Eden, Blum, and the Origins of Non-Intervention

Abstract

Most supporters of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War were and are convinced that the agreement of the European Powers to operate a policy of non-intervention, which was to be substantially observed in practice only by the Western democracies, was of vital significance in determining the outcome of the struggle. Yet this allegedly fatal step was first officially proposed by the French Popular Front Government led by Leon Blum. The result has been that the European Left as a whole has been content to argue that the French acted as they did only under pressure from the right-wing British Government. According to this interpretation, the French capitulated to the British in several stages. First, on 25 July, the French Cabinet, supposedly overawed by British representations made at an international conference in London, decided not to adhere to their original intention of aiding the Madrid Government. Instead, they suspended the export of arms to Spain, though they refrained from taking the further logical step of banning the export of civil aircraft, which could of course easily be converted for military use. The next supposed British success came on I August when the French Government decided to promote an international non-intervention agreement. In the first instance this proposal was put only to the Mediterranean Powers but it was subsequently felt desirable to attempt to bring in Germany and the Soviet Union as well. But in the meantime evidence had accumulated that the Italians were supplying military aircraft to the insurgents in Spanish Morocco. The result was that on 2 August the French Foreign Ministry issued the following statement: 'The fact that munitions of war are now being sent from abroad to the insurgents compels the French Government to reserve their liberty of judgment in application of their decision [not to supply arms]'. By 7 August the implications of this statement were becoming apparent: the French had let it be known that