February 1937

On 5 February, the Iron Column convened a meeting in Valencia of all the confederal militia units in the Levante in an attempt to resolve the problem of militarization. Taking part were representatives from the columns Tierra y Libertad, the Durruti Column, the Extremadura Andalusia Column, the Valdepeñas and Manzanares Sectors, the Ascaso, Iberia, Iron, Ortíz, Temple y Rebeldía columns and the CNT 13 Column. The CNT’s National Committee was neither invited nor informed, but a representative turned up all the same. There were two items on the agenda: “(1) The attitude to be adopted by the columns in the face of the mobilization decree and, (2) the effects this will have upon us.”

Fernando Pellicer of the Iron Column opened the debate by accusing both the higher committees and themselves:

‘… since we have been guilty of keeping our finest at the front while, by contrast, parvenus ensconced behind their desks have remained in the organization’s committees to engage in activities inimical to the proper functioning of the same…

‘We are not hostile to (military) expertize but those who blather so much about it ought to know that in Spain the military who failed to mutiny did so simply through cowardice or simply because the occasion did not arise…

‘Let us state this fact clearly: if we hope for a successful conclusion to the war from the presence of one armed comrade urging forward seven or eight militiamen at gunpoint from behind, then we might as well say we have lost the war…

‘The government knows that the only ones capable of cleaning up Levante are the Iron Column and for that reason it denies us weapons. As far as Levante is concerned, the Organization [CNT] has played a sordid game — played at setting up committees, committees which have given their consent to militarization even though a resolution to the contrary was passed at the last Regional Plenum of Syndicates.’

Delegates from the Ascaso and Ortiz columns agreed with Pellicer’s opening statement while the delegate from the Column CNT 13 informed the meeting that it had already re-organized itself and militarized because they felt that they had to be certain that ‘if we have 1,000 men, we will be 1,000 men under an obligation to do our bits.’

The uninvited spokesman from the National Committee protested about not being informed and went on to say that militarization had been imposed on no one. The decision had been taken with the approval of a Plenum of Regional Committees and if blame had to be apportioned it lay with those who abused their offices. The decision to militarize was approved because ‘we have seen that columns with communists in control operate with war materials aplenty whereas we are increasingly being starved of the same.’

The delegate from the militias of the Central region pointed out that if the militias continued fighting as in the past there would be a disaster ‘because we no longer possess the self-discipline that we had at the outbreak of the war.’[86]

Cipriano Mera, speaking on behalf of the Defense Committee of the CNT intervened:

“Discipline should begin with the committees and its imposition solely upon the militian cannot be acceptable any more than the fact that the committees should do as they see fit without consultation with the comrades concerned. We need to embrace a strong sense of organizational discipline which will not, however, be of the barrack room sort. “

The Tierra y Libertad delegate spoke to say that although they had initially agreed to militarization they now wished to renounce that decision:

‘We convened a meeting in our column; the consensus was that militarization be rejected. The proof of this is that half our ranks, 143 men, contend that anyone may be overcome by panic, whether he be soldier or militiaman.’

When the Congress ended two days later, 8 February, although united in their criticism of the higher committees of the CNT and FAI, the militians remained divided over the question of militarization.

According to Cipriano Mera ‘every delegation save two — the Iron Column and the Tierra y Libertad Column — accepted militarization.’[87] The Italian anarchists of the International Battalion attached to the Ascaso Column were also bitterly opposed to militarization.

In the face of growing pressure for a decision, the War Committee of the Iron Column published an urgent memorandum in Nosotros on 16 February warning its members that a decision had to be taken very soon — militarize or disband! It expressed the hope that the issue could be finally resolved at a general assembly of Column members to be held shortly. No formal decision was ever reached and the situation steadily built up to crisis point.

Meanwhile, Stalin increased the pressure on Largo Caballero, urging him to form a single proletarian party, merging the socialist and communists into one Unified Socialist Party of Spain. When Caballero finally rejected this proposal both the Stalinists and their right wing bourgeois allies, each for their own reasons, decided the time had come to move against the Spanish ‘Lenin’ as he had been misnamed. The emotional capital created by the fall of Malaga to the Nationalists on 8 February provided the opportunity for the opening shots in the campaign of vilification orchestrated against Caballero. For the next four months his position within the government and the party was to be steadily eroded until he was totally isolated.

The fall of Malaga, a major blow to the Republic, might have been averted, according to Borkenau, by a popular ‘fight of despair’ which ‘the anarchists might have led’, as opposed to a military solution under the command of regular army officers

Revolutionary morale and hope had evaporated as the ever-encroaching power of the state and the sectarian interests of the parties suffocated the popular organs of the revolution and mass involvement. ‘The nuisance of hundreds of independent village police bodies had disappeared, but with it the passionate interest of the villages in the civil war … The short interlude of the Spanish Soviet system was at an end.’[88] ‘The Spanish Republic’, Borkenau observed, ‘paid with the fall of Malaga for the decision of the right-wing of its camp to make an end of social revolution and of its left wing to allow that.’[89]