{"id":714,"date":"2009-07-14T12:16:07","date_gmt":"2009-07-14T12:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=714"},"modified":"2009-07-14T12:16:07","modified_gmt":"2009-07-14T12:16:07","slug":"remember-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=714","title":{"rendered":"Remember Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

In most recent years I’ve managed to attend the annual commemoration for the British volunteers who travelled to Spain to fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War in 1936-9.\u00a0 Each year fewer veterans of the war are able to attend, with only seven British veterans still surviving, all in their 90s or older. Although that is a remarkable figure, a third of the known surviving veterans from the Republican side.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

Our government refused to act, even making it illegal to send aid to the legitimately elected Spanish Government that was being attacked by Franco,\u00a0 but over two thousand men and women from Britain, socialists and mainly communists, made their way to support Spain; over 500 dying there.<\/p>\n

One veteran whose absence at the ceremony this year was deeply felt was Jack Jones, one of the truly great British figures of the last century as a trade unionist and activist, and former head of the International Brigade Memorial Trust<\/em>.\u00a0 Sam Lesser, at 95 one of the younger veterans of the war, gave a moving tribute to his life.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

Others who died in the past year were Bob Doyle, Bernard McKenna and Rosaleen Ross. McKenna, who came from a poverty-stricken Irish family in Manchester, had been wounded in two battles, recovering to return to the front and was then captured by the Germans and interrogated by the Gestapo. Unlike most others he was not executed but spent some time in an Italian prisoner of war camp.\u00a0 He was repatriated in a prisoner exchange in 1938 – and got a bill for repatriation- \u00a34 – from the Foreign Office on his return. It was still unpaid when he died last year.<\/p>\n

You can see more pictures from this event at the International Brigade Memorial in Jubillee Gardens on the South Bank,\u00a0 on My London Diary<\/a>, as well as some from the events in 2007<\/a>, 2006 <\/a>, 2005<\/a> and 2004 <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In most recent years I’ve managed to attend the annual commemoration for the British volunteers who travelled to Spain to fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War in 1936-9.\u00a0 Each year fewer veterans of the war are able to attend, with only seven British veterans still surviving, all in their 90s or older. Although … Continue reading Remember Spain<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-political-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}