South Wales and the Civil War

Industrial South Wales had a particular affinity with Spain stretching back to the years before 1914 when Spanish workers were recruited to work in the booming steel works. During the First World War Basque sailors braved the threat of German submarines to trade in coal and steel, and two decades later Welsh seamen would run the risk of rebel blockade to carry food to the starving Spanish cities. These historic links, as well as the region’s influential nonconformist and socialist traditions, ensured that the Spanish Civil War made a powerful impact in South Wales. 

The South Wales Miners’ Federation (SWMF) was at the heart of politics in the region. In 1939 the union still had 135,000 members and sponsored thirteen Labour MPs. The “Fed” consistently gave large sums of money to aid the Spanish Republic (£12,500 in May 1938) and supported the local International Brigade volunteers. Will Paynter, Political Commissar to the British Battalion was also a member of the SWMF executive committee. He later became General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (1959-1968). 

Some 150 Welsh volunteers fought in Spain, most of them arriving between December 1936 and April 1937. The Welsh were highly valued for their fighting abilities, their morale-raising songs and their political unity. About two thirds came from the mining valleys, as many as a half had held some form of trade union post (including the National Unemployed Workers’ Union), and a very high proportion were members of the Communist Party. In all, thirty three Welshmen were killed in Spain. The Welsh contribution to the British Battalion had a significance disproportionate to its size, although it should be remembered that a larger number of volunteers (some 500) came from industrial Scotland.  

South Wales was also the site of extensive campaigning on behalf of the Spanish Republic. When the Basque refugee children arrived in May 1937, a number were placed in four Welsh homes, fifty-six at Cambria House, Caerleon. This home supported itself through local subscriptions from miners’ lodges and fund-raising. The children themselves organised concerts, a football team and a regular journal.  

The Civil War had a lasting political and cultural resonance in South Wales. In December 1938 Paul Robeson sang to more than seven thousand at a “National Memorial Meeting” in Mountain Ash, to mark the return of the final volunteers from Spain. A few weeks later the novelist Lewis Jones, who had ruined his health through his Spanish campaigning, collapsed and died after – it was claimed – addressing thirty meetings in a single day. His partner Mavis Llewellyn completed his novel We live, adding two final chapters in which the hero is sent by the Communist Party to Spain, where he dies fighting. As late as 2000 the Manic Street Preachers (who come from Blackwood in the Welsh valleys) achieved a major hit with "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next", a song that picked up on the local memories of the Civil War.