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Twentieth Century British History 1999 10(1):52-66; doi:10.1093/tcbh/10.1.52
© 1999 by Oxford University Press
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ARTICLES

The Foreign Enlistment Act and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

S. P. MACKENZIE

University of South Carolina

This article examines the official response to the policy problems raised by the over two thousand Britons who went to fight for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, with particular reference to the Foreign Enlistment Act (1870). Revived in January 1937 as a means of reducing the flow of volunteers and curbing the recruiting efforts of the Communist Party of Great Britain, the act proved embarrassingly unenforceable. Ambiguity over its applicability to the situation in Spain, combined with problems of evidence, meant that no charges were ever laid against volunteers caught attempting to leave for Spain or members of the recruiting organization of the CPGB. Though a complete failure as a legal tool, the Foreign Enlistment Act nevertheless symbolically underlined the British government's declared support for international non-intervention in Spain, and was never rescinded.


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