(1) Ethel MacDonald, diary entry (3rd November, 1936)
Tuesday, 3rd November was the most exciting day in both of our lives and I don't think we'll ever forget it. We handed in our papers and after they realised we were comrades, they were terribly nice to us. They asked us if we had money and we told them the truth that we were broke. They took us to a restaurant and we had a wonderful time. Everyone was bright and cheerful and happy. So naturally we were the same. We felt full of enthusiasm. This was revolution.
(2) Ethel MacDonald, The Sunday Mail (5th December, 1936)
In the main square, the Plaza de la Republica, the white walls of the Generalitat, the government offices, glistened in brilliant sunshine. Birds were singing in the trees and the sky was the most beautiful blue that I have ever seen. Civilian soldiers dressed in their inevitable dungarees and little red and black Glengarry bonnets and smoking endless cigarettes, strolled casually in Las Ramblas and the Via Durruti or chatted to the girl soldiers in the Plaza Catalunya. We had difficulty deciding which were young men and which were girls. They were dressed exactly alike, but as we drew nearer we saw that all the girls had beautifully permed hair and were strikingly made up.
(3) Ethel MacDonald, radio broadcast (19th February, 1937)
The 20th of February, 1937, is the date fixed by the Sub-Committee of Non-intervention, sitting in London, for the commencement of the ban on volunteers for Spain. Volunteers to Spain! From where have these volunteers come? Italy has sent, not volunteers, but conscripts. Germany landed in Spanish territory, not volunteers, but conscripts. The army of rebel Franco consists, not of volunteers, but of conscript Moors, conscript Germans, conscript Italians, all bent on making Spain a Fascist colony and Africa a Fascist hell, with the defeat and the retreat of democracy everywhere.
The situation today proves the truth of the words of St. Simon and of Proudhon that parliamentarianism is the road to militarism, that parliamentary democracy is impossible, and that mankind must accept industrial democracy, revolutionary syndicalism. But syndicalism and industrial democracy do not imply trades unionism which is the British idea of organisation and action. If mankind is not prepared to accept this, then the only other alternative is a retreat to barbarism and militarism. An insistence on parliamentary so-called democracy is merely playing with freedom and in effect, retreating to militarism. The progressive conquest of political power under capitalism is a snare and a delusion. The present situation in Germany illustrates this truth very clearly.
If parliamentary socialism had any worth whatever, this could never have taken place. Germany could have given the world the example that would have set alight the fires of world revolution. But Germany failed because of this paralysing belief in parliamentarianism and this disbelief in the power and initiative of the working class. It has been left to Spain, with its Anarcho-syndicalism, to do what Germany should have done. And this paralysis extends to other countries that still believe in the power of parliament as an emancipating weapon of the proletariat. It should act as such but that is beyond its power. Belief in parliament does not lead to freedom, but leads to the emancipation of a few selected persons at the expense of the whole of the working class.
What are the actions of the parliamentary parties with regard to support of the Spanish struggle? They talk, they discuss, they speak with bated breath of the horrors that are taking place in Spain. They gesticulate, they proclaim to the world their determination to assist Spain and to see that Fascism is halted; and that is all they do. Talk of what they will do. This would not matter if it were not for the fact that the workers, through a disbelief in their own power to do something definite, collaborate with them in this playing with words.
Comrades, fellow-workers, of what use are your meetings that pass pious resolutions, that exhibit Soldiers of the International Column, provide entertainment, make collections and achieve nothing? This is not the time for sympathy and charity. This is the time for action. Do you not understand that every week, every day and every hour counts. Each hour that passes means the death of more Spanish men and women, and yet you advertise meetings, talk, arrange to talk and fail to take any action. Your leaders ask questions in parliament, in the senate, collect in small committees and make arrangements to send clothes and food to the poor people of Spain who are menaced by this horrible monster of Fascism, and in the end, do nothing.
We welcome every man that comes to Spain to offer his life in the cause of freedom. But of what use are these volunteers if we have no arms to give them? We want arms, ammunition, aeroplanes, all kinds of war material. Your brothers who come to us to fight and have no arms to fight with are also being made a jest of by your inaction. We want the freedom of the Mediterranean. We want our rights, the rights that are being taken from us by the combined efforts of international capitalism. You have permitted Franco to have soldiers and arms and aeroplanes and ammunition. Your government, in the name of democracy, have starved the government and workers of Spain, and now they have decided to ban arms, ban volunteers, to the government of the Spanish workers. Your government, workers of the world, are assisting in the development of Fascism. They are conniving at the defeat of the workers' cause, and you tamely accept this or merely idly protest against it. Workers, your socialism and your communism are worthless. Your democracy is a sham, and that sham is fertilising the fields of Spain with the blood of the Spanish people. Your sham democracy is making the men, women and children of Spain the sod of Fascism. The workers of Spain bid you cry, "Halt!" The workers of Spain bid you act!
I, myself, was in Scotland when sanctions were proposed on behalf of Ethiopia. The Labour Party there threatened war. The Trades Unions threatened war. The Communist Party threatened war. The threats wore off, and Italy seized the land of Ethiopia, and despite the continued protests from various persons, Italy has commenced the exploitation of Abyssinia. Ethiopia is now the colony of Italy.
But Abyssinia is not Spain. Despite its history, Abyssinia is a wild and undeveloped country and may, indeed, in some parts, be semi-savage. But Spain is a land of culture and more important, a land of proletarian development, and it is menaced by the hireling Franco because it possesses proletarian culture. And Franco is assisted by Hitler and Mussolini and all the hordes of international capitalism because of the wealth contained within its territory, and to gain possession of that wealth for purposes of further exploiting the working class and for their own personal aggrandisement, they are prepared to massacre the whole of the Spanish working class. For what are the lives of the workers to them? Labour is cheap, and is easily replaceable.
And you, parliamentarians, you so-called socialists, talk and talk, and know not how to act. Nor when to act. For Spain, you are not even prepared to threaten war. Non-intervention, as a slogan, is an improvement on sanctions. It is even more radically hypocritical. It is more thorough and deliberate lying, for Non-intervention means the connived advance of Fascism. This cannot be disputed. Under the cloak of Non-intervention, Hitler and Mussolini are being assisted in their wanton destruction of Spain. Non-intervention gives them the excuse to do nothing, and behind the scenes to supply these European maniacs with all that they require. Your governments are not for non-intervention. They stand quite definitely for intervention, intervention on behalf of their friends and allies, Hitler and Mussolini. Your governments and your leaders have many points in common with these two scoundrels. All of them lack decency, human understanding, and intelligence. They are virtually the scum of the earth, the dregs that must be destroyed.
Comrades, workers, Malaga has fallen. Malaga was betrayed and you too were betrayed, for you have witnessed not merely the fall of Malaga but the fall of a key defence of world democracy, of workers' struggle, of world liberty, of world emancipation. Malaga fell; you, the world proletariat, were invaded: and you talk. Talk and lament and sigh and fear to act! Tomorrow, Madrid may be bombed once more. Barcelona may be attacked. Valencia may be attacked, and still you talk! When will this talking cease? Will you never act?
To go back to Germany. At the Second Congress of the Third International, Moscow, a comrade who is with us now in Spain, answering Zinoviev, urged faith in the syndicalist movement in Germany and the end of parliamentary communism. He was ridiculed. Parliamentarianism, communist parliamentarianism, but still parliamentarianism would save Germany. And it did. You know this. You know the conditions in that famous land today. Yes, parliamentarianism saved Germany. Saved it from Socialism. Saved it for Fascism. Parliamentary social democracy and parliamentary communism have destroyed the socialist hope of Europe, has made a carnage of human liberty. In Britain, parliamentarianism saved the workers from Socialism, gave them a Socialist leader of a National Government, and has prepared the workers for the holocaust of a new war. All this has parliamentarianism done. Have you not had enough of this huge deception? Are you still prepared to continue in the same old way, along the same old lines, talking and talking and doing nothing?
Spain, syndicalist Spain, the Spanish workers' republic would save you. Yes, save you with the hunger and blood and struggle of its magnificent people. And you pause and hesitate to gave your solidarity, and pause in your manhood and democracy of action until it is too late.
The crisis is here. The hour of struggle is here. Now is the decisive moment. By all your traditions of liberty and struggle, by all the brave martyrs of old, in the name of the heroic Spanish men and women, I bid you act. Act on behalf of Spain through living, immediate Committees of Action in Britain, in America, throughout the whole world. Let your cry be not non-intervention, but "Hands off Spain", and from that slogan let your action come. In your trade union branches, in your political party hall, make that your cry: "All Hands off Spain". What will your action be? The General Strike. Your message? "Starve Fascism, end the war on Spanish Labour, or - the Strike, the strike and on to Revolution".
The British Government says: "You shall not serve in Spain." Good! Then to the British Workers we say make this your reply. "We will serve Spain and the workers in Spain and ourselves in Britain. We strike." Down tools! There is one flag of labour today. Spain's Red and Black Flag of Freedom, of Syndicalism and Courage!
(4) Ethel MacDonald, The Barcelona Bulletin (5th May, 1937)
The trouble broke out on Monday afternoon. The civil guards seized the telephone building by force. As the move was quite unexpected, they succeeded in disarming the militiamen in charge there, and so gaining control. All during the night there was firing in the street, and we had a good view from the hotel windows. As the day (Tuesday) wore on the firing became terrific: the police were firing from their building further up the street, and from nearby houses, and the CNT were replying from their HQ, from the balconies and from the roof. The noise is terrible, and already there have been many killed and wounded.
(5) Ethel MacDonald, interview that appeared in the Glasgow Evening Times (1937)
My arrest was typical of the attitude of the Communist Party. In Scotland the group to which I am attached has always been in complete opposition to the Communist Party. In opposing their propaganda we have always had to face and deal with their fundamental ignorance and brutality. In Spain, their approach is the same. Assault Guards and officials of the Public Order entered the house in which I lived late one night. Without any explanation they commenced to go through thoroughly every room and every cupboard in the house. After having discovered that which to them was sufficient to hang me - revolutionary literature etc. - they demanded to see my passport. On this being shown they informed me that I was in Spain illegally, although I entered Spain quite legally.
(6) Ethel MacDonald, interview that appeared in The Sunday Mail (1937)
The spirit of the comrades in prison is good. Persecution and imprisonment of revolutionists is not something new to Spain. Even persecution by so-called Communists is not new. The treatment meted out to the revolutionists in Russia today beggars description. That can be expected from the present regime in the Socialist fatherland. But that in Spain, whilst their comrades and brothers are struggling at the fronts against the fascist enemy, revolutionists should be arrested on such a scale is a scandal that brings discredit on all those who permit such to take place without making protest. Revolution should mean the end of prisons, not the changing of the guard.
(7) 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.
(8) John Taylor Caldwell, Come Dungeons Dark: The Life and Times of Guy Aldred (1988)
The Strickland Pres had some hard times financially, for Aldred always worked to the limit of his capacity. He had little sense of "market potential" and over-printed enormously. He never estimated a cost to find a price, and consistently under-charged. He was lavish in the distribution of free copies, and conducted a postal mission which took The Word to most parts of the world where a glimmer of political awareness was manifest. But the price Aldred had to pay was a constant struggle to keep abreast of his creditors.
He had constantly to appeal for funds. This position worsened when, the war over and the soldiers back at work, the Typographical Society refused to allow suppliers to serve The Strickland Press because it "employed women". Those responsible for imposing"the ban knew well that Ethel Macdonald and Jenny Patrick were not "employed" by the Press, and that whatever reason (if there could have been any) for not allowing women to work at the trade, the Strickland Press was a special case. Guy, Jenny and Ethel were veteran socialists, and they had all been in prison for upholding the cause of the workers. The phrase `male chauvinist pig' had not been coined in those days, but it is still not too late to have it engraved on the tombstones of the Typographical Society officials of that time.
The Press was still struggling from the result of this ban when something more serious happened, and the last shadows began to gather over the four comrades. Near the end of February 1958, Ethel Macdonald had what seemed a slight accident. She fell from a box on which she was standing to make an adjustment to one of the machines. She was more distressed than the accident seemed to justify, as if she knew that this was the onset of dreadful illness. She continued with her work at the Press, though within a few weeks she needed the aid of a stick. One of her legs seemed to be gradually losing its power...
By the end of 1958 Ethel's condition was so bad that she was unable to board a tram, and had to travel to and front the Press in a taxi. Guy Aldred never owned a car, and was inclined to think that proletarians who did so were halfway to betraying their class. Ethel lived in a flat three stairs up in Gibson Street, Hillhead. The disease, having paralysed completely one of her legs, now attacked the other. In November 195 8 she went into hospital, though she and her friends were beginning to fear the illness was incurable. Six weeks later she was discharged. She had walked into the hospital with difficulty. She was unable to walk out. The consultant told her she must give up hope of ever walking again. Her hopes, too, of pause or remission of the disease began to fade. In fact, she was suffering from a particularly virulent form of multiple sclerosis.
It was decided that it would be better if Ethel were at Baliol Street where she could be looked after by Guy and Jenny. A year from the time of her `accident' she had lost the power of both arms and legs, but there was no lessening of her mental powers. She once said to Guy, `I'm inside watching this happening to me." Aldred wrote: "Having rendered her legs useless, the disease spread to her arms. First her left arm, then her right - as though the virus possessed a malicious consciousness that caused it to gloat over its dastardly work. It was a painful business to serve her so anxiously and yet so purposelessly."
For a year she was nursed at Baliol Street by her three comrades and by members of her family who visited her regularly. By the end of 1959 she was completely paralysed and had to be propped up to prevent her powerless tongue from falling back and choking her. Only her eyes were alive, and only by these could she express her dreadful mental agony. She was still a woman of great power and vitality, imprisoned in a dead shell, and she knew that she must die. There was no acceptance or resignation in her last agonised look at Guy Aldred and John Caldwell as they sat by her bed, waiting for her relatives, who arrived too late. She died in Knightswood Hospital on December 1st, 1960.
(9) Guy Aldred, The Word (January, 1961)
I see no kindness, no friendship, no regard for mankind, no purpose in the universe. It is a miracle that cannot be explained. It seems to be a wonderful evolution from cause to effect, although there seems to be no cause and the effect is without intelligence or aim. So, for for my part, I do not believe in God. That was also the belief of Ethel... Yet for some strange reason a contradiction arises within us. We do change the world. One generation merges into another. The hopes of yesterday's heroes and martyrs become the inspiring slogans of today, passed on to the heroes of tomorrow ... In this frame of sorrow I turn from the lifeless body of my comrade to associate with those in whom still dwells the consciousness of being.
