Spanish Civil War talk in Ashton-under-Lyne

LAST NIGHT Dr Mercedes Penalba-Sotorrio of Manchester Metropolitan University gave an exquisite talk on the Spanish Civil War at a crowded event at Ashton-under-Lyne Central Library.   Ashton has been the scene of several such events since the unveiling of a Blue Plaque on behalf of  a local lad, James Keogh, who died in the hills of Aragon in 1938 fighting for the freedom of Spaniards on the 25th, November 2011.

Dr. Mercedes Sotorrio gave a very interesting detailed account of the struggle to defend democracy in Spain of the 1930s.  She described the contribution made by working-class volunteers such as James Keogh, a tailor and the son of a local binman.*   But James Keogh, as she showed in her talk last night was one of a vast number of northern workingmen, who were so inspired that they fought in many battles on the Spanish peninsula, throughout the war.  People went from Ireland and as she pointed out fought for both sides.

She referred particularly to the Battle of the Ebro which occurred between July and November 1938.  Fought on the banks of the Ebro; the longest river in Spain, it became a slaughter house for the republic.  It was a folly described so well by Antony Beevor the military historian in his book 'The BATTLE for SPAIN':

'To continue the battle in such circumstances had no military justification at all, especially when the Republic was so vulnerable there was no hope of achieving the original purpose of the offensive.  But instead of withdrawing with their best troops in good order to fight again, the republican command continued to send more men across the Ebro.  And all this was because Negrin believed that the eyes of Europe were upon them and he could not acknowledge a defeat.  Once again, political and propaganda considerations led to yet another self-inflicted disaster.'

Dr. Sotorrio said:  'Some 35,000 people went to Spain to fight with the volunteers, mostly, but not only,  in the International Brigades and some 10,000 died in the conflicts'.   She agreed during the question time which followed that the Soviet Union, like the Fascist Axis powers, 'had its own agenda'; which sometimes contrasted with that of the Spanish Republic.

There was some criticism during the questions about the non-intervention of the British and French governments in the Spanish Civil War, and Dr. Sotorrio said 'it seemed that some of the British public had more understanding of the likely danger presented by Fascism to Europe'.  There were also queries about the role and relevance of British Gibraltar to the conflict.  In the early stages of the war the British authorities on Gibraltar had tended to assist the supporters of General Franco rather than the legally elected Spanish Republic.  Some Spaniards who supported the Republic, who sought refuge in Gib. were sent back to Spain and imprisoned by Franco's supprters, and a Republican ship that sought British protection was threatened  by the British that if it didn't leave the port of Gibraltar the authorities would illuminate it so that it would by vulnerable to nationalist bombers at night.

Meanwhile, although it wasn't mentioned  last night, in 1937, it is worth mentioning that during the Spanish Civil War, the British Governor of Gibraltar was successful in obtaining permission from Franco to continue the Hunt.^[23] The tradition of the Royal Calpe Hunt continued for more than a century. The last Hunt took place on 4 April 1939.  It could not be resumed the following autumn due to the outbreak of the Second World War.  Although the horses and the pack were maintained in the hope that the Hunt would resume, and the Hunt Committee remained active until 1973, the Second World War brought the end of the Royal Calpe Hunt.^[4][5][7]

After the questions to Dr Mercedes Penalba-Sotorrio, the archivist who organised the event thanked the speaker and expressed his delight at the turn-out having originally worried that perhaps the subject was not sufficiently local. 


*  See more:   www.northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2011/12 › james-keogh-commemoration

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Tameside Remembers The Spanish Civil War

Click on image to enlarge

 

Men, Massacres & Monuments

 

Image of James Keogh by Clifford Harper on N.V.13

AROUND 2008, Tameside Trade Union Council applied for a blue plaque for James Keogh, an Ashton-under-Lyne lad who was killed in action fighting with the International Brigade for freedom and democracy in the Spanish Civil War 1936-39. This initial nomination was rejected by the Arts & Events committee of Tameside MBC on the grounds that Mr. Keogh's contribution may not have been unique, and that there may have been other local people who fought in Spain. It turned out that there had been a number of others but that James Keogh was the only one, so far as we know, who was actually killed in action. The research involved in finding out about Mr. Keogh, who died in March 1938 near Calaceite in the northern Spanish province of Aragón, and investigating the other residents of Ashton who went to Spain, was onerous and it was not until 25th November 2011 that a Blue Plaque was unveiled to James at Ashton-under-Lyne library. This followed a long campaign by Tameside TUC, and his family for recognition; this despite the fact that Mr. Keogh fitted all the criteria.                                                                                                

                                                                                                              
In contrast, Rochdale Council wasted no time in awarding a blue plaque to Sir Cyril Smith, the former Rochdale MP 1972-92, after he died in 2010: his blue plaque was erected outside Rochdale Town Hall in October 2011, even though it turned out that he didn't fit the criteria set down by English Heritage having been dead for just over a year. The person responsible at that time in the Rochdale Tourist Bureau, when asked, told Northern Voices that the town didn't need to meet the criteria suggested by English Heritage. Of course, it was revealed in November 2012 that Cyril Smith was very unique by any standards of human conduct, and that he had molested young lads in the 20th century on a significanr scale. Now four empty screw holes is all that remains in the grey stone wall of Rochdale Town Hall, where the commemorate blue plaque to Sir Cyril was once affixed. Fear of vandalism was the reason given by the Council Leader, Colin Lambert, for the removal of the plaque, and yet, I understand that a picture of Cyril still adorns' the inner walls of the Town Hall and that there is still a 'Sir Cyril Smith Room' within to remember the great man.

This business of commemorating significant figures, men or women, is tricky.   Last Saturday's Spanish paper El Pais had an acticle reporting on a meeting this month at 26, Kutuzuvski Avenue in Moscow, at which an event took place with the motive of remounting a plaque to commemorate Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (Russian: Леони́д Ильи́ч Бре́жнев, IPA: [lʲɪɐˈnʲid ɪlʲˈjitɕ ˈbrʲeʐnʲɪf] who led the Soviet Union for 18 years till his death in 1982.  The original plaque had been taken down in 1991.  The ceremony, according to El Pais, was 'solemn' and took place 'thanks to the inniative of one of the most polemical deputies in the State Duma (Russian Parliament) Alexandr Jinshtein'.  There is also talk of reinstalling a statute of Felix Dzherzhinski, founder of the Checa, the organisation that preceeded the KGB (Soviet Secret Police outfit):  this statue of huge dimensions, was originally pulled down, El Pais reports, 'by a furious mulitude  in 1991 when it adorned the Lubianka Square in front of the headquarters of the secret police' - today it can be viewed in an exhibion at a museum of sculptures.  El Pais further reports that the Russian President Putin at a press conference recently said that he didn't see much difference 'between Stalin and Cromwell'. 

Meanwhile, it seems that before the edifice of the KGB in a nearby garden there now stands a simple monument, which El Pais says is 'much more simple:  a stone commemorative of the Solovki concentration camp, in the north of Russia, in rememberance of the 11 million people who died during the years of the Soviet Terror'. 

Spanish Civil War for Infants

Book Review:  'From Manchester to Spain' by Bernard Barry. Price £5: A5 – 57 pages. Published in 2009 by the Working Class Movement Library, Jubilee House, 51, The Crescent, Salford M5 4WX. 
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The Strange Entries in Mr. Barry's 'Roll of Honour'

WHEN it was first published in 2009, Mr. Barry's book was intended 'to mark the 70th anniversary of the stand down of the International Brigade in Spain in October 1938' and he says 'it was felt that a new pamphlet incorporating such [new] research' in the Working Class Movement Library's 'ever-expanding archive on the subject' of the Spanish Civil War should be brought up to date with a new pamphlet to replace one published in1983 by the Greater Manchester International Brigade Memorial Committee entitled 'Greater Manchester Men who fought in Spain'.  He asks us to note that 'Manchester' covers an area now known as Greater Manchester which did not exist in the 1930s and now includes ten Metropolitan Boroughs: Central Manchester, Salford, Bury, Bolton, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, and Wigan.  The book contains no bibliography and we are asked to check Mr Barry's 'facts' by 'reference to the Spain archive held by the Working Class Movement Library in Salford': the website lists 19 boxes of relevant material and a computer list of volunteers. 

The pamphlet describes the historical background of the 1930s in brief, referring to Oswald Mosley, the rise of right wing governments in Europe, the depression and the non-intervention agreement by several European powers including Germany, Italy, USSR, Britain and France, and there are some good thumb nail sketches of some of the Greater Manchester volunteers such as Syd Booth, Ralph Cantor, Maurice Levene, George Brown, Sam Wild, and Clem Beckett from Oldham. One sub-heading is entitled 'The Franco Revolt' and goes on to say 'General Franco [on July 18th, 1936] launched a revolt against the constitutionally elected government of the Spanish Republic'.  Franco, based in the Canarias, was not the leader of the rebel Spanish Generals at the time of the rebellion on July 18th; 1936; General Mola (code name 'Director') in Pamplona was 'the main organiser of the conspiracy' (see Antony Beevor's 'The Battle for Spain') .  Mola led the rebel nationalists until his death in an air crash on June 3rd, 1937. By personalising the rebellion Mr Barry lends a comic book quality to his account.  He gives no serious description of the level of opposition of the Spanish people themselves to the Generals' revolt nor does he analyse why it was that the Spaniards and the Catalans became the first people to seriously resist Fascism in July 1936: what was the special quality in Spanish society that blocked the march of reaction in Europe in the 1930s?  Presumably it must have something to do with the historical development of the Spanish working classes, their trade unions, and their culture that set them on a level that made them more capable of resistance than the more organised, highly educated and disciplined German workers, whose big left-wing parties and trade unions collapsed before the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. 

The most troubling and controversial aspect of Bernard Barry's account is his production of a 'Roll of Honour' at the end of his pamphlet.  He gives us 187 names of individuals from Greater Manchester and he writes: 'The Roll of Honour given at the end of this pamphlet includes the names of those from Manchester known to have served in the International Brigade.' He warns that: 'Unfortunately for some no more than the name is known but for a large majority there are varying amounts of detail.' This represents a rather weak health warning that doesn't distinguish between which names are reliable and which are dodgy or at least who are deserters. In 2010, as Secretary of Tameside Trade Union Council, I was in correspondence with James Carmody, the archivist of the International Brigade Memorial Trust (IBMT), who asked me to look for evidence that a man named Greenwood from Ashton-under-Lyne had gone to serve in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. On the 16th, June 2010, I and Barry Woodling of Northern Voices editorial panel went to the Working Class Movement Library and were shown a computer coded list of international brigade volunteers dated 1981 (page 199 to 209) entitled 'Records Office, Kew 1981' research by Jimmy Moon and placed on the records at the Working Class Movement Library by International Brigader, Syd Booth. These official records listed an 'F. Greenwood' of 9, Gerard Street, Ashton-under-Lyne as a 'deserter' (the Ashton-u-Lyne electoral register in the early 1930s shows a James Greenwood living with Lily Greenwood at this address; in the later 1930s the register shows Mr. Greenwood is no longer listed at this address), yet Mr Barry lists 'F. Greenwood', categorised on the Records Office document as a 'deserter', on his own International Brigade 'Roll of Honour' in this pamphlet. Of another Ashton man included on Mr Barry's 'Roll of Honour', Daniel Albert Boon of Taunton Road, it is reported in a note on the Records Office file that while in San Pedro prison in Burgos, he offered to join Franco's forces and we could go on showing other perverse entries on the 'Roll of Honour' in Mr. Barry's pamphlet. 

A couple of years ago at a meeting on the Spanish Civil War, addressed by local historian Chris Carson at the Working Class History Library, Carson was asked about a 'Peter Grimshaw', now deceased, an ex-communist and later a councillor for the Labour Party in Salford who, it was claimed at the meeting, had definitely served in the International Brigade in Spain. Mr Carson, a friend of Eddie Frow the communist founder of the Working Class Movement Library in Salford and a rigorous researcher, told the meeting that he had no evidence Grimshaw had ever served in Spain. Our examination of the list, which we assume Mr Barry must have used, showed that a 'Peter Grimshaw' had gone to Spain but had been rejected at the Catalan town of Figueras and had been repatriated on the 10th, February 1938, his record shows 'NO SERVICE'. Yet, Mr Barry does not hesitate to place 'Peter Grimshaw' on his 'Roll of Honour' as having 'served in Spain' in the International Brigade. Another name given on Mr Barry's list is Ivor Hickman as being from Ashton-u-Lyne. Ivor Hickman did serve in the Spanish Civil War and was killed in action, but he didn't come from Ashton-under-Lyne in Greater Manchester, as he is commemorated on a memorial in Southampton. Our research, despite some who have told us he never came up North, suggests that he may have lived in Stretford, South Manchester, and have worked at Vickers for a time – this is perhaps the least serious of Bernard Barry's errors so far but it could have caused problems for Tameside TUC, where the local Trades' Council applied for a blue plaque for an Ashton lad, James Keogh, who fought and died in the Spanish Civil War in Aragón. If Hickman had been in Ashton-u-Lyne, as Mr Barry claimed, the Keogh application would not have been 'unique' and the Tameside Council Arts & Events Panel could probably have used it to reject the Keogh application. Arthur Clinton from Swinton in Salford, is on Barry's Roll and he certainly fought in Spain, but Clinton didn't serve with the International Brigade as Barry claims, as he was with George Orwell in the Independent Labour Party contingent of the POUM. Interestingly, there is no reference to the POUM or the Independent Labour Party in Bernard Barry's pamphlet, let alone the CNT (National Confederation of Labour) or the anarchist militias. Clinton is mentioned in George Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia'; in a letter from Orwell's wife, Eileen, to her own brother* and a sketch of his involvement in the ILP contingent is to be found in a recent book by Christopher Hall on the Independent Labour Party volunteers and the Spanish Civil War entitled 'Not just Orwell' [2009]. Reading some of the parochial accounts like Bernard Barry's and others, one wouldn't think that the CNT and the anarchists were the most influential forces in Catalonia, Aragon and Andalucia and sometimes one could easily conclude from these kind of narrow histories that the Spanish people themselves played a bit part in the Civil War on the Republican side. Some of these accounts (not Mr Barry's) are patronising to the Spaniards, and imply that it was the International Brigades that were crucial in saving Madrid. In truth they did not arrive in time to affect the Madrid fighting on November 8th, 1936 and they represented only 5% of the republican forces (see Antony Beevor's 'The Battle for Spain'). 

Mr Barry's short pamphlet contains list inflation, double counting and bias: our investigations show a man called Greenwood from Gerrard Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, went to Spain yet is listed as a 'deserter' on the Kew official list, and Mr Peter Grimshaw before crossing into Spain was found to be too unfit to fight, never-the-less Mr Barry has no difficulty placing them both on his 'Roll of Honour' in 'From Manchester to Spain'; Ivor Hickman's link to Ashton-under-Lyne is dubious; Arthur Clinton from Salford, referred in George Orwell's book 'Homage to Catalonia',  was with the ILP contingent of the POUM not the International Brigade and so on.  A problem with misleading and exaggerated claims, however well meaning, is that they undermine genuine material and in a way Bernard Barry's pamphlet casts a shadow on the Working Class Movement Library that has published and endorsed this document. When the poet, Steven Spender, who was associated with the Communist Party in the 1930s, returned from his last visit to Spain after the Writer's Congress in the summer of 1937, he was visited by another poet and communist sympathiser W.H. Auden, who he reported in his book 'World Within World' as saying that 'political exigence was never a justification for lies.'  Auden and Spencer were concerned about the nature of the cynical communist and Soviet propaganda put out at that time; Mr Barry's booklet is not guilty of lies but rather of over enthusiasm: a desire to make claims that are not substantiated by documentary evidence.  On our count 21 people on Bernard Barry's 'Roll of Honour', either are 'officially' listed as 'deserters' or as 'not serving' according to the list provided to us by the Working Class Movement Library.  A scientific approach or just doing research methods generally, involves a clearly defined system of classifications by the author not just an uncritical list of names cobbled together without regard for distinctive features such 'desertion' or being 'rejected' for being unfit to serve in the International Brigade on health grounds. Mr Barry has not done this properly, but as Mr Barry is an old man without an obvious academic background one would have thought that the publishers or someone should have had the responsibility for sub-editing this booklet. With something so glaringly flawed it ought not to be left to a reviewer to do the detective work. 

*Writing to a relative from Barcelona on 1st, May 1937, Eileen says: 'There is a chance Arthur Clinton, who was wounded, may go & recuperate in the cottage. He is perhaps the nicest man in the world...' 
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I am grateful to the Working Class Movement Library for all their help in allowing us to examine their records. According to one Library assistant interviewed, it seems, Mr Barry used his own sources and is no longer able to answer questions about his sources, yet his book refers to the Library resources.  I didn't publish this review earlier because Mr. Barry is an old man and I was reluctant to offend him or his family, but as the International Brigade Memorial Trust is still promoting Mr. Barry's booklet I thought I ought to draw their attention to the errors and oversights in it. 

New Year 2013: A Decade of Northern Voices

Sir Cyril Smith, David Hoffman, Sophie Lancaster, the Bookfair Attacks, the Free Press & the Campaign Against the Blacklist

THIS has been probably been the most successful in the ten-year history of Northern Voices.  It has been a year in which Northern Voices made a serious breakthrough by being at the forefront and making inroads into some main stream media stories such as the Cyril Smith revelations last November.  In November 2012, the Northern Voices' Blog for the first time had a monthly page-viewing public that went well into five figures. Partly the reason for this was our exposure of the issues surrounding Sir Cyril Smith on the 13th, November, at 2.30 pm on the day in which the Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk, gave his speech in the House of Commons at around 4 pm, in which we knew he would would accuse Sir Cyril of child sex abuse. Paul Waugh, a journalist from Rochdale, as agreed had run the story at 10.30 am on his own site at www.politicshome.com  . The Cyril Smith post of the 19th, September 2010, now has the largest number of page-viewings, and it was this post that triggered the events that ultimately led to the events in November 2012. Naturally Northern Voices was involved in some important spade work in this regard in so far as we helped to find two vital witnesses, who were abused as young lads in the 1960s, who were now for the first time willing to go on the record. On Monday, last week, one of these witnesses identified by Northern Voices had his first interview with the main solicitor dealing with the Cyril Smith abuse case.

Throughout the Autumn of 2012, after the exposure of Jimmy Savile in the main stream media, the Northern Voices' Blog linked the cases of Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith in several postings. All of these posts scored well in terms of page-views. And yet, when the Cyril Smith case is examined in depth historically there are so many loose ends that lead in political and sociological directions to issues of power; such as the relationship between institutions and elites that may be involved either directly or indirectly: our printed publication Northern Voices No.8 ran a story in 2007 entitled 'Was Cyril Smith Set Up?: Rochdale MP in Seventies Sex Scandal'. In Southern Europe political corruption is often more blatant and less furtive than it appears to be in England, but some aspects of the Cyril Smith case seem to suggest curious glimpses of political networking that operated beneath the surface of respectable political live.

In 2012, our N.V. page-views as whole almost tripled. The attack by the free-lance photographer, David Hoffman, on Freedom Press, in which he alleged the publisher had breach his copyright led to several posts that scored highly on the N.V. Blog. Our approach was to defend Freedom from the Hoffman claim for damages, because it seemed to us to threaten the freedom of minority publications to publish material and David Hoffman seemed to making a living out of demanding fees from publications that may have inadvertently used his photos.

The year had begun with a debate with Dave Douglass on the N.V. Blog about Libya and NATO involvement, which Barry Woodling had originally introduced by at the Northern Anarchist Network Conference in Newcastle in November 2011. Barry followed this up with an interview in NV13 with Azeldin-El-Sharif, the Chair of the British Libyan Solidarity Campaign. The NV13 issue included a piece in the Tameside Eye column about Kieran Quinn and the Labour controlled Tameside Council flagrant awarding of contracts to the company that blacklists building workers – Carillion. Since Hull MBC has now banned companies guilty of blacklisting from putting in tenders, MPs are being urged by Unite to sign the Early Day Motion on Blacklisting, and the likelihood that a motion will be on the agenda at the coming North West TUC Conference in Manchester in March, Northern Voices' feels that its decade-long campaign with the Manchester electricians has been entirely justified. Northern Voices No.13 reported on Tameside Trade Union Council's success in getting Tameside MBC to award a Blue Plaque to the local Spanish Civil War volunteer who died fighting Fascism in Spain in March 1938.  The interview with Sophie Lancaster's mother, Sylvia, as a leading article in N.V.13, gained the journal much support especially at the showing of the play 'Black Roses' at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, when we had to have a special reprint of the publication.  Sophie Lancaster was a 'Goth Girl' from Bacup in Lancashire, who was murdered in 2007 for dressing differently.

The attacks on Northern Voices' supporters at bookfairs in October in London and December in Manchester by members of a minority political body, the Anarchist Federation, has only served to stimulate interest in the N.V. publication and its Blog.  The journal is certainly better known now nationally than at any other time in its ten-years of life, and this is largely owing to the efforts of Sally Hymen/ Miller and her friend the Anarchist Federation groupie, Ron Marsden, who now does voluntary work for Alex McFadden at the Salford Unemployed Centre.  Northern Voices was also banned at Touchstones' Museum bookshop in Rochdale, because of an attack in the last issue by Debbie Firth, of the protest group Touchstones' Challenge, on the Link4Life company that runs the Museum.

James Keogh's politics?

THE New Year issue of the International Brigade Memorial Trust's (IBMT) Newsletter reports on last year's Blue Plaque unveiling for Ashton-under-Lyne's Spanish Civil War volunteer, James Keogh.  It says that  James Keogh's sister 'Joyce Harrison unveiled a plaque to her brother, James Keogh at Tameside Central Library, Ashton-under-Lyne on 25 November 2011.'  The author of the IBMT Newsletter piece then writes:  'Keogh, who died in Spain at the age of 22, was the eldest of 11 children and as a self-taught socialist spent many hours in the library before giving up his tailoring apprenticeship and heading for Spain in May 1937.'

Tameside TUC researched James Keogh's life and involvement in the Spanish Civil War over a number of years, and could find no evidence that he was affiliated to any party or trade union and this was confirmed by the family.  There was certainly nothing in his letters to suggest that he was a 'socialist' or an 'anarchist' or anything else.  There is much more evidence to show what he was not politically rather than what he was:  despite being dismissed as a 'commie' on one right-wing web site up North there is a strong support that James was not held in great esteem by the Communist Party during the Spanish conflict.  The booklet produced by Tameside TUC in memory of James Keogh states that  'James Keogh like the nurse Lillian Urmston from Stalybridge were both flattered by being mentioned in dispatches in the Russian Archives in Moscow:  Lillian was in these secret files to be denounced for being "too friendly with the Spaniards" and James was accused of going "absent without leave".'   These files were compiled by the trusted Communist Party officials like the middle-class woman, Winifred Bates, sympathetic to Russia and sent to Spain to spy on the volunteers.  The Tameside TUC booklet reports:  'Some of the utterances in the files of the spies who reported back to Moscow suggest a particularly spiteful frame of mind of the kind we might attributed to the classroom creep:  the reference to Lillian Urmstone being "too friendly" or the false claim of James having a "criminal conviction" seem to be typical of this.'  As the author of the booklet remarks:  'People who write this kind of thing don't, unlike James, end up in an unmarked grave.'

Furthermore it is noted in the Tameside booklet that 'The fact that James Keogh was not a member of the Communist Party or indeed any other party or trade union, would mark him down as "politically unreliable" in the eyes of the Communist Party.'  Those people on certain right-wing websites who dismiss James Keogh as a 'dupe of the Reds' would do well to remember this spirit of independence about James as would those on the left who are keen to categorise James as 'a self-taught socialist'.  The fact is, as Orwell perceived, few people in England grasped the nature of the conflict in the Spanish Civil War where as Gerald Brenan said 'words of which most of history is made - feudalism, autocracy, liberalism, Church, Army, Parliament, trade union and so forth - have quite other meanings there to what they have in France or England.'  James Keogh may not have fully understood that even when he died, but nor do many of those of the British Left and the Right who write today.  Listening to Professor Paul Preston yesterday on Andrew Marr's Radio 4 program 'Start the Week', going on about the Civil War and crudely dismissing George Orwell's ethnography 'Homage to Catalonia', as someone who worked, lived and even had a son born in Spain, I sometimes wonder how much  Professor Preston has really grasped about the culture and nature of the Spanish people, despite his proud boast last month at the People's History Museum that he has studied Spain for some 40 years.
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The printed version of NORTHERN VOICES 13, with our report on Tameside TUC's application for a Blue Plaque for James Keogh, covers all sorts of stuff others won't touch and may be obtained as follows:

Postal subscription: £5 for the next two issues (post included) Cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' at
c/o 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH. 
Tel.: 0161 793 5122.
email: northernvoices@hotmail.com









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A Song to James Keogh

words and music by Michael Burns:  Feb 2012

Well his name was James Keogh, he was a son of Chartist Ashton,
a thoughtful lad, apprenticed to a tailor in the town.
As he studied in the library, read of better worlds and bolder, in many lands in Europe freedom’s light was being turned down.

So don’t forget the sacrifice of men like young James Keogh.
Over 60 men left Manchester for freedom’s fight in Spain.
They were English, they were Irish, some were communists, some Jewish. nearly forty died on Spanish soil, well did they die in vain?

He watched as Mussolini’s troops waged war in Ethiopia.
Read how Hitler dealt with gays and communists and Jews
when the newsreels showed the Condors raining death on Basque Guernica,
James packed his case to head for Spain, - was the path he had to choose.

So don’t forget the sacrifice of men like young James Keogh. 
Over 60 men left Manchester for freedom’s fight in Spain. 
They were English, they were Irish, some were communists, some Jewish.
nearly forty died on Spanish soil, well did they die in vain?

Well James sailed from Marseilles, in May of 1937
the Ciudad de Barcelona held 200 men or more
a Francoist torpedo took the ship and fifty comrades
but the Catalans looked after all the men who made the shore.

So don’t forget the sacrifice of men like young James Keogh. 
Over 60 men left Manchester for freedom’s fight in Spain.
They were English, they were Irish, some were communists, some Jewish.
nearly forty died on Spanish soil, well did they die in vain?

James was home for Christmas leave in 1937,
but he died on St Patrick’s Day at Calaciete,
a credit to his town and to north western working people,
shellfire from a fascist tank took his young life away.

So don’t forget the sacrifice of men like young James Keogh.
Over 60 men left Manchester for freedom’s fight in Spain.
They were English, they were Irish, some were communists, some Jewish.
nearly forty died on Spanish soil, well did they die in vain?

Clem Becket was a roughyed* and a top notch speedway rider,
George Brown of Kilkenny’s name is one we won’t forget
Sydney Fink and Victor Shammah are included in this number,
Michael Gallagher of Wigan yes and many others yet.

Well we’ve not forgot the sacrifice of men like young James Keogh
and the men who gave their lives to fight for freedom out in Spain
so speak out against injustice and stand up against oppression
and the men who lie in Spanish soil will not have died in vain.

*Someone from Oldham

NORTHERN VOICES No.13: Out Now!!!

NORTHERN VOICES 13, - the printed / physical version of N.V. - deals with some of the issues that the others on the so-called British left won't touch. Starting with an interview with Sylvia Lancaster, mum of the murdered 'Goth Girl' / 'New Romantic' Sophie Lancaster, who was kicked to death up Bacup, in Lancashire, in August 2007. How do you feel about a new 'Hate Crime' on the statute book? Previously, Northern Voices has given you 'The Gangs of Manchester' dating back to an early 20th Century, but that was about lad's gangs: does the merciless killing of our sublime Sophie represent a step into a darker age? To be up-to-date and understand the way Northern Voices thinks and is different from other publications you should read the real and physical N.V..

Other stories include an apparent attack on the arts in Rochdale by the Link4Life organisation; 'The Strange Burnley story of Philip Morrell: the man who resisted Britain's participation in World War One' by Rev. Father Petty; an interview with a Libyan freedom fighter in Manchester by Barry Woodling; Tameside Eye & Salford Spy; Bribery & Corruption Column covering blacklisting; work-for-dole; allegations of bribery on Bury Council, 'environmental vandalism' at Chat Moss in Salford and  Les May on what he is now describing as 'Backdoor Privatisation' in Rochdale.

Do you think theatres and drama are Crap? Well, if you do or you don't, there's a review of Six O' the Best Northern Theatres by Chris Draper and with 'Miss Julie'* staring one of our northern actresses Maxine Peake, and starting at Manchester's Royal Exchange on the 12th, April, you can decide if it's worth a visit to Theatre -in-the-Round, based on what Chris has to say about the state of our local theatres up North. In our coloured centre-spread there is an image of an anarchist scarf that James Keogh, a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War 1936-39 and who last November was awarded a Blue Plaque by Tameside MBC, sent to his mum in Ashton-under-Lyne. Did James buy it on the Ramblas in Barcelona after he arrived in Spain in 1937? Then if you fancy a bit of culture you can have a look at our view of the Ford Madox Brown Exhibition, and the tricky business that led to his painting of the murals in Manchester Town Hall: our centre spread includes 'Bradshaw's Defence of Manchester A.D. 1642'.

Then there's history with 'Peterloo & the politics of Failure' by Dick Dutch and more of Chris Draper on the Sheffield outrages and sucking-up to the bosses by British trade union gaffers.

* 'MISS JULIE' by August Strindberg at the Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester:
a new version by David Eldridge, from a literal translation by Charlotte Barslund
'I can't run away, I can't stay. I can't live, I can't die. Help me'
MAXINE PEAKE plays Miss Julie. Known for her television appearances in SILK, the BAFTA nominated HANCOCK & JOAN and SHAMELESS, she is reunited with director Sarah Frankcom, whose recent successes at the Exchange include the award-winning PUNK ROCK and A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE.
'Sweden, 1894. Midsummer night’s celebrations are in full swing but the Count’s daughter, the beautiful and imperious Miss Julie, feels trapped and alone. Downstairs in the servants’ kitchen, handsome and rebellious footman Jean is feeling restless. When they meet a passion is ignited that soon spirals out of control. Strindberg’s masterpiece caused a scandal when first produced – and has been hugely popular ever since – for its searingly honest portrait of the class system and human sexuality.'
_______________________________________________________
The printed version of NORTHERN VOICES 13, with all sorts of stuff others won't touch and may be obtained as follows:
Postal subscription: £5 for the next two issues (post included)
Cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' at
c/o 52, Todmorden Road,
Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.
Tel.: 0161 793 5122.
email: northernvoices@hotmail.com
_______________________________________________________

Blue Plaque Tribute to Ashton hero who died fighting for freedom

Friday, 25th, November 2011, saw over fifty turn up to a packed gathering in the atrium between what is now the Tameside Central Library & the Local Studies & Archives Centre in Old Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, close to where James Keogh spent many hours studying world affairs. The event was the result of Tameside Trades Union Council's decision to nominate James Keogh, a local hero who died in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, for a Blue Plaque. This plaque is the 80th Blue Plaque awarded in the Borough of Tameside and pays tribute to seven other volunteers who went to fight in Spain in the Spanish Civil War and was reported in the local media including the Manchester Evening News on Monday 28th, November 2011.

Councillor Jackie Lane, Tameside Council's Assistant Executive Member for Heritage & Tourism, declared: 'I am proud that Tameside is recognising their sacrifice, and specifically that of James from Ashton.' Mike Harrison, James Keogh's nephew, spoke about the contribution of James to the fight against Fascism in the 1930's and Brian Bamford, Tameside Trade Union Council's Secretary, addressed the issues contained in the commemorative booklet on James Keogh's correspondence, which was circulated at the event: see reports below. James died in March 1938 at the age of 22, when he was hit by tank fire after his battalion met Italian troops near Calaceite in the Spanish province of Aragón. James, an apprentice tailor, went to fight in Spain in May 1937, after telling his family that he was going for another job in Leeds.

The nomination of James Keogh for a Blue Plaque had been initiated by Tameside TUC, but had been particularly supported by Father Kenneth Leech of Mossley, Charles Jepson of the National Clarion Cycling Club (1895) North Lancs. Union and the International Brigade Memorial Trust in Greater Manchester. A large contingent from James Keogh's family were present as well as the Tameside Civic Mayor; affiliates from Tameside TUC and many local trade unionists attended including several local blacklisted electricians from the Unite union, and a number of libertarians from the Northern Anarchist Network in the North West.

James Keogh's nephew explains why James went to Spain

MY name is Michael Harrison and James Keogh was my uncle but I never knew him personally for he was cut down in his prime trying to stem the tide of Fascism. I know him from the stories told by my family and I think to understand him better, we have to cast our minds back to the 1930's.

The Wall Street crash had taken place in October 1929 and in Europe the collapse of the Austrian Bank 'Creditanstalt' in 1931 had turned a recession into a depression. This also resulted in the strengthening of the anti-democratic Fascist and Nazi movement in Austria and Germany. Of course, Benito Mussolini had been in power in Italy since 1922, and then in 1936 fascism raised its ugly head in Spain and both Hitler and Mussolini had pledged support for Franco.

James was 21 year-old in 1936, a young man from a working class family who made a living from tailoring. He wasn't a member of a political party and yet, he and others from the borough set off for Spain a year later to fight Fascism with the International Brigades. It may have seemed like quite an adventure but it wasn't going to be a picnic. So, why would an inconspicuous young man like James join in somebody else's war? I believe that he hated Fascism, having witnessed an Italian Fascist State and then in 1933, Hitler was appointed as Chancellor of Germany. He must have felt it was now time to do his bit to stop the spread of Fascism and preserved democracy in Europe. He was a very confident young man, who wrote home from Spain:

'The Government troops along with the Internationals are going to very soon drive the Fascists out of Spain for good. We have up-to-date tanks, machine guns etc. and a huge airforce that can stand against the enemy.'

He armed himself with knowledge, much of which he obtained at this Library and he grew in confidence. It is, therefore, fitting that the Blue Plaque be placed here. Having taken a great interest in the events of his day, he saw the danger from another European country becoming a Fascist State. He felt that the time for action had arrived but he had to keep his decision quiet from his family, who only found out what he intended to do when they received a postcard from Marseille, where he was to board the ship known as the'Cuidad de Barcelona' (City of Barcelona) was torpedoed and sunk by the Nationalist submarine, 'General Sanjurjo' off the coast of Catalonia near Malgrat. More than a hundred volunteers perished in the attack and the survivors had to swim ashore at Malgrat, where they were offered assistance by local people.

James' war came to an end in March 1938 near the town called Calaceite in Aragón, when his column ran into Italian tanks and troops. I visited Calaceite in 2007 but could not find any graves for the fallen of the International Brigades. There were many British casualties in Spain and their valiant struggle could not prevent Franco from taking power. The rest, as they say, is history.

I see this Blue Plaque as a testimony to the courage of the brave volunteers from this borough and I would hope that it will also serve as a beacon to all, that there are brave men and women who will stand up to defend freedom and democracy, as did so many more when the World War II broke out in 1939. I don't think that we are finished with Fascism and we should be on our guard. Perhaps we should remember what Mussolini had to tell us:

'Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and Corporate power.'

James and the other volunteers understood that danger and I am pleased that their sacrifice is now being recognised. I would also like to thank all those who made today possible. Your hard work and your desire to see just recognition for the sacrifice made by others is a credit to you. Although, the Spanish Civil War took place more than 70 years ago, it isn't something that should be confined to the history books, but rather be a reminder of the many dangers that could threaten our way of life. Let this Blue Plaque be another testimony to the bravery of the people of Ashton and the wider borough.

The James Keogh Commemoration

Adapted from the speech by Brian Bamford, Tameside TUC's Secretary's speech, given at Tameside Central Library Blue Plaque Event on the 25th, November 2011:

ON this day Ashton's Spanish Civil War hero, James Keogh, the humble son of a local binman, becomes 'A Giant among Pygmies'!

Tameside TUC believes that like Thomas Hardy's 'Drummer Hodge' in the Boer War that James Keogh of Ashton-under-Lyne in the Spanish Civil War was 'Thrown to rest' and lies 'Uncoffined in the ground'. He was left 'just as found' somewhere in the hard hills and mountains in the bitter landscape of Aragón.

As Thomas Hardy might well have said:

'James Keogh's homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.'

I came across the poem of 'Drummer Hodge' on a wet weekend in the English Lakes on a DVD of Alan Bennett's 'The History Boys': in that film the tutor Hector tells his student that before the Boer War that we wouldn't have been aware of the name of 'Drummer Hodge'; he would like millions before him have disappeared off the historical radar as an unknown soldier.

Thus so, it would have been that 'Drummer Hodge' and Jimmy Keogh's names and identities would have been lost forever on some foreign field.

Two years ago in 2009 James Keogh's sister, Clare Jackson, who passionately supported this application, and who sadly died earlier this year, told me that: 'After all these years and now, at last, people are talking about James.'

James Keogh was unaffiliated,
Uncoffined in the ground,
And until this day uncommemorated.
And yet, in Spain he will be forever a part of the 'Memoria Historica': the historical memory.

This booklet, produced by Tameside Trade Union Council is simply a rendering of James Keogh's intervention in the Spanish Civil War. The artist's impression on the front is by The Guardian artist Clifford Harper and he told me that the hills in the background may be seen both as representations of the Pyrenees of the Iberian peninsular where James' died and as the Pennine chain round here where James' was brought up.

Now I'm not a historian, I'm an electrician with a background in sociology and anthropology, but this booklet produced by Tameside TUC that pays tribute to James Keogh on the unveiling of this Blue Plaque is simply a rendering or an impressionistic account of James's intervention in the Spanish Civil War. We should also remember that history itself is not an exact science: it is not an exact science and nor should it pretend to be so.

As one of the students in Alan Bennett's film 'The History Boys' said: 'If I may speak plainly; History is just one fucking thing after another!' So if I may speak honestly this here booklet from Tameside Trade Union Council is merely a narrative, a rendering by me and Mike Harrison of what we see as James Keogh's contribution in the Spanish Civil War. This has been done by basing it on the limited evidence we have in the letters to his Mum and brothers, and the odd newspaper clipping, the information gathered from the Kew Record's Office; the MI5 files and the material of James in the Moscow Archives. It is not going to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth and it is certainly not going to be the last word on James Keogh. Indeed, if owt this is going to be the Genesis; the kick-off; the starting-gun in what promises to be a fascinating piece of research.

Thus, in unveiling this Blue Plaque Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council is leading the way, setting the trend for other towns in Greater Manchester. What we have here in the story of James Keogh is both sublime and ridiculous in the display of the tension between a working-class mother and her son: that is so typical of our North of England culture. It this we can instantly recognise things in our own lives and our own family experiences. The letters herein from James to his mother show a thirst for news from home and a deep love for his family, especially his mother.

Nobody would understand these affections better than a Spaniard and we see something similar in the poems of the Spanish Civil War poet Miguel Hernandez. Miguel Hernandez, who was born in the region of Valencia, worked as a goat herder and was, like James Keogh, mostly self-taught. But unlike James, Hernandez survived the War only to be captured by the soldiers of General Franco. In 1942, Hernandez died in the prison hospital in Alicante, near to what is now the Costa Blanca not far from tourist Benidorm.

Carlos Figueroa of the Spanish trade union the Confederación General del Trabajo, CGT (General Confederation of Labour), sent me and Tameside TUC a few poems especially for this unveiling event. One of these poems was the 'Lullaby of the Onion', which is about the mother and son relationship; it describes the feelings of Miguel Hernandez on hearing that his wife Josephina is only surviving on onions and bread:

'My little boy
was in hunger's cradle.
He was nursed on onion blood.
But your blood is frosted with sugar,
Onion and hunger.'

'I woke up from childhood:
Don't you be, waking up.
For I have a frown:
Keep to your cradle, defending laughter
Feather by feather.'

'Fly away, son, on the double
moon of the breast:
It is saddened by onion,
You are satisfied.
Don't let go.
Don't find out what's happening,
Or what's going on.'

The tragedy of James Keogh and Miguel Hernández is our tragedy, it is the tragedy of growing up and of knowing too much about the world and ultimately dying as a consequence. The others who to our knowledge went to Spain, surviving the war, from this borough include:

Daniel Albert Boon of Taunton Road, Ashton-under-Lyne.
Patrick Brady of Droylsden.
William Aubrey Brown of 60, Victoria Street, Ashton-under-Lyne.
Albert Godwin of Albert Street, Dukinfield, Ashton-under-Lyne.
James Greenwood of Gerard Street, Ashton-under-Lyne.
William Matthews of Lenford Road, Denton.
J. Russell of 25, Oxford Street, Stalybridge.
Dr. Taylor of Hyde, Cheshire.

Blue plaque honour for Ashton's Spanish Civil War local hero!

James Keogh, from Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, was only a young lad of 22 years when he killed near the small town of Calaceite, in the province of Aragon, in the north of Spain. As a member of the 15th International Brigade, he was one of a number of people who were killed in March 1938, when they ran into a column of Italian tanks and infantrymen, who opened fired on them, as they made their way to assist General Lister. Like many other people who died during the Spanish conflict, we know little about what happened to James, or where he lies buried.

James lived at 105 Wellington Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, and was the eldest son of James Keogh and Clara Howard. After leaving school, he started work as an apprentice at 'Pikes' Tailors on Stamford Street, Ashton-under-Lyne. We know that James was not a member of a trade union or a political party and that he was one of a number of local people, who volunteered to go and fight to support the legally elected Republican government in Spain, against the nationalists led by General Francisco Franco, who sought to overthrow the elected government with the support of the Fascists dictators Hitler and Mussolini.

Apart from an article that appeared in the Ashton Reporter in June 1937, which shows the only extant photograph of James Keogh, there remains very little physical evidence today of James, apart from family memories, a few hand written letters, and a picture postcard sent from Marseille, where he sailed to Spain on the 'Barcelona', which was sunk by a submarine which resulted in the loss of many lives.

Having sacrificed his life at a young age, fighting for democracy on foreign soil, members of the Tameside Trades Union Council, nominated James Keogh for a blue plaque which was unveiled by Councillor Jackie Lane, on Friday 25th November at Tameside Central Library, Old Street, Ashton-under-Lyne. Attending the ceremony was his sister Joyce Harrison and other family members.

Those who spoke at the ceremony last Friday, were Mike Harrison, a nephew of James Keogh, Councillor Jackie Lane, Assistant Executive Member for Heritage and Tourism, and Brian Bamford, Secretary of Tameside Trades Union Council and Charles Jepson, of the National Clarion Cycling Club. Members of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, were also present.

James Keogh's Sister Clare: a Stalybridge neighbour pays her respects

EULOGY: NEIGHBOURS BY CHANCE; FRIENDS BY CHOICE
by Julie Aney

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This year it is the 75th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War. In November, the Arts & Events Department of Tameside MBC will be awarding a Blue Plaque to local lad James Keogh for his part in volunteering to fight in the Spanish Civil War along with others from the Tameside towns. James Keogh died in March 1938, fighting for freedom and democracy with the International Brigade in Spain. His younger sister, Clare Jackson, was born on 27th June 1932 and died on 11th July 2011,  and was assisting Tameside Trade Union Council in its campaign to get her brother James a blue plaque until the end of her life. It is a tragedy that she did not survive to see it installed. Below, a neighbour of Clare's, Julie Aney, gives her appreciation.

---

Clare Jackson, reading Northern Voices

I HAVE been a neighbour of Clare & Arthur [Jackson] on Moorfield Avenue my whole life, almost 27 year! Moorfield Avenue is one of those rare places which houses [no pun intended] a real community spirit; we look out for each other and are not only neighbours but many of us would call ourselves friends. It's for this reason that I have many memories of Clare; some which I'll share now.

Moorfield Avenue didn't need Home Watch with Clare around; she was our eyes and ears, no matter what time of day or night! We'd get weekly update of who'd been where, who had had what delivered and the details and full description of any mysterious callers! More often than not she'd know where we were before we did; quite often I'd hear the words 'you were out last night' or 'have you not been to work today, I saw your car up the drive?'. We always said nobody would get away with having an affair or truanting from work or school with Clare around!

But, on the flip side of the coin, her curiosity was what made Clare a wonderful neighbour; if we were at work she'd look out for the postman to take in any parcels to save us going to the sorting office and she'd keep an eye on the houses to make sure they were kept safe whilst we were out. She would bring a weekly magazine delivery to our house which she continued to do during her illness and during her days at Kerry Foods, we would get food and toiletry deliveries too! Her kind and caring nature will be missed by so many.

Clare loved a drink and one of my favourite memories is Boxing Day get-togethers at Clare and Arthur's with all the neighbours. Arthur and Clare were so generous and would organise drinks and food for us to celebrate the festive season. Anyone who had the pleasure of being invited would find the drinks flowing and I'm sure I speak for many when I say Boxing Day evenings was usually feeling the effects!

Clare never lost this sense of humour, even when she was very poorly and indeed my last memory of Clare is one of laughter. My Mum, me and Clare's friend Nell spent a Friday evening with her and were given some of the biggest measures of alcohol you've ever seen; this was straight from work before I'd eaten and needless to say we ended up in fits of laughter at some of Clare's stories. This memory will stay with me forever and is how I will remember Clare!

Clare was fiercely independent and fought her illness with the courage of a lion. Never once did she complain about being unwell and would always insist on making the drinks whenever we visited regardless of how poorly she was. Her fighting spirit and character will be missed from Moorfield Avenue for many years to come.

Wherever she is now, no doubt she will have a whisky in her hand so there's only one thing left for me to say and that's 'Cheers Clare - it's been a pleasure.'

Statistics, Official Statistics & Reports:

Doubt & uncertainty from the BLACKLIST FILES to the SPANISH CIVIL WAR RECORDS...

LAST night, just before the meeting of Tameside Trade Union Council in Ashton-under-Lyne, I and Derek Pattison - President of Tameside TUC - were handed the recently released MI5 files on the 4,000 or so British volunteers who have been recorded as going to fight or work as medical aid in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. On top of the pile was George Orwell's file which read as follows:

Reference: PF 62,162.

Name: BLAIR, Eric. ORWELL, George.
Address: 77, Parliament Hill, N.W.
Born: 25.6.02. Motihari, Bengal.
Occupation: Journalist and author.

General History.
30.4.37. Member of the I.L.P. (Independent Labour Party) fighting with the International Brigade in Spain. (cutting from "The New Leader".) 1938. Was one fo (sic) the signatories to a Joint Peace Manifesto, issued by the P.P.U., No More War Movt., etc. Resigned from the Indeian (sic) Police, and when in Paris took an interest in the activities of the French C.P. (Communist Party)
21.1.50. Died.

---

This is immediately recognisable as an inaccurate record in so far as all the evidence shows that George Orwell never joined the International Brigade in Spain and that he fought with the POUM militia as a member of the I.L.P. He resigned from the Indian Imperial Police as from 1st, January 1928 and went to Paris in the spring of that year. According to Peter Davison in his book on Orwell 'Facing Unpleasant Facts: 1937-39', Orwell 'is said to have "paid a membership subscription to the Peace Pledge Union (PPU)" in December 1937.' Davidson believes that '... the evidence he (Orwell) joined the PPU is based on a misreading of a receipt in the Orwell Archive.' It seems this misreading is based on an acknowledgement of a 'receipt for 2s 6d, dated 12th, December 1937, from Mrs E. Blair - Eileen, not Eric', and Davison thinks that she was buying pamphlets for her husband. No mention in Davison's book of Orwell signing the Peace Manifesto, though he may well have done so even if he had not been a member of the PPU.

The moral of this is that we should approach all these documents with caution. Whether it be the dodgy blacklist files of the unlicensed data bank of Ian Kerr's Consulting Association, the MI5 files and official records, the contents of the Moscow Archives, the lists of volunteers in the Marx Memorial Library or the oddly assembled booklet, written by Bernard Barry, 'From Manchester to Spain', published in 2009 by the Working Class Movement Library. Ian Kerr's blacklist files on the workers and trade unionists in the British building trade were full of errors; the current MI5 records on Spanish Civil War volunteers are at times speculative and flawed; some of the material in the Moscow Archives is 'bitchy' about people from Tameside like Lillian Urmston and James Keogh; and Bernard Barry's 2009 booklet on the local volunteers from Greater Manchester has a poorly categorised and misleading 'Roll of Honour'. The ethnomethodologists urge us to study how lists, files, Rolls of Honour and official statistics are assembled by the people collecting the data. One consideration should be the motives of the data collectors in these cases, whether it be the blacklister, Ian Kerr, or Bernard Barry on behalf of the Working Class Movement Library, or the spies snooping on their comrades fighting in Spain to send stuff to Stalin and the Moscow Archives, or the agents employed by MI5 counting how many went to Spain and who was in the Communist Party: all of these parties may have an incentive to exaggerate and inflate their figures.

In the light of the recently released MI5 new data and the fact that Tameside TUC may have been misled by the 'Roll of Honour' in Bernard Barry's booklet 'From Manchester to Spain' to include people in the 3rd edition of our booklet commemorating the Spanish Civil War who did not qualify for recognition, it ought now to be revised in the production of a 4th edition later this year.

History of Tameside - James Keogh

Here's the section of the Tameside episode of the History of Greater Manchester, broadcast on BBC Radio Manchester this Wednesday. Our very own Bammy is interviewed about Tameside's volunteers, in particular James Keogh. TMBC plan later in the year to unveil a Blue Plaque in memory of James Keogh at the site of his former workplace in Ashton-under-Lyne.

History of Greater Manchester on Radio Manchester

IF IT'S WEDNESDAY! IT MUST BE TAMESIDE!!!

YESTERDAY it was Salford, last Friday it was Rochdale, today it's Stockport but Wednesday it will be Tameside. John Stapleton's 'History of Greater Manchester' continues tomorrow on BBC Radio Manchester with coverage of the Tameside towns: Ashton, Stalybridge, Hyde, Dukinfield etc. With Salford it was Marx and Engels drinking at The Crescent pub, L.S. Lowry, 'Love on the Dole', 'The Classic Slum', Ruth Frow and the Working Class Movement Library, the wealth of local actors and playwrights and, horror of horrors, even Hazel Blears. The Rochdale one included Rochdale's neo-Gothic Town Hall and its architect, the Co-op and the Pioneers, the Chartists, Our Gracie and even former Chairman of the Planning Committee Councillor Norman Smith on his brother Big Cyril Smith - the notorious local politician who dominated politics in the town for decades. Former Alderman Cyril Smith, who died last September, was a giant character rather like 'The Workhouse Donkey', Charlie Butterwaite, in John Arden's play of the same name: Butterwaite was born in a Yorkshire Workhouse and Smith was born in a Rochdale slum and both went on to triumph in politics. John Stapleton’s had an emotional interview with Norman Smith, who describes growing up with his brother Cyril in 1930’s Rochdale. He reflects on his brother’s political career and recalls how Cyril made his mum Mayoress in 1966.

Yet, on Wednesday the 13th April it will be Tameside's turn. Tameside is a name for a collection of small towns in East Manchester. It will be Tameside's link to the Spanish Civil War that will interest some of our readers. From Tameside more than half a dozen of its citizens in the 1930s set off for Spain to fight in Civil War to defend the young Spanish democratic republic, plus one young woman, Lillian Urmston from Stalybridge, by then in her twenties, who went off to nurse the wounded in that war. At that time, in 1936, there were only three democracies left in Western Europe; these included Great Britain, France and the then threatened Spanish Republic, which at the time in July 1936 had been presented with the treachery of military uprising by many of its Generals led by General Franco and General Mola and supported by the dictators Chancellor Hitler of Germany and the Italian Mussolini. This year Tameside MBC is going to commemorate one of their number, James Keogh, from Ashton who died fighting in Spain in March 1938 in the mountains of Aragon where George Orwell earlier had served in the POUM militia, by installing a Blue Plaque for him and other local combatants in the town. Tameside Trade Union Council and the local publication Northern Voices have been campaigning for this almost since the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War in 2006. Besides the young James Keogh and Lillian Urmston, other Tamesiders who are known to have gone to fight in Spain in the 1930s included: Albert Godwin from Dukinfield, Daniel Albert Boon, William Brown, James Greenwood - all from Ashton. Some others are suspected to have lodged or stayed in the Tameside towns and also believed to have served in Spain. None of these seem to have been affiliated to a political party of any kind and in James Keogh's case, as an apprentice tailor working in central Ashton, he was not even a member of a trade union. This suggests great strength of character in Keogh's case and in that of Lillian Urmston for she didn't belong to a political party either: and yet both of these, perhaps because they were not members of the Communist Party had derogatory references to them when recently documents were revealed in the Moscow Archives - containing reports of them both from communist spies to the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. The Secretary of Tameside Trade Union Council will be being interviewed on the participation of these volunteers in the program.

With this years Oscar winner (for his part in 'The King's Speech') Colin Firth about to play George Orwell in the coming film 'Homage to Catalonia', which records Orwell's own experiences in the Spanish Civil War between Christmas 1936 and May 1937, any coverage of the Spanish Civil War is bound to be topical. This is the 75th anniversary of the start of that war in July 1936.

LOOKING BACK ON THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

'A louse is a louse and a bomb is a bomb, even though what you are fighting for happens to be just.' from George Orwell's essay 'Looking Back on the Spanish War' written in the Autumn of 1942.

Last night, Charles Jepson of the National Clarion Cycling Club 1895 welcomed the recent decision of Tameside Council to award a blue plaque to James Keogh, an international brigade volunteer, who died in action in the Spanish Civil War in March 1938 in a confrontation in northern Spain with Italian troops. Mr Jepson was speaking to a group of local people at the Tameside Local Studies & Archives Centre on Old Street, Ashton-u-Lyne on 'Tameside People who served in the Spanish Civil War'. The event was organised by local archivist Alice Lock. Present at the talk were officers from Tameside Trade Union Council and Louise Atkinson, the Tameside Arts & Events Manager.

Charles Jepson spoke of the courage of young James Keogh, who lived on Wellington Street, Ashton, and the other young men from the Tameside area, who served in Spain fighting for what they saw as freedom and democracy. His younger sister, Claire Jackson, still lives in Stalybridge. Another man from Dukinfield, Albert Godwin, who served with James in Spain was captured by the enemy and is believed to have been forced, at one stage, to dig his own grave: in the end Albert and the others who went from Tameside survived the war. No grave nor James Keogh's remains, have ever been found, despite a visit by James's nephew, Mike Harrison, a couple of years ago.

Louise Atkinson of the Tameside Arts & Events Unit, has written that she 'anticipate(s) the plaque (to James Keogh) will be unveiled around Autumn/Winter 2011' and that the plaque will 'include reference to “all other volunteers” from the area that also fought in the Spanish Civil War'. At the last meeting of Tameside TUC, that nominated James for the blue plaque two years ago, the Council's decision was welcomed.

Mr Jepson's talk was a workmanlike and well balanced account of the Civil War. In the end, he echoed George Orwell assessment in his essay 'Looking Back on the Spanish War' that: 'The outcome of the Spanish war was settled in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin – at any rate not in Spain' and that General Franco's forces 'won because they were stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't.' Spain in 1936, was one of only three democracies remaining in western Europe – Britain and France being the other two, and it had a legitimate right to international support. James Keogh and the others who fought in Spain, including George Orwell, understood this. Most people in this country, including in the trade union and Labour movement, choose to ignore this preferring a policy of appeasement and non-intervention, and Tory critics of Germany, like Winston Churchill and Harold Nicholson, were still in the political wilderness. Only after Munich did public opinion change on this.

Buy Northern Voices12 price £1.50, out next month, from certain select Ashton and Tameside newsagents & in the Local Studies Archive at Ashton Library, for more on James Keogh and other local heroes of the Spanish Civil War.

Tameside considers a blue plaque for James Keogh

Last week, an Arts & Events panel for Tameside MBC considered an application from Tameside TUC that James Keogh be awarded a blue plaque in tribute to him and other volunteers from the Tameside area who served in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. If a blue plaque is awarded to James Keogh and the others, it is expected that the event will take place later next year.

Spanish Protests for Garzon & Victims of Franco

LAST SATURDAY, tens of thousands of protesters turned out on the streets of 21 Spanish towns and cities in support of Judge Baltasar Garzon, who faces suspension from the Spanish bench for having called for the opening of more than a dozen graves of people who were presumed to be Franco's victims, and for demanding the investigation of the 'crimes' of the Franco regime. By breaching the terms of a 1977 amnesty created during the transition to democracy, some magistrates argue that he overstepped his judicial mandate: in English law this would mean he acted ultra vires - beyond his powers.

Garzon's supporters claim he is being pursued by a right-wing gang, including member of the 'Fascist' Falange party and 'Manos Limpias' - a pseudo-sindicato (trade union), that have taken out writs against him. It was Garzon who, some years ago, forced the British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, to act against Pinochet in this country. His actions on behalf of the victims of Franco has divided the Spaniards. The Spanish judges are highly political, and Garzon is no exception. Last Saturday, many of the demonstrators were calling for 'Mas juces como Garzon' ('More Judges like Garzon') and 'Garzon amigo, Espanaesta contigo!' (Garzon old mate, Spain is with you!').

Famous actors and actresses, like Juan Diego Botto, Jose Sacristan, Pilar Bardem and Charo Lopez, world famous film director Pedro Almodovar, and singer, Miguel Rios, backed the protest.

This is happening at a time when the Tameside Arts & Events Department in Greater Manchester, has recently 'deferred indefinitely' an application from Tameside Trade Union Council for a commemoration for James Keogh, a local youth who was killed in Spain by Italian troops supporting General Franco over 70 years ago, while fighting in the International brigade for freedom and democracy for the Spanish people [see Northern Voices 11]. This week, the English Judge, Lord Bingham said on Radio 4's 'Start the Week' that, in his view, the best judges are those that are unknown to the public. This shows us the difference between the Spanish mentality and that of the English: the Spaniard generally is more forthright, blunter and more open than his English counterpart; the English are more reserved, hypocritical and more restrained in the way they go about things. This thought possibly encouraged Christopher Caldwell in the FT to write: 'For all its impressive progress over the past three decades, Spain remains a country with an unsettled - and, by western standards of non-partisanship and impartiality, unimpressive - judicial tradition.' And referring to Garzon, he writes: 'It is no gain for international peace when a freelancer operating in such a system is permitted to make foreign policy for a dozen European countries, all of which have a better human rights record than Spain's over the last 60 years, as Garzon was permitted to do in the Pinochet case.'