(1) James Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire (1998)
The influences, then, that turned Bates into a self-professed revolutionary were the result of witnessing the soul-destroying effects of class oppression both in England and Spain. In the beginning, at least, his views had nothing to do with the young British Communist party. But Bates' attitudes began to take on a political character after he arrived in Spain: "I didn't think about theory," he said. What the writer wanted was to live in a society in which the kind of abuse of authority he had known in the British army did not exist. He worked on the docks in Barcelona and irregularly engaged in political organizing. His maturing philosophy, though powerfully felt, did not yet have a center. His belief was that human rights and the dignity of man were inherent and immutable. They could "not be conceded by these people." Moreover, he believed that any society that ignored or abused these rights was to be condemned and fought against, whether in England or Spain. In his own view, the vital power of these convictions "was much more revolutionary than the Communists." In that sense his political stance was "completely anti-ideological," wholly a product of his own experiences and the conclusions he drew from them, although he would hew to the party line during the Spanish war, which included condemning the anti-Stalinist POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista) in which Orwell fought.
At first, even with Bates' fluent command of the language, and the work he shared with his Spanish comrades, which included tinsmithing, harvesting olives, and participation in strikes that frequently had the character of a "freeforall," he still found himself not fully taken into their confidence. The issue that crystallized these differences was his friends' refusal to ask him to make a contribution to the needy, perhaps a workman who had caught an arm in a loom or an indigent widow. Although he always volunteered to contribute, it was never requested, which made him feel acutely a sense of a fundamental separateness between himself and his friends and workmates. When he became confident enough to challenge them, they at first offered distracting compliments, but then conceded, "We can't get it out of our heads that you are free and you can go when you want. We can't-we're here." There was a difference between them, and Bates saw it.
(2) Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage (2009)
We had to get to Barcelona when this inspection was over. She would see to it that we were put up in comfort. The visitation when it came had dual leadership. First there was Ralph Bates, author of the "Olive Tree", whose wife Winifrid was to be immensely helpful to us later. He was wearing a uniform of a deep burgundy colour which displayed no badges or rank-markings. In reply to my enquiry, he said that it was the uniform of a Political Commissar and that his rank was such that it could not be expressed in gold braid. He certainly wore his rank lightly, as he took no part whatsoever in the subsequent proceedings.
(3) Ralph Bates, quoted in Reporter in Spain by Claude Cockburn (1936)
My memory goes back to the dictatorship of Primo, Berenguer, of Alonso. Just before the monarchy fell (April 14, 1931) I walked month after month, throughout a year, twelve hundred miles, through the immense, almost unknown, the "lost" Cordilleras of Spain, to find how Spaniards live. I dare to say that I know more about the life and work of Spanish shepherds, olive workers, ploughmen, peasants, than these Englishmen whom I find talking of a "glorious Spanish tradition" and its fascist champions. I believe I know the real tradition, the way olives are grown, wine made, cork gathered, what songs are sung for the picking of figs, or the herding of cattle. I know, because I have followed them, by what immemorial tracks the sheep flocks go tip in summer from the red choking plains to the hills.
(4) Douglas Martin, The New York Times (4th December, 2000)
Ralph Bates, who fell in love with the idea of Spain as a working-class youth in Britain and went on to write evocative novels about the real Spain in the years before the Spanish Civil War, died on Nov. 26 at his home in Manhattan. He was 101.
Almost 60 years ago he was considered by some to be one of the best writers on Spain. ''He stands out as perhaps the best informed -- not even excepting Andre Malraux or Ernest Hemingway - of the chroniclers of the preceding disturbed decade in Spain,'' said 20th-Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature, published in 1942.
But by that time Mr. Bates had reached the height of his fame, which dwindled as he almost ceased publishing and withdrew, disappointed, from the very public role he played when the civil war was a leading liberal cause.
For decades he brought nearly as much passion to politics as he did to literature. He joined the British Communist Party in 1923, became a labor organizer in Spain and then fought in one of the militias set up by leftist parties and trade unions during the civil war. He broke with the Communist Party after Stalin's pact with Hitler in 1939. During the investigations of those suspected of being Communists in the 1950's, when he was living in New York, he refused to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
He was a highly touted literary figure in the 1930's, receiving streams of favorable reviews for a considerable body of work. His fame was enhanced when Spain's leftist government assigned him to tour the United States to recruit men and money for its fight against the nationalist insurgents led by Gen. Francisco Franco. His pace then slowed dramatically: a novel he wrote in 1950 ended a 10-year publishing drought, and after that he never published again.
