One of the prominent members of the International Brigades that came to the aid of the Socialist government in Spain in 1936 as they fought to save their country from the ravages of the Franco-led Fascist rebels, was George Orwell. He related some of his experiences in one of his most poignant works, Homage to Catalonia.
Amongst Orwell’s other famous literary gems was the brilliant 1984 in which he foresaw a world where the ‘Thought Police’ would constantly monitor people’s actvities and their loyalty to the ruling elite and where history would be rewritten and retold whenever it was expedient for the establishment to do so.
How ironic then, that the Tory ‘thought police’ at County Hall are to remove an information board dedicated to those who died in the Spanish Civil War in order to sever links with any remaining vestige of the previous Labour administation and with anything vaguely socialist.
George Orwell foresaw a world where Big Brother would be watching us but the County Council, with leader Kay Cutts firmly established in her ivory tower overlooking the Trent, seems to have quickly established an authoritarian regime presided over by Big Sister.
3 Comments
Not quite the full story. The sculpture stays, the plaque replaced by one memorialising all Notts people dying on duty in wars. It always struck me as very gratuitious the memorial to one side of a complex civil war, and nothing for Notts soldiers of wars we, Britain, were a party too. And I am on the left!
You may have a point about the complexities of the Spanish Civil War Fred, but don’t we already have enough memorials to Brits that died in various other wars?
And will this be a memorial to ALL Nottinghamshire troops killed ‘in the line of duty’… in Palestine, for instance, Suez, Cyprus, Congo, Borneo and any one of the 45 or so other military engagements of one sort or another that the UK has got itself into since 1945?
Or will it just be the ones that we’re not now ashamed of being part of?
I went to see the new plaque today. Bit garish for my taste, but that might be the newness. Forget the exact wording but it covers all who died fighting for others and for freedom. Seemed fair enough.