SCUM OF THE EARTH

 ‘FRANCO’S FRIENDS’ PETER DAY * Biteback Publishing Ltd 2011
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In 1940 Arthur Koestler, who had just escaped from the advancing German army in France, produced a book about his experience of being detained by the French authorities; he called his book ‘Scum of the Earth.’
 I recommend the book to anyone interested in twentieth century history, particularly anyone interested in what became of those who had fought so heroically for Republican Spain. Trotsky famously coined the phrase ‘dustbin of history,’ Koestler describes what it is like to live there. It is a painful read for anyone, like me, who has felt something of the nobility of the Spanish revolutionaries of 1936.


Rothermere and Friend
Mr Day has written about the British citizens who backed the other side in the Spanish struggle, who were overwhelmingly drawn from the British establishment. It is I think not unfair to describe them as being representative of the thinking of the elite who ruled Britain in the 1930’s.  If patriotism is love of and loyalty to ones country, to its citizens and its international interests many of this crew’s activity bordered on treason. The loyalty these people had was not to the British people but to their fellow elites across the continent, though they were often equally motivated by financial gain. The historian Alan Taylor said that the western European socialist movements talked class struggle, the ruling classes practised it. Here is written documentation of that fact. Fear and hatred of the organised working class far outweighed any anxieties they might have about the emerging ideology of fascism or a resurgent Nazi Germany. Indeed fascism was welcomed by figures as disparate as Rothemere, Lord Londonderry, the Duke of Westminster and of course the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.[1] They saw fascism as a necessary antidote, in Churchill’s words, ‘to the bacillus of communism.’
To wade into the history of this milieu one requires a nose peg, many were simply rapidly anti Semitic half wits, others much more sinister and dangerous with links to Special Branch, MI5 and MI6, and it is this latter group that Day is primarily concerned.
It is clear that the British establishment[2] had clear intelligence of the coup, that not only did it not warn the legitimate government of Spain, nor even simply turn a blind eye, but actively colluded with the coup plotters; perfidious Albion indeed.
What is perhaps worse[3] is that these activities actively damaged British interests. From 1936 it was obvious to anyone but a half wit that some sort of conflict with a resurgent Nazi Germany was, to put it mildly, a distinct possibility, certainly something for which planning was required. In any such conflict it was obvious that benign Spanish neutrality was a minimal requirement. Instead of which the British establishment backed a regime openly sympathetic to the fascist dictatorships and which would require considerable Dane geld[4] to keep it from becoming a belligerent on the axis side.  At one stage a benevolent eye was even turned on the possibility of Italian forces permanently occupying the Balearic's  The consequences of such a situation for Britain’s later campaign in the Mediterranean and North Africa would surely have been dire indeed. There surely comes a point at which the lines between ideological blindness, stupidity and outright treason begin to blur.

Mr Day’s attitude towards his protagonists, given the breezy boys own adventure of his style, seems a little unclear. Whilst exposing their venality he seems somewhat taken with their superficial glamour and derring-do. The calibre of those involved can best be summed up in the character of Hugh Bertie Campbell Pollard, the MI6 agent responsible for flying Franco from Las Palmas to Morocco to facilitate his role in coup against the democratically elected government of Spain. Mr Pollard remained an unrepentant fascist to the end of his life in 1966. Amongst the possible ‘achievements’ that Mr Pollard could list on his CV was responsibility for some of the worst fake atrocity propaganda of the First World War. Ivor Montague his cousin described how:-

‘In the First World War he was with Intelligence…….how we laughed at his cleverness when he told us how his department had launched the account of German corpse factories and how the Hun was using myriads of trench war casualties for making soap and margarine.’[5]

George Orwell rightly wrote that this kind of propaganda ultimately does more to damage the fabric of civilised society than guns or bullets. Indeed the exposure of such propaganda after the war led to later descriptions of the real atrocities committed by the Nazi’s being disbelieved. Some side splitter that.
The Spanish Revolution of 1936 which itself was a consequence of the Fascist coup was beset by enemies on all sides, the greatest being obviously the Fascist powers and Stalinist Russia. In the wings were a coterie of bit part players from Britain, officials working for British state, members of the aristocracy and thuggish boy scout adventurers. They are described in this book. What a truly disgusting bunch they are, perfidious to the core, truly deserving of the epithet Scum of the Earth.   




[1] Another element that united this disparate group, but not including Churchill, was a virulent anti Semitism.
[2] Though it is clear that not everyone was in the loop, nor is it clear how far some activities were the result of rogue elements within the intelligence community. Nothing knew there.
[3] Obviously leaving morality to one side and examining events from a narrow British Perspective.
[4] Day catalogues the payment of such bribes see
[5] Quoted in  Franco’s Friends Pages 20/21


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