ILP Contingent

The British Independent Labour Party sent a small contingent to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The contingent fought alongside the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) and included George Orwell, who subsequently wrote about his experiences in his personal account Homage to Catalonia.

The main body of the ILP contingent consisting of about 25 men departed from England on 1 January 1937, under the leadership of Bob Edwards, later a Member of Parliament for the Labour Party.

The ILP had begun organising volunteers in November 1936 following the return to Britain of Bob Edwards from delivering an ambulance sent by the ILP for the POUM militia. Though there had been five times the number of volunteers, the ILP would only accept unmarried men for its contingent and 25 men left Britain on 8 January as the vanguard of a larger force to be sent later. However, the day after the contingent left, the British government announced that it would prosecute anyone going to fight in Spain and the ILP did not try to recruit any more volunteers.

On arriving in Barcelona, they had two weeks of very basic training, and were joined by Bob Smillie, grandson of the well-known Scottish socialist and miners' leader of the same name. Smillie, who had been in Barcelona working with John McNair as the representative Youth section of the International Bureau for Revolutionary Socialist Unity. However, Smillie became convinced that he would be of most service at the front and persuaded McNair to let him sign up when the ILP contingent came over. He later died in Valencia.

The ILP contingent was attached to the POUM’s English-speaking contingent, as part of the centuria commanded by Georges Kopp. Once at the front, the initial group of twenty-five was sent to the front at Monte Oscuro, within sight of Zaragoza, some 12 miles to the south west, where they joined by a number of others who had arrived at the front a few weeks earlier, including Eric Blair, not yet using his pen name George Orwell; an Australian, Harvey Buttonshaw; US Revolutionary Workers League member Wolf Kupinski; and Bob Williams, a Welshman married to a Spanish woman who joined up with his brother-in-law, Ramon. With these, and other, additions the ILP contingent numbered somewhere between thirty and thirty-five. They left the front, with the POUM militia, in mid-February 1937 to take part in the siege of Huesca, some 50 miles away.

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Wikipedia