J. R. Campbell 1937
Source: International Press Correspondence, Volume 17, no 26, 19 June 1937. Scanned and prepared for the Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers.
The organisations of the Spanish working class – the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, and the General Workers Union, have appealed to the Communist International, the Labour and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions, for joint activity on behalf of the Spanish people.
It is no longer a question of the Communist International appealing to the Labour and Socialist International for joint activity. It is the organisations of the Spanish people which are appealing for a powerful joint effort. It is the Spanish sections of the Labour and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions, which are appealing for joint action.
It will be a crime of appalling magnitude if that appeal goes unheard.
All the old excuses put forward in the past against unity of action are now no longer feasible. The cry that unity is a Communist manoeuvre has been dispelled by the experience of the Popular Front in France and Spain. It is being dispelled daily in Spain, where Socialists and Communists are fighting together on the battlefield.
The argument that such an agreement for unity in action will scare the middle classes or cause the Catholic workers to leave the reformist unions (a popular reformist argument at the present moment in Great Britain) is flying in the face of all the facts.
One of the outstanding features of British political life at any rate is the growing sympathy of the middle class for the cause of the Spanish people.
There is also a change taking place as far as the Catholic workers are concerned. The sharpening attacks of the Hitler regime against the Catholic Church, the destruction of whole towns and villages in the Basque country, the arrival of the Basque children in England, have profoundly affected the Catholic masses. The spectacle of working-class unity, nationally and internationally, would attract the Catholic working class close to the cause of the Spanish people.
It is in the hands of the rank and file of the reformist parties that the final decision as to unity rests. If they move forward to unity, no power on earth can resist them.