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| Untold love story from the Spanish
Civil War |
Nan Green followed her husband to fight in
the Spanish Civil War but she had already dedicated her life righting
wrongs, says her son Martin Green
A Chronicle of Small Beer by Nan Green
Trent Editions, £6.99
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An impromptu concert at a hospital in Huerte, south east
of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. Seated playing the
cello is George Green and Nan stands behind him playing
the accordian. A Bavarian violinist and two Spanish guitarists
complete the ensemble
Nan Green
Martin Green
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I WAS born in Stockport, but spent the first five years of my
life in Heathcote Street, off the Gray’s Inn Road. My father
George was a cellist, and he moved to London from Stockport, because
previously he had been able to find employment in the Manchester
area. When he couldn’t play in concerts, he could always get
a job in the cinema, to accompany the film. With the introduction
of the talkies, live music was no longer needed. Coming to London
enabled him to get work in Lyons Corner House, dressed as a gypsy
and playing the cello.
The early 1930s was the time of the depression, and both my parents
were politically active, initially in the Labour Party, but later
became members of the Communist Party. At the outbreak of the Spanish
Civil War, my father volunteered to drive an ambulance to Spain,
to help the Republican cause. He was accompanied by Wogan Phillips,
later the first declared Communist to sit in the House of Lords.
When Wogan was wounded, and had to return to England, he asked my
mother, Nan, if she could go out to Spain and work in a hospital,
as they were desperately short of staff. Nan told him that she had
two young children, myself and my sister Frances.
Wogan, who came from a wealthy family, said he would pay for both
of us to go to boarding school. She agreed, and Grandpa Green was
appointed our guardian. Nan had read about A S Neill’s co-educational
boarding school, Summer Hill, and it was here that Frances and I
were boarded. On arriving at a hospital in Huete in Spain, my mother
found that George was one of the patients, he having suffered a
minor wound to his arm. They saw a little of each other after that,
when George joined the British Battalion to the International Brigade
and returned to the front line. In order to try and get foreign
Fascist troops, Mussolini’s soldiers and Hitler’s airmen
out the Republican Government offered to withdraw the International
Brigades. George took part in the last skirmish, the Battle of Ebro,
and was killed on September 23 1938. It wasn’t until some months
later that Nan learned that he’d been killed, hoping meanwhile
that he might still be alive, possibly captured. She then threw
herself into the cause of the Republican Spain, accompanying a party
of Spanish refugee children to Mexico, where they’d been offered
refuge.
When World War II broke out, Summer Hill School was evacuated to
north Wales, and Nan returned to London, where she was bombed out
twice. Living in Clapham with an ex-Brigadier and his Spanish wife,
she met someone she agreed to marry, thinking my sister Frances
and I needed a father figure.
After the war, Nan joined the peace movement, helping to organise
a peace conference in Sheffield, which was attended by Pablo Picasso,
whose Peace Dove was prominently displayed, although Major Atlee’s
Labour Government told him he was “persona non grata,”
being a member of the Communist Party. Later, Nan was invited to
Peking as a Spanish translator in an international peace conference.
There she was then offered a job helping to run an English-language
magazine.
Eventually in the early 1960s, she returned to London, having separated
from her husband Ted, and got an editorial job in the communist
publishing house of Lawrence and Wishart. I only really got to know
my mother in those later years. Before she died, I did say to her
that because of the interesting life she’d led – and because
she was an accomplished writer – that she should write her
memoirs, to which she agreed.
After she died, I approached a number of publishing houses hoping
that they would agree to publish them, though chapters from the
memoirs appeared in three anthologies about the Spanish Civil War.
Later, she appeared as one of the four female profiles in Paul Preston’s
Doves of War – two on each side of the conflict.
Last year, I finally succeeded in finding a publisher, Trent Editions,
the Nottingham University Press, and A Chronicle of Small Beer appeared.
The birth of a book is often long and painful progress, as in this
case.
Dolores Ibárruri, ‘La Pasionaria’ – chief
propagandist for the Republicans – in her farewell address
to the International Brigades in Barcelona in 1938, said: “You
are history, you are legend. You will return.” Nan fulfilled
this prophecy fully, when I took her ashes back to Spain to scatter
them on the soil where George has his unknown grave. |
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