'Next week sees the eightieth anniversary of the May Day Events in Barcelona. Most informed people on the left see it as a turning point of the Civil War. But there are deep divisions of opinion as to what brought about the"civil war within the civil war" and what sort of turning point it was. On this latter question my article argues that the outcome marked the renewal of the Popular Front and opened up the only possibility for a Republican victory - eventually denied by the policies (appeasement and the arms embargo) of the Western powers and the contingent military ascendancy of Franco backed as he was by Hitler and Mussolini.'
The LSHG is publishing Tom's essay below as a contribution to the ongoing debate about the May Days and its legacy and we welcome any responses - please contact Keith Flett at the address above.
The Spanish Civil War - Betrayal in Barcelona
Tom Sibley
In July 1936,
international fascism launched a war of intervention against the Spanish
people. Earlier in that year the
democratic forces, making up the Popular Front, were elected following a period
of extreme right-wing Government in which the fascists played a leading
role. The Popular Front government was initially
supported by the left, including many
members of the powerful anarchist movement, and the centrist Republican
Party. It brought forward a progressive
programme aimed at democratising and modernising Spain which, at the time, was
dominated by the Church, the military and the big landowners and whose
industries were often controlled by foreign capital.
The Republican
Government’s measures to introduce land reform in order to end widespread and
abject poverty in the countryside, educational expansion and change and women’s
rights were anathema to the forces of the right. They were seen to be against the interests of
the Church and were presented by the right as the first steps along the road to
a communist society. With anti-communism
as its pretext the Spanish military, led by General Franco, launched a military
coup in July which was immediately supported with copious supplies of trained
troops and modern weaponry by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
Initially Franco’s
forces were repulsed in most of the big cities and towns as workers’ militias
and armed police loyal to the elected Government came together in defence of
the Republic. Madrid continued to hold
firm, thanks mainly to the arrival of modern weaponry from the Soviet Union and
the solidarity provided by the thousands of International Brigade volunteers
organised by the international communist movement. But in other parts of the
country the tide turned quickly as Italian and German forces were deployed. And the limitations of the badly organised and
poorly trained militia were exposed.
In the face of overwhelming military force, in the early months of 1937 the Popular Unity movement splintered under the pressure of ultra-leftist adventurism culminating in the tragedy of the Barcelona May Day events, the 80th anniversary of which we mark on 3rd May this year.
In the face of overwhelming military force, in the early months of 1937 the Popular Unity movement splintered under the pressure of ultra-leftist adventurism culminating in the tragedy of the Barcelona May Day events, the 80th anniversary of which we mark on 3rd May this year.
The May Day events
were one of the most important turning points of the Civil War
(1936-1939). In the middle of a war in
which international fascism threatened to overthrow by military force a
democratically elected Government, the ultra-left movement which had initially
played an important part in resisting Franco’s first offensive turned against
the regional government in Catalonia and launched an insurrectionary putsch. Guns, which should have been at the disposal
of forces fighting Franco, were instead turned on the state forces defending
the Republic. The insurrection was
instigated by dissident anarchist militias, which had a strong base in
Barcelona, encouraged by the Trotskyist influenced POUM which since the
beginning of 1937 had been actively and very publicly campaigning for the overthrow
of the Popular Front government in Catalonia.
What was the
subtext which led to the May uprising and put at risk the whole of the
Republican movement’s attempts to withstand the fascist offensive? The underlying catalyst was the determination
of the Republican Government to radically reshape the war effort following
months of military setbacks. This
followed widespread demands to incorporate all militia in a national popular
army with a unified command.
In Catalonia the
Popular Front administration, in the teeth of opposition of both POUM and the
local anarchists took measures in line with central government policies. The Government called on the local militia to
surrender their arms and join the national army. It shut down the local patrol groups
controlled by the anarchists and put policing into local government hands. Catalonia’s important arms industry was
nationalised and the Government sought to take over the strategically vital communication
centre, the Barcelona telephone exchange, which until 3rd May had
been controlled by an anarchist trade union committee. All of these centralising measures were taken
primarily to strengthen the war effort.
But they also threatened to totally undermine what the anarchist and
POUMists saw as pillars of their strength, influence and control. Rather than fall in line, in the interests of
boosting the anti-fascist war effort, the ultra-leftists launched an
insurrection against the elected government.
The immediate spark
for the insurrection was the retaking by the Government of the Telephone Exchange. The anarchists had used their control of this
facility to intercept and disrupt calls between government ministers and
military leaders. This could not be
tolerated in a war situation where the country was fighting for its very
existence. Consequently Government
ministers ordered the police to take back into state control the telephone
exchange. Unarmed senior police officers
were met with a volley of shots and a standoff followed. But the sound of gunfire
and the subsequent surrounding of the Exchange by armed police officers was a
signal for the anarchist militia to take to the streets, erect barricades, and
bring tanks and other armed vehicles into the fray. In the fighting that ensued in which the
rebels were opposed by communist party militia and the Republican Guards,
hundreds were killed or maimed.
Catalonian ministers quickly called for Central Government
reinforcements and within a few days, encouraged by their national leadership,
the local anarchists had laid down their arms.
Throughout the piece the overwhelming majority of Barcelona’s workers
had taken Government advice to stay at home.
Eighty years later
arguments still appear from both the anti-communist left (sometimes described
as the anti-Stalinist left) and the liberal right suggesting that the Barcelona
events were provoked by Moscow so as to crush a nascent social revolution. Such action was necessary, the critics argue,
in order to reassure western imperialist powers, with which the Soviet Union
was seeking to build an anti-Hitler front, that Republican Spain was not about
to usher in communist control under Soviet tutelage. Some of the commentators also assert that by
removing hopes for a fully-fledged socialist revolution the Republican
Government destroyed any possibility of a military victory. Given the balance of political forces both in
Spain and internationally these hopes were entirely unrealistic. In this they partly reflect Orwell’s crass
and typically defeatist assessment made in late 1937 that whichever side won
the civil war a fascist type regime would be installed in Spain.
What are we to make
of these assessments? Firstly, there is
no evidence to back assertions that the Soviets provoked the uprising, as
suggested in Ken Loach’s deeply flawed film, “Land and Freedom”. On the contrary, recently opened archive
material shows that the insurrection was planned months in advance and that the
dissident anarchists and POUM put their sectarian and disruptive demands above
the requirements of the national struggle to defeat fascism.
In the
circumstances of 1937, to call for a full blown socialist uprising would have
created deep divisions in the republican movement thereby guaranteeing certain
and early victory for the fascist forces.
The Barcelona events
were indeed an important turning point but not as some anti-communist and
liberal commentators present it. For
there followed a period during which the national Popular Army was transformed
into an effective fighting force.
Despite the overwhelming military advantages enjoyed by the fascist
enemy and the continuing arms embargo placed on Republican Spain by the Western
democracies, the re-organised National Army supported by the International
Brigade was able to hold on for a further eighteen months, giving space for
Spain’s outstanding socialist prime minister, Negrin, to negotiate for
increased international assistance.
The fundamental
reasons for the defeat of Spanish democracy were outside the Republic’s control. Firstly Franco could not have prevailed
without the massive military support of the fascist powers. And Spanish democracy could have survived if
Britain, France and the United States had lifted the arms embargo placed on
Republican Spain and put diplomatic and economic pressures on the fascist
powers to stop their war of intervention.
By May 1937 it was
clear to Negrin and the Communist Party, which provided the backbone to his
administration, that only the centralising strategy of the Popular Front
Government could stop the slide to military defeat, and consolidate the
substantial and profoundly democratic changes it had instituted. These reforms could have rapidly moved Spain
from a largely backward, medieval theocracy to an advanced social
democracy. Many on the left saw such
developments as important steps on the road to socialism.
