Homage to Caledonia by Gray Daniel

Author:Gray, Daniel. [Gray, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc.
Published: 2012-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

A Food Ship For Spain wagon in Aberdeen, typical of those seen across Scotland. Generous donations facilitated the sending of a vessel from Glasgow on 18 December 1938.

British aid – including corned beef – is gratefully received in Madrid.

Scotland’s largest single contribution to the campaign for Spanish aid was not focused on one particular geographical area, although the Glasgow Trades Council played an instrumental role. The sending of a food ship to Spain was first proposed at a December 1937 meeting between Edinburgh and Glasgow Trades Councils. Over the subsequent six months, an appeal to raise £10,000 for the venture received significant backing throughout the country. In the summer of 1938, a shop was opened in Dundas Street, Glasgow, for the donation of ‘canned foods for the magnificent people of Spain.’

On 18 December, Captain McCrady and his crew set out from the Broomielaw destined for Spain with a 1,000 ton cargo of foodstuffs on board. Despite sailing through militarily dangerous waters for no pay, the crew arrived speedily, and was able to start distributing the ship’s wares to starving, under siege Spaniards in late 1938. Buoyed by the success of this endeavour, the Trades Councils proposed sending a second ship, though this was never to materialise owing to an intensification of the blockade on Spanish waters. The food ship was a rare example of inter-city working in Scottish aid operations, but in many ways, that cooperation had come too late.

By March 1939, republican defeat appeared unavoidable, and the aid movement in Scotland and elsewhere switched its focus to the plight of Spanish refugees. Half a million people had fled or been evacuated from former republican territory in northern Spain, most hoping to escape nationalist reprisals by settling in France. When they arrived on the northern side of the Pyrenees, they were instead placed in concentration camps.

Offers from individual households to give shelter to refugees in Scotland flooded in. The Co-operative Society in Rothesay was able to provide accommodation for 200 children in its holiday camp there and a Clyde-built ship, the SS Sinaia, was chartered by the National Joint Committee for Spanish relief and a British Committee for Refugees from Spain to transport 1,800 exiles from France to a new life in Mexico. Scottish aid committees were quick to commit the money to pay for the conveyance of 20 men and their families on the Sinaia, and the Glasgow and District Joint Committee for Spanish Relief held a fundraising fiesta, which raised £1,400.

The newly-formed International Brigade Association (IBA), with George Murray at its helm in Scotland, soon took over the mantle of campaigning for the rights of exiled republicans and all of those who fought in Spain. The IBA was to continue its work for the duration of the Franco era, agitating against British collaboration with his regime (not least in 1947, when the Labour government signed an economic treaty with Spain). The IBA also brought into the open the atrocities being perpetrated on imprisoned republicans in Spain and offered support to wounded ex-International Brigaders.

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