"If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" | ||||
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Single by Manic Street Preachers | ||||
from the album This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours | ||||
Released | 24 August 1998 | |||
Format | CD, cassette | |||
Recorded | January–May 1998 at Rockfield Studios, Wales | |||
Genre | Alternative rock, Britpop | |||
Length | 4:51 | |||
Label | Epic | |||
Writer(s) | Nick Jones, James Dean Bradfield, Sean Moore | |||
Producer(s) | Dave Eringa | |||
Manic Street Preachers singles chronology | ||||
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"If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" is a single by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers. It was released on 24 August 1998, through Epic Records as the first single from their fifth studio album This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. The track sold 156,000 copies in its first week and reached number 1 on the UK Singles Chart in August 1998.
The song's theme is taken from the Spanish Civil War, and the idealism of Welsh volunteers who joined the left-wing International Brigades fighting for the Spanish Republic against Francisco Franco's military rebels. The song takes its name from a Republican poster of the time, displaying a photograph of a young child killed by the Nationalists under a sky of bombers with the stark warning "If you tolerate this, your children will be next" written at the bottom.
Various works on the Spanish Civil War were the inspiration for this song, and certain lyrics pertain directly to these works. For example, the line "If I can shoot rabbits/then I can shoot fascists" is attributed to a remark made by a man who signed up with the Republican fighters to his brother in an interview years later. This was originally quoted in the book Miners Against Fascism by Hywel Francis. Another work George Orwell's first-hand account, "Homage to Catalonia". "I've walked Las Ramblas/but not with real intent" brings to mind the account in Orwell's book of fighting on the Ramblas, with the various factions seemingly getting nowhere, with the fighting and often a sense of camaraderie overriding the vaunted principles each side was supposed to be fighting for. Nicky Wire has also acknowledged that he was also inspired by a song by The Clash, "Spanish Bombs", which has a similar subject.