[Marxism] Ethel MacDonald, Scottish anarchist

[Ernest Tate <mackenzie.tate@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is from the Sunday Herald.

Revealed: amazing life of Scottish Pimpernel
Seventy years after the Spanish civil war, the efforts of 'forgotten'
activist Ethel MacDonald are recognised.

By Senay Boztas <http://www.sundayherald.com/np/Senay-Boztas.shtml>,
Arts Correspondent

SHE was dubbed the Scottish Scarlet Pimpernel for helping innocent
prisoners caught up in the chaos of the Spanish civil war.

Now the neglected story of Ethel MacDonald, a free-thinking anarchist
jailed for her efforts in Barcelona, is to be told in a film marking the
war's 70th anniversary.

The film's producer, Alison Murphy, said MacDonald's tale deserved to
gain wider recognition because she was an "amazing" woman who "placed
herself at the heart of the struggle".

Although MacDonald is now remembered only by a few survivors, she was
once known worldwide for her efforts helping the Inter national Brigades
in the Spanish civil war.

She travelled to Spain to support the governing left-leaning Republicans
after General Francisco Franco, a Nationalist and social conservative,
declared war on them in 1936.

The fighting lasted three years and ended in the defeat of the Republicans.

Born in 1909 to a working-class family in Motherwell, MacDonald left
school at 16 and was active in the left-wing movement all her life.
Secretary of the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Movement in Glasgow, she
eventually worked for the United Socialist Movement (USM).

In 1936, the USM sent her to Barcelona to report back for the
organisation. There, she became the English-speaking propagandist for an
anarchist radio station, listened to in Europe and America.

She was behind some of the first reports on the 1937 May Riots, when
leftists turned against each other, resulting in death squads of
Stalinists assassinating prominent anarchists and 400 people being
killed in street fights in Barcelona. She also wrote for Scottish
newspapers.

MacDonald often endangered her life in support of her cause. When
anarchists in the independent Marxist party, POUM, were rounded up in
June 1937, she visited them in prison, smuggling in letters and food and
helping some escape in borrowed clothes and on foreign ships.

She was imprisoned by Stalin's secret police, but while the world
fretted about her disappearance, she organised hunger strikes among the
anarchist prisoners and smuggled out letters.

After questions about her absence in the Houses of Parliament and an
American newspaper campaign, supporters formed the Ethel MacDonald
Defence Committee. International pressure was applied and she was
deported to France, eventually returning to Glasgow disillusioned.

She told crowds of well-wishers: "I went to Spain full of hopes and
dreams. It promised the utopia realised. I return full of sadness,
dulled by the tragedy I have seen."

Ethel MacDonald, who continued to campaign throughout her life against
Stalinist attacks on the POUM and the anarchists, died in 1960 of
multiple sclerosis.

Alison Murphy, producer of the new film, came across her story while
working on the BAFTA-nominated documentary Against The Tide - George
Orwell, another International Brigades volunteer.

"The beauty of this story is not only that it is forgotten, but that it
shows what an extra ordinary path her life was to take: from humble
beginnings in Lanarkshire to Spain, where she would place herself at the
heart of a fierce struggle," she said.

The film, Ethel MacDonald - An Anarchist's Story, has won financial
backing from the European Commission and director Mark Littlewood is in
discussions with potential German co-producers.

The hour-long feature will mix reportage and drama to depict a
strong-minded feminist who demonstrated her bravery in the Spanish civil
war, but was never fully accepted on her return.

Littlewood said: "It is a remarkable story of an individual who
struggles to achieve, virtually on her own," he said. "Even in
California, people were concerned for her safety when she was arrested
and the Scottish papers called her a Scarlet Pimpernel. She lived in a
menage-a-trois with other anarchists in Gibson Street in Glasgow. We
have interviewed one of them, John Caldwell, and he gives a remarkable
testimony."

Caldwell, who is 94 and lives in Glasgow, recalled: "We were separate
individuals who sometimes had it off a wee bit.

"When Ethel and I were in public, we were separate people ... sex had
nothing to do with other people.

"But she believed I could have as many friends as I liked and she could,
too."

He added: "Her broadcasts went down very well. Some of the American
newspapers said how pleasant her Scottish voice was. But Ethel's mother
disapproved of her being with [one of her companions] Aldred. Aldred the
free lover, the atheist - she didn't want it. After Ethel died, none of
the family came near us at all."

Ethel MacDonald's life also features in a pamphlet published by Rhona
Hodgart, a senior lecturer at Anniesland College, Glasgow.

Relatives or acquaintances of Ethel MacDonald who would like to contact
producer Alison Murphy can telephone 0141 300 3014

13 February 2005

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