He hated regimentation wherever he found it, even in the socialist ranks.

1. This advance was of £100 against royalties for The Road to Wigan Pier (see 341).

Orwell in Spain, December 1936

In George Orwell: A Life (317–18), Bernard Crick quotes from John McNair’s typescript, ‘George Orwell: The Man I Knew’, dated March 1965, in Newcastle upon Tyne University Library. McNair records that Orwell brought him one letter from Fenner Brockway (1888–1988, Lord Brockway, 1964), General Secretary of the ILP, and one from H. N. Brailsford (1873–1958), a socialist intellectual and journalist and leader-writer for several newspapers, including the Manchester Guardian; Orwell later corresponded with him (see below). McNair, a Tynesider, was at first put off by Orwell’s ‘distinctly bourgeois accent’, but, when he realized that this was George Orwell, two of whose books he ‘had read and greatly admired’, he asked what he could do to help him. ‘I have come to Spain to join the militia to fight against Fascism,’ Orwell told him. He also told McNair that ‘he would like to write about the situation and endeavour to stir working-class opinion in Britain and France’. McNair proposed that Orwell base himself in McNair’s offices and suggested he visit Madrid, Valencia and the Aragón front, where the POUM1 was stationed, ‘and then get down to writing his book’. Orwell told McNair that writing a book ‘was quite secondary and his main reason for coming was to fight against Fascism’. McNair took him to the POUM barracks, where Orwell immediately enlisted, and introduced him to Victor Alba, then a journalist who would later write a history of the POUM (see, p. 2, n. 1, above); Alba showed Orwell round Barcelona. Orwell did not know, and never knew, that two months before he arrived in Spain, the NKVD’s resident in Spain, Aleksandr Orlov, had confidently assured NKVD Headquarters, ‘The Trotskyist organization POUM can easily be liquidated’2 – by those, the Communists, whom Orwell took to be their allies in the fight against Franco.

1. POUM, Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification), was described by Orwell in Homage to Catalonia as ‘one of those dissident Communist parties which have appeared in many countries in the last few years as a result of the opposition to “Stalinism”; i.e. to the change, real or apparent, in Communist policy. It was made up partly of ex-Communists and partly of an earlier party, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Bloc. Numerically it was a small party, with not much influence outside Catalonia, and chiefly important because it contained an unusually high proportion of politically conscious members.… It did not represent any block of trade unions.’ He gives the membership as 10,000 in July 1936; 70,000 in December 1936; and 40,000 in June 1937, but warns that the figures are from POUM sources, and ‘a hostile estimate would probably divide them by four’; see pp. 180–81 [VI/202–3].

2. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (1999), 95, quoting John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, Deadly Illusions (1993), 281.

[358]

Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore

31 January 1937    Handwritten

The Stores, Wallington, Near Baldock, Herts

Dear Mr Moore,

I enclose the signed agreement.1 I am afraid there was a little delay before your letter was forwarded to me – I got it yesterday – but when I read the agreement I was delighted, as I know my husband will be when he hears the details. I had not fully realised before how satisfactory it was; in your office the other day I was being rather single-minded.

There is quite good news in Spain, though it comes very erratically. Eric has been created a ‘cabo’, which is I think a kind of corporal2 & which distresses him because he has to get up early to turn out the guard, but he also has a dug-out in which he can make tea. There is apparently no ‘proper’ fighting as neither side has efficient artillery or even rifles.3 He says he thinks the government forces ought to attack but are not going to. I hope no crisis will arise needing his decision as letters take from 7 to 104 days to get here.

With many thanks,
Yours sincerely,
Eileen Blair

1. The agreement was for the next three novels Orwell was to write after Keep the Aspidistra Flying (see 357).

2. Orwell refers to his promotion in Homage to Catalonia, see p. 48 [VI/25].

3. Orwell records that rifles were issued on their third morning in Alcubierre, Homage to Catalonia, see p. 42 [VI/16].

4. ‘10’ is possibly ‘16.’ Eileen seems to be more concerned that a battle could affect the publication of her husband’s work than that it might endanger his life.