Colin Carritt spoke to us at our meeting on 31st July about the Spanish Civil War and the role of Oxfordshire people in it. He began by explaining the build up to the war in some detail, but briefly Spain was a generally backward nation with little industry and the people disillusioned. This eventually led to unrest in the underclasses which was crushed by the military, the aristocracy and the church. This eventually led to the civil war between the left-leaning Republicans and the aristocratic, conservative Nationalist counter-revolutionaries under General Franco. It lasted three years from 1936. Spain had no help from the non-interventionist US or Europe and the Nationalists appealed to the international trades union movement for help. 35,000 volunteers came from 54 countries to form the International Brigade. Although generally anti-fascist, the volunteers came from all backgrounds. The figure included 2,700 from the British Isles of which 31 were Oxfordshire volunteers, 6 of whom were killed in action. The British group was about two-thirds working class but for fairly obvious reasons the Oxfordshire group included only about 6% from the working classes, the remainder coming from academia and the upper classes. Colin’s father Noel Carritt fought and was injured. His uncle, Anthony Carritt, was killed and his name appears on the new monument which has just been unveiled in South Park. The Nationalists won and Franco ruled Spain from April 1939 until his death in 1975.
The picture shows L-R Peter Venables, Ivor Spackman, Bill Topping, Speaker Colin Carritt and James Offen