Earnestness and ideology also permeated English literature and art throughout the decade. In the Twenties, many authors and artists had tried to escape from history and contemporary politics by focusing on stylistic experimentation. In the Thirties, history and politics returned as the central theme of art and literature. According to a cliché of the decade, a work of art was ‘first of all a social and political event’ and its relation to the world and to history was more important than its place within an artistic tradition. In this climate many authors became topical and didactic, while others, like the plain-speaking Orwell, aimed at stylistic transparency. A parallel development can be seen in the proliferation of clubs formed in the decade to ‘save’, ‘fight’, ‘defend’, ‘declare’ or ‘overthrow’ various political causes.
One such organization was Victor Gollancz’s Left Book Club. This socialist society sent its 60,000 members the magazine Left News and its ‘Book of the Month’, along with various educational titles. By the end of the decade it had circulated over half a million publications; many of them espoused the republican cause in Spain or anti-fascism, while others focused on poverty at home, the most famous example being Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). A number of LBC publications championed the Communist cause, both in and outside Russia. In 1937 the club published an augmented edition of Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s 1935 book Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?, dropping the question mark from the title in deference to Stalin. The fact that the Soviet dictator had recently conducted show trials as part of his ‘Great Purge’ of 600,000 officials and peasants did not tarnish his reputation in the eyes of the authors or the publisher. Such naivety was common on the left, where many saw Stalin as a champion of democratic socialism.
Throughout England, Left Book Club centres were established, providing venues for discussion groups and lectures. According to Orwell, who gave a number of LBC lectures, the meetings were typically attended by ‘old blokes from the local Labour Party [in] overcoats’; argumentative youths from the local Communist party; and young women who sat with their ‘mouths a little open, drinking it all in’. Many members of the audience wore orange LBC badges, which bore the organization’s watchwords: KNOWLEDGE, UNITY, RESPONSIBILITY.
Some middle-class intellectuals did much more than write books, pledging to defend the Spanish Republic with their lives in the International Brigades. Of the 30,000 European male and female idealists who fought on the republican side in Spain, around 2,400 came from Britain. Among them were undergraduates, artists and poets, such as Julian Bell and W. H. Auden, who wrote memorably about their experiences. For some of the middle-class soldiers, stretcher bearers, ambulance drivers and nurses, the war was the defining experience of their lives. It provided a mirror image to the defining middle-class political experience of the previous decade – the General Strike, when many volunteers had defended the status quo against the workingclass strikers. Other volunteers in Spain, however, were disillusioned by their experience. Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (1938) tells the depressing tale of infighting on the republican side, which the author witnessed during his spell of active service. Communism in action proved a disheartening spectacle, with the Russian soldiers behaving brutally towards their allies as well as their enemies. Orwell’s seven months in Spain turned him into a vehement anti-Stalinist; yet some on the left were not interested in his criticisms – the Left Book Club refused to publish Homage.
Partly because of the famous war literature produced by intellectuals, the English contribution to the republican effort is sometimes regarded as a middle-class affair, yet the largest numbers of English recruits were drawn from the working classes. The first English memorial to one of the fallen volunteers was erected to Percy Williams, a twenty-three-year-old apprentice railway engineer from Swindon, who died two months after joining the International Brigades.
Five hundred and twenty-six British volunteers died in Spain, and around 1,200 were wounded. These casualties, and the death of a quarter of a million combatants on all sides, curbed the idealistic optimism of the English left. The horrors of war, which included 80,000 executions on both sides and the Francoist bombing of militarily insignificant targets such as the town of Guernica, increased their disillusion. As Franco and the Fascist forces advanced, few on the left retained their hopes of victory in Spain and even fewer their optimism concerning the ultimate defeat of Fascism. Socialism no longer seemed to be inevitable, or even desirable, in its Stalinist form. Yet at the same time, the civil war strengthened the Left’s conviction that the Fascists had to be opposed, and that a war between democracy and Fascist dictatorship was likely. ‘To be anti-war,’ wrote Julian Bell, ‘means to submit to fascism, to be anti-fascist means to be prepared for war. War will come.’ Pacifism steadily lost its appeal on the left. Socialists now urged the National Government to press ahead with rearmament and to stand up to Hitler and Mussolini.
The Spanish Civil War offered members of the English left their first real encounter with fascism, a political ideology that had failed to flourish in England, despite the best efforts of Sir Oswald Mosley. After Mosley was expelled from Labour in 1931, he had created a ‘New Party’ to promote his corporatist economic policy. Under the influence of Mussolini’s ideas, and in the growing conviction that liberal capitalism and parliamentary democracy were unlikely to survive following the depression, Mosley transformed the party into the British Union of Fascists.
The BUF united various Fascist splinter groups under Mosley’s leadership. Authoritarian, nationalist, anti-Semitic and rabidly anti-communist, the party offered itself as the only viable alternative to an eventual communist success. Like its policies, the BUF’s ethos was Italian – a group of violent and uniformed paramilitary stewards called ‘blackshirts’ would ‘protect’ ‘The Leader’ from anti-fascist protesters during public meetings and marches. Their most notorious march took place in October 1936, through an area with a large Jewish population in London’s East End. Around 6,000 police attempted to ensure the safe passage of the 2,500 marchers but they were repulsed by approximately 100,000 anti-fascist protesters, with many women and children among them. After a series of running battles with the police, the anti-fascist protesters forced the BUF to divert their march.
Mosley possessed charisma, and an aristocratic hauteur admired by his workingclass followers. With impassioned and eloquent speeches, he bewitched the crowds and certain sections of the press. His populistic diatribes against the ‘old gang’ of the establishment impressed the young and the poor, who felt ignored and despised by mainstream politicians. During its first two years, the BUF attracted 50,000 members and also received the vociferous backing of the Daily Mail, which ran the headline ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ Yet the BUF’s popularity never translated into parliamentary gains, and no more than a handful of Conservative MPs offered Mosley their support. Moreover, unlike the Communist party, the BUF lacked middle-class intellectual champions.
After 1934, Mosley’s blackshirts became increasingly violent, and their activities were disowned by sympathizers who aspired to represent respectable opinion. The National Government attempted to eradicate political violence by introducing the 1936 Public Order Act, which banned all quasi-military organizations and demonstrations. After the bill passed into law the BUF’s membership dwindled to a few thousand, and in the end it was no more successful than the British Communist party. After 1937 mutual vilification was the raison d’être of both parties, with communist protesters the largest presence at Fascist meetings.