(1) James Maxton, Bob Smillie (1937)

Bob Smillie from the friends and comrades among whom he worked, and among whom he inspired respect and affection to a degree far beyond what is usually evoked by one who has not reached full manhood. He died just before he saw his twenty-first birthday, and a life full of the greatest promise was cut short. Those of us, his elders, who had watched him grow up, were fondly hoping to see him achieve great things in and for the working-class movement of this country and of the world.

We knew the stock from which he came. We saw his father and mother living a strenuous existence on their little farm in Lanarkshire, toiling early and late on the soil, but still with surplus energy to devote to the Socialist Movement, to the unemployed, to the improvement of the conditions of the miners living around them.

We knew his grandfather - that strong leader of the miners, who pioneered their organisation first in Lanarkshire, then in Scotland and Great Britain, finally to become a great International working-class figure. We knew his grandmother, a great woman who to this day in advanced years maintains a spirit of sturdy independence, and staunch adherence to the workers' cause.

 

(2) Dan McArthur, Bob Smillie (1937)

The full extent of the loss sustained by the I.L.P. and the Guild of Youth can be readily grasped by those members of the Movement who had a long and close association with our young comrade.

Bob's energies were devoted to spreading the doctrine of Socialism amongst the Youth of his native land. His burning zeal for the hastening of a Socialist Britain was given open expression by his inspiring and enthusiastic activities in the Guild of Youth. Clear mental pictures of Bob's activities keep occurring to me, clamouring to be set in type, so that the Movement in this country may recognise the worth and character of our late comrade.

The year 1935 saw him in the ranks of the Lanarkshire section of the great Scottish Hunger March. Over 100,000 of the working class assembled in the historic George Square of Glasgow to demonstrate their hatred of the U.A.H. Regulations.

And so it was, year in, year out, on every issue affecting the working class, Bob was in his place, ready.

During all this lime Bob worked hard for the creation of a powerful Guild of Youth. It was one of his main objectives. Guild week-ends were held in Larkhall, Saltcoats, Carluke, and wherever else possible. He threw his heart and soul into these activities. Speaking in l.ondon, Bradford, Glasgow, Leeds, and other big cities, he continually stressed the need for the creation of a strong I.L.P. Youth Section.

July 1936 saw the beginning of the Fascist revolt in Spain. The Fascist butchery of Irun and Badajoz affected Bob as it affected every other sincere young Socialist.

By October Bob was in Barcelona. A few weeks later he became a member of the Executive Committee of the International Revolutionary Youth Bureau, and shortly afterwards he was appointed personal Secretary to John McNair (I.L.P. representative in Spain).

When the I L.P. contingent of volunteers reached Spain, Bob immediately volunteered to join them. He was not content to remain at his clerical posts, vitally important though they were. As always, he wanted to place himself in the front line of the fight, and so he was accepted as a member of the P.O.U.M. militia.

 

(3) John Murray, letter to Alex Smillie (1937)

I am convinced, and this I can affirm on oath, that Bob died a natural death. All my observations and impressions lead me to this conclusion. Judgement is a human thing and liable to error, but in spite of every curious and mysterious circumstance, I am convinced that Bob was never ill-treated nor was he done to death.

 

(4) George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938)

I met my wife at the British Consulate at ten o'clock. McNair and Cottman turned up shortly afterwards. The first thing thetold me was that Bob Smillie was dead. He had died in prison at Valencia of what, nobody knew for certain. He had been buried immediately, and the I.L.P. representative on the spot, David Murray, had been refused permission to see his body.

Of course I assumed at once that Smillie had been shot. It was what everyone believed at the time, but I have since thought that I may have been wrong. Later the cause of his death was given out as appendicitis, and we heard afterwards from another prisoner who had been released that Smillie had certainly been ill in prison. So perhaps the appendicitis story was true. The refusal to let Murray see his body may have been due to pure spite. I must say this, however. Bob Smillie was only twenty-two years old and physically was one of the toughest people I have met. He was, I think, the only person I knew, English or Spanish, who spent three months in the trenches without a day's illness. People so tough as that do not usually die of appendicitis if they are properly looked after. But when you saw what the Spanish jails were like - the makeshift jails used for political prisoners - you realized how much chance there was of a sick man getting proper attention. The jails were places that could only be described as dungeons. In England you would have to go back to the eighteenth century to find anything comparable. People were penned together in small rooms where there was barely space for them to lie down, and often they were kept in cellars and other dark places. This was not as a temporary measure - there were cases of people being kept four and five months almost without sight of daylight. And they were fed on a filthy and insufficient diet of two plates of soup and two pieces of bread a day. (Some months later, however, the food seems to have improved a little.) I am not exaggerating; ask any political suspect who was imprisoned in Spain. I have had accounts of the Spanish jails from a number of separate sources, and they agree with one another too well to be disbelieved; besides, I had a few glimpses into one Spanish jail myself. Another English friend who was imprisoned later writes that his experiences in jail "make Smillie's case easier to understand". Smillie's death is not a thing I can easily forgive. Here was this brave and gifted boy, who had thrown up his career at Glasgow University in order to come and fight against Fascism, and who, as I saw for myself, had done his job at the front with faultless courage and willingness; and all they could find to do with him was to fling him into jail and let him die like a neglected animal. I know that in the middle ofa huge and bloody war it is no use making too much fuss over an individual death. One aeroplane bomb in a crowded street causes more suffering than quite a lot of political persecution. But what angers one about a death like this is its utter pointlessness. To be killed in battle - yes, that is what one expects; but to be flung into jail, not even for any imaginary offence, but simply owing to dull blind spite, and then left to die in solitude - that is a different matter. I fail to see how this kind of thing - and it is not as though Smillie's case were exceptional - brought victory any nearer.

 

(5) Georges Kopp, statement in 1938.

The doctor states that Bob Smillie had the skin and the flesh of his skin perforated by a powerful kick delivered by a foot shod in the nailed boot; the intestines were partly hanging outside. Another blow had severed the left side connection between the jaw and the skull and the former was merely hanging on the right side. Bob died about 30 minutes after reaching the hospital.

 

(6) Helen Lennox, letter to Ethel MacDonald's mother (July 1937)

The Secret Service operating today in Spain comes by night and its victims are never seen again. Bob Smillie they didn't dare to bump off openly, but he may have suffered more because of that. Your Ethel certainly believes his death was intended. She prophesied it before his death took place, and said he would not be allowed out of the country with the knowledge he had. What worries me more than anything is that Ethel has already been ill and would be easy prey for anyone trying to make her death appear natural.

 

(7) Daniel Gray, Homage to Caledonia (2008)

Suspicions over the death of Bob Smillie were expressed in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, first published in April 1938, in which he referred to Smillie as "perhaps the best of the bunch" among the ILP contingent. Orwell felt he had died "an evil and meaningless death... like a neglected animal" and was sceptical in the extreme as to what caused it, writing "perhaps the appendicitis story was true... [but] people so tough as that do not usually die of appendicitis if they are properly looked after." Orwell's take on proceedings was written before the release of the ILP's official report into Smillie's death, which, to an extent justified his comments. Rather than offering an alternative explanation for the death, Orwell's words stood to reinforce the ILP's official line: Smillie had been the victim of a tragic case of neglect.That official line was reached following extensive investigatory work by David Murray, who took statements from inmates, medical staff and wardens in the Model Prison, as well as from patients, nurses and doctors at the provincial hospital. He also interviewed the Military Fiscal and staff at the Office of Public Safety, the Ministry of justice and the SIM. With his journalistic background shining through, Murray even carried out interviews at the mortuary and the cemetery where Smillie was interned. His report was completed in February 1938, and published in the New Leader newspaper on 11th March.Reflecting the position that David Murray had taken from the outset, it held that Smillie had been arrested not for political reasons but for failing to carry a discharge certificate with him when attempting to leave Spain. However republican authorities had sought to establish whether Smillie had played a part in routs agitation, prolonging his stay in prison and belatedly adding a political element to his incarceration. The report made it clear that Smillie was perfectly innocent of any wrongdoing and suggested that had he lived, he would have been released. The report concluded: " We consider that Bob Smillie's death was due to great carelessness on the part of the responsible authorities which amounted to criminal negligence."Interestingly, an earlier version of Murray's findings, included in a July 1937 letter to John McNair, included "intent" as a possible motive for the neglect shown to Smillie when his illness had become serious. After hearing evidence, Murray was confident that there had been no deliberate delay in treating Smillie. "There was", he wrote, "no secret about the manner of his arrest, his place of imprisonment, the type of illness, the location of the hospital and the place of the burial."

Questions still hang over the probity of this conclusion. It has been suggested that Murray removed the `intent' part of the argument so as to avoid reigniting tensions on the republican left while the civil war was still being fought. He had been the man closest to the case, and in later years he consistently maintained that there was no sense in the argument that the Spanish would want to kill the young grandson of a titan of the trade union movement.