Salford Answered Spain’s Call
The global movement to defend the Spanish Republic from fascism included scores of Salford people who volunteered in the International Brigades, raised funds and cared for refugees — a legacy that campaigners are hoping will be enshrined in a memorial.
Volunteers and supporters of the International Brigades on Bury New Road, Salford.
The recent wave of far-right fuelled rioting has hit our country’s most deprived area the hardest, but despite Salford sitting as one of the most deprived local authorities, we thankfully did not see any disorder. It’s debatable why rioting didn’t arrive here; in recent years, Tommy Robinson has held several rallies in Salford. But one thing is for certain — complacency is not an option.
This is one major reason why many Salfordians hope to build a monument to those from our city who volunteered to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War by joining the International Brigades.
The campaign, led by representatives from Salford Trades Union Council, the International Brigade Memorial Trust (IBMT), Salford Labour Party and the Working Class Movement Library (WCML), has a vision for a monument both worthy of their sacrifices and to build on their legacy of solidarity, freedom and democracy.
So far, we have identified thirty volunteers from Salford — including nine who were killed in action. These individual stories are a testament to the commitment to justice and freedom shown by the volunteers.
They include figures such as Molly Murphy, who was brought up in the slums of Salford to a father who struggled to find work because of his fearless socialist political activity. Living in Eccles, Molly was a founding member of the local Suffragette movement and trained as a nurse; after marrying Jack Murphy, a leading Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) member, she toured the nascent USSR to examine its health system, meeting Lenin in the process.
In January 1937 — aged forty-two and in poor health — she nevertheless heard the call of democratic Spain, where she worked tirelessly with wounded Republican soldiers in nine hospitals over eight months. After Spain, she worked punishing 100-hour weekly shifts in London hospitals as the Blitzkrieg war that hit Madrid now hit our capital, before retiring due to her ill health in 1942.
Boxing Gloves for Mosin Nagants
Another heroic Salford figure is Joe Norman, who started work aged fourteen as a millworker. Within weeks of working there, he was part of a workers’ delegation which demanded and won a 20 percent pay rise. He joined the Merchant Navy, where he was a champion boxer. Finding himself unemployed in the early 1930s, he chaired the local National Unemployed Workers’ Movement and the British Workers Sports Federation, where a boxing tour of the Soviet Union saw him earn the nickname ‘the Professor’ from Red Army soldiers impressed by his skill.
After his friend George Brown — a Manchester Irishman — was killed in Spain, Joe volunteered. After serving in some of the most intense battles of the war, he was captured by the fascists, and spent nearly a year inside a Gestapo-controlled concentration camp. A member of the resistance committee inside the camp, he avoided the firing squad several times before being repatriated in December 1938.
But this direct experience of Nazi terror never bowed him. Back on home soil, Joe helped found a local branch of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE, now Unison), as well as the local chair of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) branch and founding the local British Legion. Moving to Corby later on in life, he would also open the Corby Trades and Labour Club and took in two Chilean refugee families following Pinochet’s fascist coup.
Salford Says: Spain Will Not Starve
My docker grandfather remembers stories of Joe’s brother, George Norman, a militant on Salford Docks who would later be expelled from the TGWU for taking unofficial action. George was one of thousands of activists in the Aid for Spain movement, which campaigned tirelessly to send assistance to the democratic Spanish government and has been compared by historian Jim Fyrth as comparable to the Chartist movement in its size.
In this work, Salford did not come up short. Several food ships left the docks for Spain; motorbike engines from the Gardeners’ works in Patricroft and vans for makeshift ambulances from a Blackfriars dealership were all donated. Door knocking for aid took place on an almost daily basis at points, with the poor inhabitants of Salford’s Depression-era slums responding generously.
As Salford people sent goods out, Salford people welcomed people in. Of the 20,000 Basque children who crossed the English Channel to become refugees to escape the Nazi bombs that would soon be destroying British cities, the Bishop of Salford encouraged opposition to the national government’s reluctance to help by announcing that Salford Christians would do their bit.
In the end, thirty Basque children were housed at the Catholic Orphanage in Seedley and the Friends Meeting House in nearby Langworthy (now an ex-serviceman’s club). After they were moved to Sheffield, it took twenty minutes to load up the bus with all the toys that local people had given them. The crew of the Bartello, a Spanish Republican ship berthed in Salford Docks, raised £20 and took the children on a shopping trip for new suits and party frocks; the children wept as they boarded the bus, crying ‘No more Salford! No more Salford!’
These stories deserve to be known — and with the creation of this memorial, we hope to bring these stories back to public knowledge. The impact of the memorial will extend far past the statue, to the classroom and beyond, providing educational enlightenment to the children and communities of Salford. It will stand as a powerful symbol of freedom, teaching the crucial importance of democracy, tolerance, community and solidarity.
We hope you can join us and help make this vision a reality by sharing, donating and asking your union branches and community organisations for support.