealists at a London anti-fascist demonstration in 1938.
For those who missed real acknowledgement in the recent Surrealist exhibition of the reactionary power of the pre-war Catholic Church, there were some instructive images and objects here. A Nationalist propaganda poster, which would make Bush and Beriuscont crook, carties the message (in Spanish): "First Crusade: Spain the Spiritual Reference Point of the World": in the image the shadow of the cross (made up of the first two words of the slogan) falls ominously across the globe.
A nearby photograph, meanwhile, shows Catholic priests standing next to rebel army offi cers and giving the Fascist salute. This helps to put in context the photograph of the aftermath of an attack on a convent in Barcelona, in which the dessicated corpses of nuns have been theatrically amidst the fragments of their coffins - a case of Catalan anarchists preserving some of the worst aspects of jacobin iconoclastic traditions, perhaps.
A good deal of the exhibition space is given to the contribution Fighring fascism: Republican front ine in the figks for Madrid of the International Brigades. It is estimated that between 35-45,000. volunteers served in the International Brigades and that one-fifth of these were killed. The French supplied a quarter of all Brigade members, with the next most numerous contingents being supplied by Germans and Americans.
was salutary to reflect on some lines by the British poet Cecil Day-Lewis: "It vas not fraud or foolishness /Glory, revenge, or pay:/ We came because our open eyes/ Could see no other way:."
The evocation of such clearsightedness and determination here 1s sooting aris a song tac since socialists in the West have been called upon to make such sacrifices.
A list of names at the end is headed "Roll of Honour: British Volunteers". There seems to have been a coyness about making it clear that all those listed were International Brigade members. A call to the museum elicited the information that this was indeed the case, and that thankfully no these islands were included, which insult.
It is worth pointing out, though, that many of the Irish volunteers (several of whom are mentioned in Christy Moore's song "Viva La Quinta Brigada" and a number of whom were Republicans) might have taken umbrage at being listed as British combatants.
The display, although quite extensive, is discreetly staged in a cramped little corner of the Imperial War Museum and is very much subordinated to the permanent First and Second World Warfest of planes, guns and tanks in the main hall.
On the day I went (just before New Year) it would have been nice to have seen a few more of the dads drag their kids away from the exciting war-toys and into an exhibition which has the potential to promote reflection on the causes of war and how to resist it.
1 See Trotsky's writings on Spain, plus an excellent contemporary account, Revolution and Counter Recolution in Spain, by an American Trotskyist journalist, Pout of print). George Orwell fought with the POUM militia in Aragon, as he recounts in Homage to Cationia. Ken Loach's film Land and Freedom is partly based on Orwell's narrative.
2 The Picasso painting, entitled Weeping Woman, is related to his famous Guernica, which was apparently too fragile to travel trom madriato tais exabiion 3 On anti-fascist activity by British artists, see Robert Radford, Ant for a Purpose: the Artists"
International Association 1933-1953, Winchester School of Art Press,
OUTLOOK monthly marxist review. No 5l. January 2002. 50p How many more will die in US reonge attacki? Don't miss an issue: SUBSCRIBE now!