Authors take sides on the Spanish War

In June 1937 the writer Nancy Cunard and a group of her friends posed a “Question” for British writers and poets: were they for or against Franco and fascism, for “it is impossible any longer to take no side”. Authors were invited not only to provide an answer, but also to submit up to six lines of writing to explain their stance. The results, published in November by Left Review as a pamphlet costing 6d, were conclusive: 128 out of 148 published responses were for the Spanish government and only five were openly against it. The initiative appeared to provide proof that not only was the majority of intellectual opinion on the side of the Republic, but also that they had broken with the “ivory tower” detachment from politics that had been such a feature of the 1920s.  

However, some caution is necessary in interpreting Authors take sides. First, this was not a scientific survey of opinion – indeed, opinion polling was very much in its infancy at this time. Instead the appeal was passed around between friends and within peer groups, and therefore inevitably self-selecting. Secondly, the responses indicate that the large group designated as “for the government” was itself somewhat divided. While many of the respondents presented the Civil War as a defence of liberal democracy against fascism, some voiced support for pacifism or Anarchism, and opposition to Communism. George Orwell, who had just returned from Spain wounded and fleeing political persecution, famously denounced the whole exercise as “bloody rot”. Accordingly, the pamphlet replicated the political debates taking place within Republican Spain. Finally, the editors created an artificial category of “Neutral ?” for sixteen of the responses, and strikingly this contained some of the best-known names in contemporary literature, such as T.S. Eliot, H. G. Wells and Ezra Pound. George Bernard Shaw’s late-arriving contribution would also have been in this category. While it was clear that the “Neutrals” were lukewarm about “The Question”, it would have been politically embarrassing to place them in the “Against” category. 

Authors take sides remains a fascinating guide to mainstream intellectual attitudes towards the Civil War in Britain, and a valuable barometer of how rapidly opinion had shifted in response to the multiple crises – economic and international – of the 1930s. What is far less clear, however, is what impact it actually had at the time. There is no evidence, for instance, that it was read by British government ministers, who maintained their support for Non-Intervention until the end of the war, and it received only minimal (sometimes hostile) coverage in the press. Even so, Nancy Cunard’s claim that authors – “the most sensitive instruments of a nation” – had a right and duty to speak out has proved highly influential: the initiative has been copied many times since, including during the Vietnam War (when the respondents included some who had previously taken part in 1937) and during the Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003.