Fighting for Freedom

by Ben Soton

Hampshire Heroes: Volunteer Fighters in the Spanish Civil War by Alan Lloyd. Clapton Press, London 2022. Paperback: 170pp, rrp: £11.

Alan Lloyd, a prominent member of the International Brigades Memorial Trust, played a major role the establishing a memorial to the men from Southampton who gave their lives in the Spanish Civil War on the side of freedom. He is also a former Labour councillor, recently expelled from the Labour Party for advocating views at odds with the party’s new hard-right leadership.
    Alan has now turned for his hand to historical writing. His first book, Hampshire Heroes: Volunteer Fighters in the Spanish Civil War, charts the lives of the men and women from Hampshire who volunteered to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
    Hampshire is a country of great contrast. It includes the two large cities of Southampton and Portsmouth on its southern coast, whilst it can also count smaller towns such as Gosport, Fareham, Eastleigh and Basingstoke, and like all Shire Counties it contains an array of leafy villages scattered throughout the New Forest, Test and Meon Valleys. Hampshire is a county where you can find deprived housing estates and a few miles away find leafy suburbs with properties worth millions. The county has produced an array of backgrounds from which many of the International Brigaders came.
    This is a very well researched book that charts the lives of those who took up arms as part of the International Brigade, as well as the medical volunteers and those pilots who flew in the Republican air force. There is also a section on the Basque children who arrived in Southampton on the SS Habana. Meanwhile, the book also exposes the British Government’s policy of “Non-Intervention”, which hindered military aid to the Spanish Republic whilst giving Hitler and Mussolini a free rein in assisting Franco. It should be pointed out that the British Government could have assisted the Spanish Republic with little effort, whereas in 1939 this country went to war to assist the reactionary Polish regime whom it had little means of helping.
    Hampshire Heroes is a useful source for anyone wishing to learn about the Spanish Civil War. The chronology of the book covers the mayor battles of the conflict such as Ebro and Jarama, Teruel and the final retreat through Aragon. In charting the lives of the volunteers, the book covers those who gave their lives in the fight against the evil of fascism but also gives an insight into the lives of those who survived the conflict, some of whom lived on into the early 2000s.
    A useful history book and a fitting tribute to the volunteers who gave fought and, in many cases, gave their lives in the fight against fascism. Particular reference should go to the four men from Southampton who gave their lives in that conflict: Raymond Artur Cox, Ivor Hickman, David Haden Guest and Harold Laws.