Abstract
Reviewed by: Josep L. Barona, Universitat de València, Spain
This book is Linda Palfreeman’s second major contribution to research on the role of British medical activists in the Spanish Civil War, coming just two years after her Salud! British Volunteers in the Republican Medical Service during the Spanish Civil War (2012). Palfreeman, who teaches at the Cardenal Herrera CEU University (Elche), has a very specific focus and context for her research. When Franco’s military coup initiated civil war in Spain in July 1936, many thousands of volunteers and activists around the world responded to the Spanish Republican appeal for humanitarian relief. There is a wide historiography showing the huge scale of collective efforts in Britain to provide aid for the Spanish Republic. Palfreeman’s book focuses on the activities of two separate participants that played significant roles in British medical aid and humanitarian relief to Spain: the Scottish Ambulance Unit and the Sir George Young’s Ambulance Unit. George Young was an experienced diplomat with a wide knowledge of Spanish affairs.
These initiatives have so far received little attention due to the ignorance of archival sources. Palfreeman fills this gap by using an extensive collection of new archival documentation, introducing new actors into the historical narrative. She sticks very closely to the sources, quoting extensive parts of archival documents, internal reports, diaries, letters and newspaper articles.
The first part of the book explains the quick organization of the Scottish response to the pleas for assistance from the Spanish Republic at that critical time. Relief organizations received support from trade unions, political parties and humanitarian initiatives as well as prominent figures such as Sir Daniel Macaulay Stevenson, a wealthy Scottish businessman and politician. The Scottish effort concentrated on providing relief to the huge amount of refugees, giving medical care and launching appeals for donations from Scottish communities that also suffered from unemployment and economic crisis. Palfreeman contrasts this generous support from the population to the cynical ‘non-interventionist’ policy officially shown by the British government.
The abundance of very detailed archival documents allows a prosopography showing the human and professional profile of some most remarkable characters. The daily work of the Scottish Ambulance Unit is shown with great detail in the hard context of besieged Madrid where it operated from September 1936 until the end of the war in April 1939. This complex scenario also reveals the unavoidable tension between the two main conceptions of medical philanthropy at the time: the pure humanitarian, and the political commitment of activists, usually close to the Communist Party. Palfreeman describes in detail remarkable figures such as Fernanda Jacobsen, a courageous leader and driving force for the Scottish Ambulance Unit. She was closely linked to D. M. Stevenson and Francesca Wilson, a Quaker who made great efforts to build hospitals for children in the Murcia region in very difficult conditions. As a member of the George Young Ambulance Unit she became involved in sanitary relief in southern Spain. Another figure discussed by Palfreeman is Captain Edwin Ch. Lance, who also provided assistance to Nationalist supporters at risk. In fact, the Scottish Ambulance Units were involved in a strategy of taking casualties from the Anglo-American Hospital down to Valencia and Alicante, from where they were frequently evacuated on British ships. These activities were motivated purely by humanitarian concerns, at the risk of arrest and execution.
In the second part of her book, Palfreeman focuses on the activities of the George Young Ambulance Unit in south-eastern Spain from the beginning of 1937. In Almería and Málaga the Nationalists deployed cruel extermination and terror strategies against anarchist militias and the civil population. This region was severely punished by African Nationalist troops, supported by German warships. They executed, strafed and shelled republicans, anarchists and civilians who tried to flee along the coast. This slaughter took on enormous dimensions. Norman Bethune reported some 150,000 refugees from this region. The George Young Ambulance Unit established hospitals and health care centres to assist refugees and deliver food and health care, as well as providing ambulance services, mainly on the Motril front.
The new archival documents brought to light by Linda Palfreeman reveal the opinions of Foreign Office officials, who considered humanitarian work as covert support of communists and leftists for a Spanish Republic which was on its way to social revolution – an idea which was reinforced by the support given the Republic by the USSR. In contrast, the non-intervention policy of European liberal governments emboldened the fascist regimes in Europe, which in turn was to trigger the World War.