大象传媒

This is an appeal for information.

Nearly 30 years ago I heard a story about a group of socialists from Cornwall who in the 1930s packed themselves off to Spain to fight for the Republican cause in the civil war. I tried to get details but my informant was vague; he had heard the information himself only second-hand etc etc.

About 15 years ago I heard a very similar story from another source, but again failed to get enough concrete facts to persuade any commissioning editor that there was a great documentary to be made - if the story stood up.

But now we have the internet, I have this blog, the blog has a few readers and who knows...

This is the story: round about 1936 about a dozen young men, from either Padstow or Port Isaac, were sufficiently concerned about Franco's assault on democracy in Spain to volunteer themselves as soldiers in a foreign war. With no training or preparation, they kissed their wives and girlfriends goodbye and set sail. Within days of their arrival they were killed - and neither of my informants was clear about which side had shot them.

The story is instantly gripping. Were they all so passionate about humanity and justice that they really believed this was the right way to make the world a better place? Had they any idea what they were getting into - including the fractured nature of the anti-Franco forces? Or were they just so drunk that they didn't realise they'd got on the wrong boat?

I did manage to find out that in the 1930s Padstow was (believe it or don't!) something of a hot-bed of Marxism - at least, there seems to have been about a dozen card-carrying Communist Party members there (In truth, in the 1930s, there were probably card-carrying Communist Party members in most towns in Cornwall, just like everywhere else.) But the International Brigade Association - whose membership, by the 1980s and 90s, was dwindling fast - had no knowledge of any contingent from Cornwall making it to Spain.

The working title of this project, in so far as there was a project at all 30 years ago, was "Innocence of Youth" and was about the declining interest in political activity among young people in the late 20th century; and the vanishing concepts of social class solidarity and internationalism.

If it did indeed happen, my guess is that the men who ended up dead in Spain were too young to have had children or other responsibilities at home. So I'm looking for nephews and neices, distant cousins etc; anyone who might be able to tell me if any of this is true.

I do hope it is true. In the far reaches of my imagination I actually hope that a Cornish Brigade not only made it to Spain but actually survived, and settled there, and their descendents now thrive in a democratic Europe unrecognisable to those who fought a war about it 80 years ago.

But I've been around long enough to know that people sometimes tell stories which they fervently wish to have been true. Whatever the answers, I won't be disappointed.