It was the International Brigades’ Memorial Day in Jubilee Park beside the Thames in London. It was a hot day with no breeze, “a Spanish day”, one of the Brigaders said. Like the others, all in their eighties and older, he took shelter in the shade and rested on his walking stick. He wore his red beret. Twenty yards away, tourists waiting to board the London Eye, the great ferris wheel built for the Milennium, looked bemused at the elderly men in their berets, and the rest of us, without knowing who we were, what the men had done and why we were celebrating them.
Between 1936 and 1939, the International Brigade fought in Spain on the side of the Republican government against the fascist forces of General Franco. There were British, Americans, Irish, Canadians, Australians and others. They were very young and all volunteers, determined to stop fascism in its tracks. They made a difference.
Although the government eventually fell, in February 1937, the 600-strong British
— source johnpilger.com | john pilger | 19 Jul 2005