The Jubilee Garden, where Extinction Rebellion’s protest against Shell Oil took place in September, is a medley of lawns and curving paths that we and many others traverse on the way from Waterloo station to the Thames Southbank. Over it looms the giant wheel called the London Eye, but we are among the relatively few who stop to pay respects to a sculpture in a bay beside one of the paths.
I think it is a wonderfully fluent abstraction of ideals such as “brotherhood” and “solidarity.” The inscription on the front of its pedestal reads:
In honour of over 2100 men & women volunteers who left these shores to fight side by side with the Spanish people against fascism 1936-1939. Many were wounded and maimed, 526 were killed. Their example inspired the world.
On the sides:
“Yet Freedom! Yet thy banner / Torn, but flying, Streams / Like the thunder-storm / Against the wind”
and:
“They went because their open eyes could see no other way”
And on the back:
This memorial unveiled by Michael Foot 5th October 1985 was made possible by the support of many democratic organisations, individuals, and the Greater London Council.
Michael Foot was the leader of the Labour party (until 1983). The inscription doesn’t name the genius sculptor.
It was a dark day when the International Brigade, and the Spanish republican side, went down before Franco. One wishes these good souls could know that light came back after the death of the dictator in 1975.
This was Franco’s summer palace, supposedly given to him by subscription of the grateful nation:
He pretended to buy it. A recent news item is that a judge has ordered his heirs to give it back to the nation.
__________
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
I remember that area and there use to be a bridge across into Waterloo which went through the Shell building and only a stump of it remains now.i use to go there a lot to catch, and arrive on, Eurostar trains during my quest to get every country on Earth under the belt.up to 93 now but obviously this year has been mainly travel free.
Thank you Guy! Your interests and knowledge are so wide ranging and have introduced so many to things they knew nothing about. I knew about the Lincoln Brigade, but not this powerful memorial, not the existence of this estate, nor wonderfully, the order for its return….even 45 years late
Thank you Guy. The upstretched arms, outsized hands, and anguished central figure remind me of Picasso’s monumental painting Guernica. The statue expresses resistance and hope, whereas the painting is a protest against brutality and atrocity.
https://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp
US volunteers who fought for the Republic in the Spanish civil war were in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Many who returned to the US remained activists and organizers for the rest of their lives. The FBI maintained files on them as “premature anti-fascists” (an Orwellian term) and they were blacklisted by many industries, etc. Here in San Francisco there was a cadre of Abraham Lincoln Brigade veterans who were active in progressive movements, e.g. opposing US intervention in Cuba and Central America, supporting unions, etc. They’re all dead now. In 2008 a monument was unveiled on the San Francisco Embarcadero, the epicenter of labor organizing when San Francisco was the biggest seaport on the west coast of the Americas. Your monument in London is much better than ours.
https://www.artandarchitecture-sf.com/the-abraham-lincoln-brigade.html
One might also remember that many of those who went to fight against Franco were betrayed and murdered by their Stalinist “allies”.
Exactly what I was thinking. And also wondering, when will there be volunteers for defeating socialism (including democratic socialism) so that they too may one day have their own memorial and posthumous praise? One day perhaps.