THE fight against fascism in Spain lives on in the archives of the Marx Memorial Library & Workers’ School (MML). Indeed, the history of the MML is deeply intertwined with that epic struggle against fascism of the 1930s.

The library was founded in 1933 in response to the rise of fascism in Europe. Many of our founders were directly involved in Spain. Historian Ralph Fox was killed fighting near Lopera in 1936. David Guest, one of the first lecturers, lost his life in at the Ebro in 1938.

With wife Noreen, Clive Branson helped raise the money to purchase our iconic building in London’s Clerkenwell — and contributed themselves. He later fought in Spain, returned home, but died in Burma in the British army during the second world war.

For decades after the war in Spain, the International Brigade Association (IBA) continued to meet at library. And in 1975 the veterans handed over their archive to the library, laying the foundation for our Spanish Collection.

Andrew Rothstein, then president of the library, reflected that in St Paul’s Cathedral were hung the flags of military and naval campaigns to conquer an empire for British capitalism.

“The banners and records of the International Brigade constitute a nobler memorial and inspiration for posterity — a memorial to the role of the working class and its movement in the making of history.”
 
Comprising 152 archival boxes, the MML’s Spanish Collection is the largest and most significant archive on the British response to the Spanish civil war in Britain.

It contains wide-ranging and often surprising material: wallets, newspapers, commissar reports, medical notebooks, diaries, love letters, photographs and memoirs. There are stunning banners created by the Artists’ International Association; even a sprig of thyme from the Ebro Valley preserved in the papers of Miles Tomalin.

Our archives span the period from solidarity with the Asturian miners in the early 1930s, through the war itself and the Aid Spain movement, to the appeal for amnesty in Spain in the 1960s and 1970s and the erection of memorials across Britain.
 
Last year the library was awarded official accreditation by the National Archives in recognition of meeting the highest professional standards in care and access. This collection is safe in our hands.
 
It continues to grow. Recent donations include the papers of notable women connected with the struggle, including ambulance driver Frieda Knight and nurse Patience Darton, donated by historian Angela Jackson. Last year a Brigader’s uniform arrived in the post from Dave Peet.
 
Another recent acquisition was the papers of International Brigader Jimmy Jump, whose experiences in Spain shaped the course of his entire life. He married the Spanish refugee Cayetana Lozano Diaz, and the war sparked a love affair with Spain and lifelong engagement with Spanish politics, culture, poetry and language — including his authorship of the Penguin Spanish-English Dictionary.
 
We see the collection not as something locked away behind closed doors, but as a living educational resource.

One example of has been our Charlie Hutchison project. Working in collaboration with teachers at Newham’s NewVIc sixth-form college, students explored the life of the only known black British volunteer in the International Brigades. They researched his story, interpreted archival material and connected with surviving family members.

In a project during Refugee Week, Hugh Myddleton School in Islington used material from the Spanish Collection, for example about the Basque children who arrived in Britain in 1937, to spark discussions about refugees today.
 
Our archives are a reminder of the role of individuals as part of a movement, and of what can be achieved through collective action.
 
They serve another vital purpose at a time when historical narratives around the second world war and the 20th century’s long war against fascism are being rewritten by European politicians. The role of communists, socialists, partisans and the Red Army in defeating fascism is being scandalously erased or minimised. Archives containing first-hand testimonies, letters and memoirs help dispel dangerous myths and distortions.
 
They also reveal important connections across the wider struggles of the 1930s. An example is Annie Mills, who was active in the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. Her scrapbook documenting direct-action campaigns in 1938-39 is filled with references to Spain. The archive reminds us that anti-fascism was not an isolated cause, but part of a broader movement against poverty, militarism and exploitation.
 
So what comes next?
 
We are delighted to announce that, through a collaboration with Adam Matthew Digital, we expect the entire Spanish Collection to be digitised over the next two years. This will transform access to the archive internationally.
 
The digitisation project forms part of wider plans to expand the educational use of the collection. This includes new trade union education programmes exploring historical campaigns against the far right, expanded schools work through our new Teachers’ Working Group and participation in the Cable Street Together programme on the theme of women and the Spanish civil war.
 
Ninety years on, the history preserved in the Spanish Collection remains far more than a record of the past. It is a living resource for understanding solidarity, collective struggle and anti-fascism in the present — and for helping shape the movements we need for the future.