A faraway war told back-to-front

Kiwi Companeros - New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War - By Mark Derby

This book suggests that the impact of the Spanish Civil War in the midst of the international economic depression of the 1930s had much less impact on New Zealand at a national and personal level than I had thought.

Perhaps this was because the Depression pressed so hard on ordinary people, because of a sense of an impending major war in Europe, and because of a confusing and divisive propaganda war between the predominantly left wing views of New Zealanders of the time and the Catholic Church.

The civil war erupted after a socialist, secular government was democratically elected in Spain. The military, led by General Franco and his Falangist (fascist) Party, backed by the Catholic Church, decided to defy the popular will and take power by force.

Thousands of democrats from around the world went to Spain to fight for the republic against Franco in an International Brigade. What tipped the balance in favour of the fascists was the decision of Western democracies to follow a non-intervention policy while the German and Italian fascist governments used the war as a practice match for their later main event. Their air power helped defeat the republican soldiers and murdered thousands of civilians in republican cities such as Barcelona.

Sadly, the International Brig-ade became a political playground for well-organised, hard-line Communists, a story told by early volunteer George Orwell, and this dimmed the rightness of the republican cause. What this book shows is that relatively few New Zealanders were sufficiently moved by the democratic cause to join the International Brigade, and they remain shadowy figures.

The most famous New Zealander involved was journalist Geoffrey Cox, whose dispatches from the besieged Madrid were the basement bricks on which his later career was constructed. The most committed to the cause of democratic republicanism were the non-combatants, members of medical teams who worked for months close to the front lines. They were Dr Doug Jolly from Cromwell, and nurses Rene Shadbolt (aunt of both writer Maurice Shadbolt and Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt), Isobel Dodds and Millicent Sharples.

For them the war was long and hard, an experience they carried with them for the rest of their lives, and their stories are well told here. For those interested in New Zealand's political history, this is a useful and readable book, but badly organised.

Many of the chapters are sketchy and repetitive, mostly because the stories of the volunteers are thin. Easily the best contributions come from the professional writers and historians, mostly tagged on the end. The book would have been much more coherent had part three been part one, with an excellent contribution by Malcolm McKinnon leading the way, followed by the chapters from Nicholas Reid, Lawrence Jones, Kerry Taylor, John Shennan and Peter Clayworth.

They would have set the scene, and the long and moving chapter from Judith Keene on the role of historical memory would then have completed the story left in its place at the back of the book. The existing introduction is insufficient.

Kiwi Companeros: New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War
Ed. by Mark Derby (Canterbury University Press $45)

* Gordon McLauchlan is an Auckland writer.