Winter of the World

At the table with Lloyd were his parents, Bernie and Ethel; his sister, Millie; and sixteen-year-old Lenny Griffiths from Aberowen, in his Sunday suit. Lenny was part of a small army of Welsh miners who had come to London to join the counter-demonstration.

Bernie looked up from his newspaper and said to Lenny: ‘The Fascists claim that the train fares for all you Welshmen to come to London have been paid by the big Jews.’

Lenny swallowed a mouthful of fried egg. ‘I don’t know any big Jews,’ he said. ‘Unless you count Mrs Levy Sweetshop, she’s quite big. Anyway, I came to London on the back of a lorry with sixty Welsh lambs going to Smithfield meat market.’

Millie said: ‘That accounts for the smell.’

Ethel said: ‘Millie! How rude.’

Lenny was sharing Lloyd’s bedroom, and he had confided that after the demonstration he was not planning to return to Aberowen. He and Dave Williams were going to Spain to join the International Brigades being formed to fight the Fascist insurrection.

‘Did you get a passport?’ Lloyd had asked. Getting a passport was not difficult, but the applicant did have to provide a reference from a clergyman, doctor, lawyer, or other person of status, so a young person could not easily keep it secret.

‘No need,’ Lenny said. ‘We go to Victoria Station and get a weekend return ticket to Paris. You can do that without a passport.’

Lloyd had vaguely known that. It was a loophole intended for the convenience of the prosperous middle class. Now the anti-Fascists were taking advantage of it. ‘How much is the ticket?’

‘Three pounds fifteen shillings.’

Lloyd had raised his eyebrows. That was more money than an unemployed coal miner was likely to have.

Lenny had added: ‘But the Independent Labour Party is paying for my ticket, and the Communist Party for Dave’s.’

They must have lied about their ages. ‘Then what happens when you get to Paris?’ Lloyd had asked.

‘We’ll be met by the French Communists at the Gare du Nord.’ He pronounced it gair duh nord. He did not speak a word of French. ‘From there we’ll be escorted to the Spanish border.’

Lloyd had delayed his own departure. He told people he wanted to soothe his parents’ worries, but the truth was he could not give up on Daisy. He still dreamed of her throwing Boy over. It was hopeless – she did not even answer his letters – but he could not forget her.

Meanwhile Britain, France, and the USA had agreed with Germany and Italy to adopt a policy of non-intervention in Spain, which meant that none of them would supply weapons to either side. This in itself was infuriating to Lloyd: surely the democracies should support the elected government? But what was worse, Germany and Italy were breaching the agreement every day, as Lloyd’s mother and Uncle Billy pointed out at many public meetings held that autumn in Britain to discuss Spain. Earl Fitzherbert, as the government minister responsible, defended the policy stoutly, saying that the Spanish government should not be armed for fear it would go Communist.

This was a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Ethel had argued in a scathing speech. The one nation willing to support the government of Spain was the Soviet Union, and the Spaniards would naturally gravitate towards the only country in the world that helped them.

The truth was that the Conservatives felt Spain had elected people who were dangerously left-wing. Men such as Fitzherbert would not be unhappy if the Spanish government was violently overthrown and replaced by right-wing extremists. Lloyd seethed with frustration.

Then had come this chance to fight Fascism at home.

‘It’s ridiculous,’ Bernie had said a week ago, when the march had been announced. ‘The Metropolitan Police must force them to change the route. They have the right to march, of course; but not in Stepney.’ However, the police said they did not have the power to interfere with a perfectly legal demonstration.

Bernie and Ethel and the mayors of eight London boroughs had been in a delegation that begged the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, to ban the march or at least divert it; but he, too, claimed he had no power to act.

The question of what to do next had split the Labour Party, the Jewish community, and the Williams family.

The Jewish People’s Council against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, founded by Bernie and others three months ago, had called for a massive counter-demonstration that would keep the Fascists out of Jewish streets. Their slogan was the Spanish phrase No pasaran, meaning ‘They shall not pass’, the cry of the anti-Fascist defenders of Madrid. The Council was a small organization with a grand name. It occupied two upstairs rooms in a building on Commercial Road, and it owned a Gestetner duplicating machine and a couple of old typewriters. But it commanded huge support in the East End. In forty-eight hours it had collected an incredible hundred thousand signatures on a petition calling for the march to be banned. Still the government did nothing.