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Title: A Rebel in Barcelona Author: Jack White Date: November 11th, 1936 Language: en Topics: Spanish Revolution, Barcelona, anarcho-syndicalism Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20120312172803/http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/jw_first.html
I came out to Barcelona as administrator of the second British Red Cross
Unit. Two nurses and myself came on in advance to find a site for the
hospital of the Unit somewhere on the Teruel front.
Unfortunately the Unit had been cancelled all except four ambulances
which are now en route somewhere between Paris and Barcelona. Some of
these ambulances are to go, I believe to the first Unit at Grañen. Till
they arrive in any case, I am left with no-one to administrate and
nothing to do, so a friend in the CNT-FAI has asked me to write my
impressions for broadcast or the press.
My first and deepest impression is that of the natural nobility of the
Catalan people. I got that impression as early as Port Bou, where we had
to spend six hours waiting for the Barcelona train. A bright sun was
shining which tempted me to bathe in the bay. After undressing I left my
coat, with some 80 English pounds in the pocket, on the rocks close to a
frequented path with a sense of its perfect safety. Half an hour in
Cataluña and a few conversations in my faulty Spanish had made me feel I
was among friends, who appreciated the effort of the British workers and
intelligentsia to help their cause. I would not have dared to risk such
a large sum of money unguarded at any English watering place. Here I
felt it was guarded by the revolutionary solidarity of Cataluña and even
of the international solidarity of the working class of which Cataluña
is now the bulwark.
This impression of revolutionary honour and revolutionary order has been
maintained by all I have seen and experienced during the week I have
been in Barcelona. On one occasion after a trying morning rushing round
after the necessary passes to go on to Valencia - that was before the
cancellation of the unit and I wanted to go on to the front to find a
place for our hospital as soon as possible - I inadvertently paid my
taxi driver four pesetas more than his fare. He brought it back to me
remarking "eso sobra". This happened as I was entering the door of the
Regional Committee of the CNT-FAI, the headquarters of those terrible
Anarchists of whose misdeeds we read so much in the Capitalist Press
now. I am not going to enter into controversy, philosophic or political,
I simply record my experiences, without fear or favour. It is a fact,
that the Barcelona churches were burnt, and many of them, where roof and
walls are still standing, are used to house medical or commissariat
stores instead of, as previously, being used by the fascists as
fortresses. I suspect their present function is nearer the purpose of a
religion based by its founder on the love of God and the Neighbour.
However that may be, the destruction of the churches has not destroyed
love and honesty in Spain. If they are not based on the love of God,
they are based on brotherliness, selflessness and self respect, which
have to be experienced to be believed. Never, till I came to
revolutionary Barcelona, had I seen waiters and even shoeblacks refuse a
tip. Here the refusal of anything in excess of the exact bill or fee is
as invariable as the courtesy with which it is done. This very courtesy
makes one feel mean for having offered it, a benighted bourgeois,
automatically continuing bourgeois habits and unable to grasp the self-
respect of the workers now they are so largely in control. My first day
taught me my lesson. I never offend now.
You will have heard no doubt about the Dublin Rising of 1916. That
rising is now thought of as purely a national one, of which the aims
went no further than the national independence of Ireland. It is
conveniently forgotten that not only was the manifesto published by the
"bourgeois" leaders conceived in a spirit of extreme liberal democracy,
but, associated with the bourgeois leaders, was James Connolly, the
international socialist, who some regarded as the greatest revolutionary
fighter and organizer of his day. In command of the Irish Citizen Army,
which I had drilled, he made common cause with the Republican
separatists against the common Imperial enemy. It is said that he
threatened to come out with the Citizen Army alone, if the bourgeois
Republicans shirked the issue.
It was then the middle of the great war. the rising was ruthlessly
suppressed by England and sixteen of the leaders were executed. Connolly
himself, badly wounded in the Dublin Post Office which was shelled to
ruins by a British gun-boat, was strapped in a chair and shot by a
firing-squad before he recovered.
Here in Cataluña, the union of the working class and nation starts off
under better auspices than were possible in Ireland. In Cataluña the
internal socialist reconstruction goes hand in hand with the armed fight
against Spanish and international fascism. You are in advance of us in
Syndico-Anarchist and Socialist construction. You are advance of us in
dealing with the clerico-fascist menace. Again and again in Ireland the
revolutionary Republican movement comes a bit of the way towards
Socialism, and scurries back in terror when the Roman catholic Church
looses its artificial thunder of condemnation and excommunication.
I come of an Ulster Protestant family. There is a saying in Ulster (the
north-east province of Ireland) "Rome is a lamb in adversity, a snake in
equality and a lion in prosperity". I am glad that in Cataluña you have
made Rome into a lamb. In Ireland Rome is still a lion, or rather a wolf
in sheep's clothing. The priests inflame the mob and then pretend to
deplore the mob-violence which they have instigated. Last Easter Sunday,
I had myself to fight for three kilometres against the Catholic
actionists, who attacked us on the streets as we were marching to honour
the memory of the Republican dead who fell in Easter week 1916. The
pious hooligans actually came inside the cemetery and tore up the grave
rails to attack us.
In Ireland, as in Spain, it was the priests who started methods of fire
and sword against the people. yet they complain bitterly when their own
weapons are turned against themselves.
Comrades of Cataluña! In your hour of trial when you hold the barricades
not only for yourselves but for us all, I greet you with the voice of
revolutionary Ireland, smothered awhile but destined to regain its
strength. I hold myself honoured to be among you, to serve if I can in
whatever capacity I can be most useful.