ON MY MIND
IT WAS at an extraordinary meeting of the Soviet Politburo in August 1936 that the idea of an international volunteer corps was mooted. This International Brigade was set up, following the mobilisation through the world’s communist parties, to play a distinctive role in the Spanish Civil War against the fascism of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini.
In my books on the Welsh contribution to the Spanish Republic, I identified and described almost 200 “Welsh” volunteers who left home to fight in Spain, 13 of them from Carmarthenshire. They were described as “a heroic example of democracy’s solidarity and universality”. Ironically, 86 years later another group of international fighters is forming in Ukraine to battle the country that recruited the Welsh volunteers.
Again, 85 years ago Wales opened its arms and its homes to over 200 children who had been rescued on the steamship SS Habana from Franco’s bombardment of the Basque country. However, placing 70 traumatised children from a Spanish city in an inhospitable camp in the middle of the Carmarthenshire countryside led to some disciplinary difficulties, with one daft councillor calling them a “dangerous lot”.
The UK has an ambivalent attitude to foreigners. It is a curious mix of enjoying a traditional English breakfast in Benidorm, openness in principle to refugees and the “hostile environment”, a set of policies introduced by Theresa May to make it difficult for anyone to enter Britain without the correct paperwork. Now current immigration controls, which reflect an obsession with borders and a freedom of movement paranoia, would refuse entry to Jesus of Nazareth and Mahatma Gandhi.
It is sobering to understand that Putin loved Brexit – to divide Europe was like having caviar on a stack of pancakes every meal, washed down with the finest Russian vodka. He must have dribbled over his Medovik honey cake when he learned that the UK was so devoid of compassion and demanded Ukrainians who had lost everything undergo a biometric bureaucratic nightmare to gain a visa. When Mark Drakeford offered Ukrainian refugees love and sanctuary in our country, he was reflecting the historical generosity of Welsh people.