IV: POLITICS IN THE 1930s

Abstract

My first visit in a parliamentary capacity to Republican Spain was in the autumn of 1934. I had heard on reliable authority that a rising of the miners in the Asturias had been suppressed with extreme brutality. The Spanish Foreign Legion had been brought over from Africa, and they had meted punishment on wives and families as well as on the militant miners. It was therefore suggested that Miss Ellen Wilkinson M.P. and I should go to Spain on a humanitarian mission, and to point out to the Spanish authorities that much harm was being done to our relations with Spain by the atrocity stories appearing in the British press.