Our Fathers Fought Franco by Willy Maley sampler
resonant piece of working class history, this book is a living link to four extraordinary stories. Why did these young men put their lives on the line and go to Spain to fight with the International Brigades? How did they all end up in the same prison cell? And what is their legacy today? James Maley, George Watters, Donald Renton and Archibald Williams were members of Machine Gun Company No. 2 of the XV International Brigade. This is the first book to focus on a small group of men who, from different starting-points, ended up on the same battleground at Jarama, and then in the same prisons after capture by Franco’s forces. Their remarkable story is told both in their own words and in the recollections of their sons and daughters, through a prison notebook, newspaper reports, stills cut from newsreels, interviews, anecdotes and memories, with a foreword by Daniel Gray. Our Fathers Fought Franco is a collective biography that promises to add significantly to the understanding of the motives of those who ‘went because their open eyes could see no other way’.
resonant piece of working class history, this book is a living link to four extraordinary stories. Why did these young men put their lives on the line and go to Spain to fight with the International Brigades? How did they all end up in the same prison cell? And what is their legacy today?
James Maley, George Watters, Donald Renton and Archibald Williams were members of Machine Gun Company No. 2 of the XV International Brigade. This is the first book to focus on a small group of men who, from different starting-points, ended up on the same battleground at Jarama, and then in the same prisons after capture by Franco’s forces.
Their remarkable story is told both in their own words and in the recollections of their sons and daughters, through a prison notebook, newspaper reports, stills cut from newsreels, interviews, anecdotes and memories, with a foreword by Daniel Gray.
Our Fathers Fought Franco is a collective biography that promises to add significantly to the understanding of the motives of those who ‘went because their open eyes could see no other way’.
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<strong>Our</strong> <strong>Fathers</strong> <strong>Fought</strong> <strong>Franco</strong><br />
I joined local groups across the north-west, meeting others with a similar<br />
interest, including Stuart Walsh and Terry Bayes, volunteer archivists at<br />
the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, who are collecting and<br />
digitalising hundreds of Spanish Civil War documents and photographs.<br />
I became involved in setting up new memorials in my area, in Wigan<br />
and Bolton, and an exhibition and talk in Adlington about the Spanish<br />
Republican internment camp situated there after the war. Currently I am<br />
pushing for a plaque at the Watermillock, Bolton, a large stately home that<br />
gave refuge to many Basque children.<br />
Discovering about my grandfather has been a rewarding and emotional<br />
experience for mum and me.<br />
Archibald Campbell McAskill Williams, known as AC, and sometimes<br />
Archie, was a working man, self-educated and intelligent, well informed<br />
through his life experiences. His mixed accent told the tale of his travels<br />
– traces of southern Hampshire English and a Highland Scots lilt, with a<br />
dominant North American drawl.<br />
He experienced the loss of his family when he emigrated to Canada in<br />
1923. He worked for low pay with thousands of other unemployed men.<br />
Competing for work during the ‘depression years’ in Canada led him to<br />
suffer victimisation and hostility. These experiences shaped the lifelong<br />
socialist convictions and principles which would see him meet his wife Jane<br />
Orme, join the International Brigades and travel to fight in the Spanish<br />
Civil War in late 1936. He was a warm, kind and principled man. He was<br />
my grandfather.<br />
AC aged 19, second left with brothers Donald, Peter and Finlay before he sets sail to Canada.<br />
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