Leading the fight against fascism: International Brigade volunteers from Croydon, clockwise from to left: Miles Tomalin, Cyril Sexton, Harry Evans, John Peet, George Wheeler and Bill Harrington
The prelude to World War II in Europe was a nasty and brutal civil war in Spain, used as a proving ground for Hitler’s troops. And Croydon played a role in its start and its end, writes JIM JUMP
Croydon has an honourable place in the annals of the World War II. It was from Croydon Airport that RAF fighter squadrons helped see off Hitler’s Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Throughout the war, Croydon remained an important RAF base and a gateway for thousands of troops being sent into action.
Espionage mission: a Dragon Rapide aircraft, like the one used by Major Pollard to fly Franco to Morocco
But the history of the airport hides a darker secret from the years leading up to that war that engulfed the world.
On July 11, 1936, Major Hugh Pollard took off from Croydon for the Canary Islands in a chartered de Havilland Dragon Rapide. He told everyone he was going on holiday.
The truth was very different. Pollard was a British spy. Working with plotters in Spain, Pollard’s mission was to pick up General Francisco Franco and take him to Spanish Morocco.
Franco had been exiled to the Canaries by the elected government of the Spanish Republic, who didn’t trust him – with good reason, as it turned out. Once airlifted to Morocco, the general took command of Spain’s elite Army of Africa and launched a fascist-backed military uprising that sparked the Spanish Civil War.
The people of Croydon shouldn’t despair, however, over this blot on their history. During the ensuing war in Spain, many local men volunteered to fight against Franco and the jack-booted leaders of fascism.
Fascist dictator: General Franco overthrew a democratically elected government and ruled Spain for almost 40 years
Men like journalist Bill Harrington, from Thornton Heath. He was in Spain for nearly two years, fighting at the battles at Jarama and Brunete outside Madrid, and then in Aragón and at the Ebro in 1938, the last great battle of the war, where he was wounded.
Another casualty at the Ebro was John Peet, a teacher from South Croydon, who was injured in the ankle.
Cyril Sexton, a gardener from Selsdon, was a machine gunner in the British Battalion. Wounded in the upper arm at Jarama in February 1937, he recovered in hospital was was sent back into action at the Ebro. There he was injured again. He carried a scar on his cheek for the rest of his life.
Croydon-born Miles Tomalin was a brilliant poet, writer and musician. He served in the British Anti-Tank Battery and was also wounded at the Ebro.
Captured in that same battle was George Wheeler, a wood machinist from Mitcham. He returned home after the war ended in April 1938.
Other volunteers lent their skills to the war effort. Electrician Harry Evans from West Wickham, for example, spent his time in Spain in workshops repairing damaged vehicles.
Noble venture: the International Brigade Memorial on London’s South Bank
Nearly 20 men from Croydon and its environs served in the famous International Brigades. Along with the other 2,000 from Britain, they are rightly regarded as heroes.
Luckily none was killed, but the fatality rate overall was very high – 1-in-4 of the British volunteers never returned home.
More details about all these volunteers can be found on an online database maintained by the International Brigade Memorial Trust.
The IBMT also does educational work and organises commemorations, such as an annual gathering on the first Saturday in July at the International Brigade Memorial on London’s South Bank.
Franco won the war, but the International Brigades helped Spain’s government hold out for nearly three years, and so played a part in shifting public opinion in Britain away from pacifism and the appeasement of Nazism.
Spain’s war was a prelude to the world war that followed soon after Franco’s victory in 1939.
The German Führer and the Italian Duce sent tens of thousands of troops to help Spain’s military rebels. They tested warplanes and weapons that would soon be in action in the world war.
Jack-booted dictators: Franco at a meeting with Hitler in Hendaye in 1940. Spain never entered World War II
Urban fire-bombing was first tried out by the Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion under Wolfram von Richthofen on the Basque town of Guernica in April 1937 – a crime that is never forgotten thanks to Picasso’s masterpiece.
The same German warplanes that attacked the British Battalion during the 1938 Battle of the Ebro would soon be taking part in the Battle of Britain.
Back to Major Pollard taking off from Croydon Airport on that July morning nearly 90 years ago.
What, we should all ask, was a British intelligence officer doing getting involved in a military coup, the successful outcome of which would embolden Hitler and Mussolini and hasten a world war?
The answer is that we don’t know for sure, but we can guess what was actually going on.
What we do know is that Britain shamefully pursued a policy of appeasing the fascist powers during the Spanish Civil War.
Its policy of “non-intervention” was meant to look even-handed. In reality it meant that the Spanish Republic couldn’t buy arms to defend itself, while Germany’s Hitler and Italy’s Mussolini did all they could to help Franco.
After Guernica, Major Pollard had a letter published in The Times in which he said that targeting the town was “perfectly legitimate”, because it was claimed to be a centre of small arms manufacture, one which supplied weapons to terrorists.
In the same letter, Pollard said that the Basques who supported the Spanish Republic were “simply reaping what they have sown”.
In the years after the war, Pollard and his pilot, Cecil Bebb, were personally decorated by Franco, awarding them fascist Spain’s highest military honour, the Imperial Order of the Yoke and Arrows.
The list of other recipients of that same award is a rogues’ gallery of war criminals, from Hitler to Himmler and from Mussolini to Von Rippentrop.
Fighting fascism, with a recorder: the British Anti-Tank Battery in Spain, with Croydon-born Miles Tomalin playing the recorder
The verdict of history will doubtless be harsh on Pollard and his fellow British spooks, and on the British governments of Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain for what they did in destroying Spanish democracy and in appeasing fascism.
But the volunteers who went to Spain from Croydon and elsewhere to join the International Brigades – while their own governments looked the other way or worse – have a special place in the pantheon of those who fought for justice over the years.
As the cry that was coined in Spain says: “¡No pasarán!”
- Jim Jump is the chair of the International Brigade Memorial Trust
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
The British Government has a shameful history of supporting fascist and apartheid regimes.
Many British people have a proud history of standing up against fascism and fighting the far-right.
This isn’t just history, it continues to this day.
The history of Croydon always seems very significant and interesting with Pollard even attending the Crystal Palace School of Practical Engineering. He certainly had a career of the type that would have inspired another of the same ilk Ian Fleming to conjure up the likes of James Bond. Surely some Farage fellow traveller will make a film about him starting from his time fighting to stop Irish Independence to receiving his medals from Franco for his services to the Spanish Fascist State near his demise in a good old age.
Yes, Derek. The Major was a right nasty piece of work.
Pingback: British Town Paper Recounts How a Local Chap Was a Spy a Who Started the Spanish Civil War | flyingpenguin