Mac-Pap: Memoir of a Canadian in the Spanish Civil War by Ronald Liversedge (review)

It was 1937. Amid throngs of thousands turned out in Vancouver to mark May Day – the unofficial holiday celebrating the international labour movement – thirty-eight-year-old Ronald Liversedge was pulled aside. “Are you ready to go now?,” a man asked. Liversedge affirmed he was and, lacking the tram fare, the two began a three-mile trudge downtown to the central train station. As they left, a voice boomed over the loudspeakers: “Right at this moment a man is leaving this rally on his way to Spain.” Thousands cried out, “Long live the Mac-Paps!” (35).

Thus began Ronald Liversedge’s journey to Spain to join the Canadian volunteers to the International Brigades fighting for the democratically elected Popular Front republic against the fascists commanded by General Francisco Franco. And thus begins Liversedge’s memorable account of his experiences as a volunteer during the Spanish Civil War that raged from 1936 to 1939. Liversedge’s memoir was completed in 1966 but was never published. It has, however, been a key document for historians writing about Canada’s part in that far-off war. When researching The Gallant Cause: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), I dusted off a typescript in the special collections of the ubc Library. So it is a pleasure to see this manuscript finally published, and even more so to find it strengthened by its editor, labour historian David Yorke.

Born in England, Liversedge had enlisted in the West Yorkshire Regiment and been twice wounded during the First World War. He emerged from military service a devout communist and remained one to his death in 1974. Unable to find employment in Britain, Liversedge immigrated to Canada in 1927. The mass unemployment of the Great Depression cemented his political views, as did the federal government’s brutal breaking of the On-to-Ottawa Trek on Dominion Day in 1935 at Regina. By 1937, Liversedge was ready to return to war to fight the spectre of fascism.

While Liversedge was neither a professional writer nor a historian, his memoir of the two years spent as a soldier in Spain is clearly and concisely written. Where the memoir lacks context, Yorke fills the gaps with equally clear and concise endnotes that provide the broader historical, political, military, and social information needed to garner a fuller understanding of the civil war and international events that swirled around it.

Liversedge was among 1,700 Canadians who fought in Spain and formed the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion (named after the leaders of the 1837 rebellions). The accounts of battle are well rendered, with vivid descriptions of the wretched conditions, faulty equipment, chaotic leadership, and other handicaps Popular Front soldiers faced while fighting large contingents of Italian and German forces bolstering Franco’s ranks. Soon the inevitability of defeat loomed, particularly due to uneven enforcement of the Non-Intervention Pact. Intended to prevent either side receiving outside aid, the pact saw the Western democracies refuse assistance to the Popular Front while the fascist German and Italian governments funnelled massive support to Franco. Although the Soviet Union sent aid and some troops to back the Popular Front, that support came at the cost of increased Spanish Communist Party domination over the republican side. Liversedge’s commitment to communism was only further reinforced by the Soviet support. “The one country in the world to act humanely and stay by its international obligations [to Spain] was the ussr,” he concluded (140). That this support came with strings attached that included surrendering – ostensibly to secure it – Spain’s gold reserves goes unremarked by Liversedge and more surprisingly by Yorke. Yet there is cutting truth in Liversedge’s assertion that the “leaders of the western powers, in their insane hatred of Russia, were … laying the groundwork for the Second World War” (114).

Liversedge never pretended to be an objective participant in a momentous historical event. His politics were always...