Opinion

HEADING FOR THE HILLS

Frida

Thank you Frida.

Your self-ef­fac­ing, sweep­ing mem­oir of liv­ing on a con­ti­nent slid­ing to­wards dis­as­ter of­fers an en­gag­ing and at the same time shud­der­ing per­spec­tive on the human con­di­tion and the ever-pre­sent shadow of con­flict.

The road to hor­ror through the dis­eases of pop­ulism, poverty, ig­no­rance, com­plic­ity and dire diplo­macy are wit­nessed on one young woman’s ex­tra­or­di­nary jour­ney, fun­da­men­tally in the spin­ning whirlpool of the 1930s and the dire con­se­quences. For some the drums of war were deaf­en­ing, but many could not hear, or chose not to.

Spain’s tragedy is there, heart and cen­tre. But this is also the Eu­ro­pean tragedy and is an all-the-more com­pelling ac­count be­cause it is mar­ried to the de­ter­mi­na­tion and ad­ven­tures of one per­son. What to do with the priv­i­lege of an ed­u­ca­tion, con­tacts and ex­pe­ri­ences that fire a deep so­cial con­science? How do you counter the grav­ity of in­evitabil­ity when it takes hold? You do all you can for oth­ers and fight in­jus­tice. You never stop try­ing.

She threw her­self into the chal­lenge, into dark cor­ners and into harm’s way, to the front line, and had the great sense to write what she saw and felt. Such win­dows into our past have im­mea­sur­able worth.

To touch on all that Frida saw and risked would rob the book of its as­ton­ish­ing depth and sur­prises. But the dis­tances she cov­ers across Britain and Eu­rope are ex­tra­or­di­nary, as are the peo­ple she en­coun­ters, the de­tails she records of life on the fringes of chaos and the un­fath­omable re­solve. We all need to know, or be re­minded of, the Span­ish war or­phans, the sick­en­ing farce of non-in­ter­ven­tion, the con­cen­tra­tion camps on the beaches: Also, with the em­bold­en­ing of the fas­cists that Franco’s vic­tory brought, the fur­ther flood­ing of France with refugees from Ger­many, Italy, Aus­tria, Czecho­slo­va­kia, and the truth of how quickly the world can change. His­tory is often so dan­ger­ously sim­pli­fied when it could not be more chaotic. Frida, ever cu­ri­ous and de­ter­mined, was some­one who lived it.

In­valu­able, too, to read of de­fi­ance and for­ti­tude. As she helped 2,000 Span­ish war refugees es­cape from the hor­ror to start a new life in Mex­ico….. “Sev­eral crowded trains car­ried the em­i­grants from Bar­carès and Per­pig­nan to Sète, and it was the most stim­u­lat­ing jour­ney I ever made, packed in with the women and chil­dren, cheer­ing and shout­ing and singing. They filed on board and every­one fore-gath­ered on deck, where speeches were made and the loud-speaker blared out the na­tional an­thems of Britain and Repub-lican Spain. We all stood to at­ten­tion, and I don’t think there was one of us who had not got a very large lump in their throats.”

This is, ul­ti­mately, for me, a book of hope - wit­ness to our power to do good more than the power to dom­i­nate. This, in tan­dem with the chronic need for us to learn from the past, makes it very much a book for now, and it sheds a vital light on in­no­cent peo­ple caught up in poverty and chaos and who are so eas­ily for­got­ten.

And it is tena­cious his­to­rian Dr An­gela Jack­son at her best too, re­search­ing in great de­tail and per­sist­ing in keep­ing the sto­ries alive. Her books on Cata­lan and Span­ish civil war his­tory and the fel­low­ship amid the dystopia are a vital record. Here is an­other one.

Read Frida.

FIR­ING A SHOT FOR FREE­DOM is avail­able from The Clap­ton Press (https://​the​clap​tonp​ress.​com/) and through Ama­zon from early July.

Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.