FRONTE
POPULARRA / EUSKAL BURGESIA, FAXISMOAREN 5. ZUTABEA
“Jabetza sakratuagoa zen beraientzat
faxismoaren
aurkako borroka baino”
“The absolute uniformity of the Basque policy of
surrendering all industrial cities intact has no counterpart in any modern
war, not to speak of civil wars!”
 |
| Milizianoak Alegian |
POPULAR
FRONT SURRENDERS SANTANDER
(by Felix Morrow)
Socialist Appeal
(organ of the
Socialist Party of New York,
Left Wing
Branches)
4. zenbakia,
1937ko irailaren 4a
S
|
antander,
last Biscay port of the Loyalists, was surrendered on August 26 [1937] by
the Basque general staff without the slighetst attempt to defend it.
Santander fell into the hands of Franco intact, its port and factories ready
for use by the Fascists. The same thing had happened in Reinosa, manufacturing
town and key to Santander’s defenses, a few days earlier. Instead of war to
death against fascism, the Negrin goverment’s appointees miserably capitulated.
Not even the military supllies were destroyed. Even before the fascist troops
arrived in Santander, yesterday’s “loyal republican police”, the National
Republican Guards, as well as armed fascist civilians, were patroling the
streets and disarming Asturian militiamen.
A revealing light is thrown on the
conduct of the Basque Government by a Times dispatch of August 25 [1937]:
“At the time of the fall of Bilbao [Bilbo] the Basques freed all their hostages except
seventeen. Now these are considered to be in the gravest peril as the Basques
admit that it is no longer possible to protect them from extremist elements
(the Asturian miners) in Santander.
“When the British Embassy agreed to take off the
hostages it would also evacuate the Basques who have been guarding them as well
as any remaining members of the Basque Government...
“It is hoped that the whole maneuver will be carried
out before the more violent elements in Santander are aware of what is
happening.”
Play Fascist Game
The next day the British battleship “Keith”,
with Basque and Fascist representatives aboard “rescued” the Basque officials
and the seventeen fascists! Instead of going to the Asturian port, Gijon, to
which the real fighters against fascism were sailing for the last stand against
Franco, the Basque President Aguirre [Agirre], a his cohorts, prefered to leave
Spain, paying for the voyage by releasing seventeen important Fascist
prisoners! Such is the quality of the “antifascism” of the liberal bourgeoisie.
That
the Basque bourgeoisie would not fight to the death against Franco was apparent
as early as September, 1936, when they
abandoned the factories of San Sebastian [Donostia] intact to the enemy. The
same thing has happened in the case of every city in the Biscay provinces.
Rather than conduct an intransigeant struggle involving demolition of bourgeois
factories and buildings, the bourgeoisie preferred to abandon the cities, one
by one. Property was more sacred to them than the struggle against fascism. If
the property were destroyed, it would be irretrievably lost. But if they
surrendered it intact and Franco was victorious, Franco, believing in private
property, would certainly want to conciliate the property-owners when the war
was over, even if they had been on the wrong side for a time..... Apart from
this certain prospect, there may even have been an understanding on this point
with Franco; the absolute uniformity of the Basque policy of
surredering all industrial cities intact has no counterpart in any modern
war, not to speak of civil wars! [...]
—F. Morrow
http://www.icl-fi.org/espanol/spe/36/espanola.html
