Mobilizing British public opinion on SCW
Daniel Coysh, in the Morning Star, reviews Hugo García’s new book on Republican and Nationalist attempts to shape public opinion in the UK:
The Spanish civil war remains a subject both endlessly fascinating and divisive for the left in Britain thanks to its status as the first war against fascism in Europe and the revolutionary nature of parts of the Spanish republican government. .. Hugo Garcia has deliberately avoided this controversy in his book, which tries hard to be an “objective” scholarly examination of the propaganda efforts in Britain by both sides of the war.
More here.
Very interesting subject this, and I’m glad more research is being done into it. Personally I have always considered Chamberlain “the villain of the piece” and although this work shows he was in line with mainstream thinking in Britain, we have to question what that mainstream opinion was and how it was formed, given the politics of those who owned the newspapers, business interests and not least the ability of people like Luis Bolín and his group of pro-Francoists to metaphorically “box above their weight” by influencing those who mattered in terms of opinion forming, government and business. Here, I firmly believe, support for Franco was tacit, if not overt,and I would dearly love to see more work done in this area.
Tom Buchanan has several good books on the topic, e.g. The Impact of the Spanish Civil War on Britain (Sussex, 2007), which you can preview here.