I'm happy to answer this and any further questions in regards to the Basque refugees in Britain!

From the start of the Spanish Civil War, numerous groups in the UK, and indeed the world, became increasingly concerned about the plight of civilians in areas that were engulfed by the war. The moment when the British public were really awoken to the events in Spain was the bombing of Guernica, on the 26 April 1937. A number of reporters (most prominently George Steer of The Times) were quick to expose the atrocities committed by the Francoists, leading to widespread condemnation and fear. To give you an idea of the events, I give you the testimony of an unnamed refugee:

We saw a family of people we knew from our street run into a wood. There was the mother with two children and the old grandmother. The planes circled about the wood for a long time and at last frightened them out of it. They took shelter in a ditch. We saw the old granny cover up the little boy with her apron. The planes came low and killed them all in the ditch, except the little boy. He soon got up and began to wander across a field, crying. They got him too.

It was in this background that discussion of evacuation of non-combatants, especially children, began to intensify. Basque President Aguirre broadcast a plea for foreign governments to receive civilians evacuated from the city. In Britain The National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief (NJCSR) had emerged in December 1936 from a cross-party group of MPs and several charities, but so far had unsuccessfully attempted to pressure the government into accepting refugees from Spain.

Opposition to allowing the refugees to enter the country varied. Sir George Chiltern, a Francoist sympathiser, worried that 'the removal of useless mouths from the area of combat around Bilbao was liable to prolong the city’s resistance.' Interestingly, George Steer agreed with him, but saw this as a good thing.

Right-wing MPs worried that the refugees, who came from a Republican-held territory, had the potential to bring with them far-left sentiments. Viewing photographs of the refugees in their camps, it becomes evident that a great many of the children were indeed politically engaged. Several photographs feature the children, holding a Republican flag, fists in the air. Although they were accepted and organised by political allegiance of their parents, I have yet to see an example of Francoist support in the refugees. However, the argument that a few thousand children might rally the people of Britain to a revolution was obviously a weak one, and it fizzled out fairly quickly. A more substantial worry was that Basque children being given 'preferential' treatment over local impoverished children might provoke some discontent.

It should be noted that some charities also opposed the evacuation of children from Spain, although supported their living costs on arrival. After a meeting with Lewis Golden, the secretary of Save the Children, J. Cooper from the Home Office remarked that Golden 'would sooner see them die in their own land than rot slowly in exile where they deteriorate physically, morally and mentally.' The Catholic Church, though 'schizophrenic' in their approach to the crisis, generally concurred.

With public outrage at the atrocities growing, the British government put aside their fears and approved an evacuation of 3,826 children on the ship Habana. Of course, the Basque government paid for the ship, and the accommodation of the refugees once in Britain was paid by the taxpayer. The refugees arrived in the port of Southampton on 23 May, where they were initially settled at a nearby refugee camp - land donated by a local farmer. Conditions were generally good - 'only' eight died, far less than if they had remained in Spain - although most of the children were not able to speak English whilst the volunteers were unable to speak Spanish or Basque.

Within these early days of the Basque children in the UK, the public were generally supportive. Fundraisers were organised, homes opened and moral support given - in spite of many working-class families experiencing a hard economic slump. The 'great army of busybodies' - in the words of AJP Taylor - had been mobilised. By the end of the year, 90 'colonies' of refugees had been established across the country, most notably in Wales. Only the local government of Jersey refused the refugees.

However, by the start of 1938, interest began to fade. The great humanitarian swell proved to be, according to Kevin Myers, temporary - and problematic. 'Temporary because it had largely faded away by the end of 1937,' he notes, 'and problematic because of the unrealistic expectations it placed on the children.' The excitement of the event had worn off and, with a gradual stream of children now returning to Spain, many started to question why they hadn't all gone home. What certainly did not help the situation was how the children had been portrayed in the media, including fundraising appeals. They were portrayed as passive, innocent and pathetic, and discussion of the political background was muted. By the end of the year, a press eager to report on any negative incident, no matter how small, meant that very minor disturbances were amplified. When the Basque country fell to Franco in 1937, many Basque children in Brechfa, Wales, broke down in tears, but some went as far as to instigate a 'riot.' As a side note, I have been unable to discover what this 'riot' consisted of aside that it was caused by older boys and may have been in reaction to a dispute with a local.

Whilst British reaction to the refugees was certainly mixed, it is thanks to many 'busybodies' that the refugees had a largely pleasant, if emotionally chaotic, time in the country. Only a couple hundred chose to settle in Britain, as several outside factors meant that most would return home even if they did not want to. This included letters from parents begging the children to come home after the war - upon arrival, the children would discover their parents had died long before the letters had been sent.

Sources and recommended reading

Myers, Kevin, 'The Ambiguities of aid and Agency: Representing Refugee Children in England, 1937–8', The Journal of the Social History Society , 6.1, (2009), 29-46.

Knox, Katherine and Tony Kushner, Refugees in an age of genocide: Global, national and local perspectives (Routledge 2012)

Anderson, Peter, 'The Struggle over the Evacuation to the United Kingdom and Repatriation of Basque Refugee Children in the Spanish Civil War: Symbols and Souls,' Journal of Contemporary History, Vol 52, Issue 2 (2016) pp. 297 - 318

I also recommend The Basque Children of '37 Organisation. They have many resources, and meet-ups are frequently organised - though sadly with dwindling numbers today. https://www.basquechildren.org

Thanks for a great, detailed answer! I have something of a follow up question/comment (I now feel that that guy at conferences, but I promise there’s a question at the heart of all this…).

I’ve done a bit of research on ‘Aid Spain’ movements in Britain, and have always been struck by the way the map of such activity varies a great deal depending on class and locality. While for various reasons I’ve generally not focused on the Basque children, I have always been struck in passing by how this geography of fundraising and care differs greatly from a lot of other Spanish relief work going on in Britain. Namely, it seems to be much more rural, in regions that otherwise don’t seem to see a particularly strong or sustained mobilisation on behalf of Spain (in this regard I’m struck by the observation in your post that fundraising dried up in 1938, which was the most successful year for other organisations – the Edinburgh Joint Committee, for instance, raised over five times more in 1938 compared to 1937, and various regional food ship schemes really took off in 1938). I’ve very rarely come across donations for Basque refugees in labour movement records, for instance – I’m not for a moment suggesting that such support didn’t exist, just that the preponderance of urban, working-class/labour movement fundraising I’ve been able to trace goes to the official labour movement fund, food ships, Co-operative schemes and the International Brigade dependants.

I was always struck in a similar regard by a passage in the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief’s monthly bulletin, which noted in October 1937 that:

There is still plenty of room for expansion in relief work. There exists in the National Joint Committee’s office a map of Great Britain on which are marked all centres in which there are Spanish aid or relief committees. Some areas are unexpectedly bare. Wales and Scotland seem to come off the worst.

This is obviously bizarre reading for anyone familiar with the response to the Spanish Civil War in either Wales or Scotland (it’s worth noting that Scotland took in barely any of the Basque refugees either), and suggests to me that the issue was more that many local organisations in Wales and Scotland didn’t see the need to affiliate themselves with the rather genteel, humanitarian-based National Joint Committee rather than an absence of Aid Spain activity altogether. This in turn seems to suggest another dimension to Lewis Mates’ argument in his 2007 book, which argued that Aid Spain organisations downplayed politics in an effort to broaden coalitions and cooperation, and focused instead on humanitarian appeals. Such an argument is sustainable in certain places throughout the UK – notably the North East of England, which Mates focused on, but also the kind of places that seemed to take in the Basque children – yet things looked rather different elsewhere, where the decision to chase humanitarian support was less obvious.

However, my research has concentrated much more on urban, working-class spaces, so I’m not sure how far my impression is actually born out by your work. So my question is about the intersections between the activity you describe and Aid Spain more broadly – did the locales which took in Basque refugees how a history of Spain-related activism or fundraising? To what extent were such efforts political? Did this continue after the children left? Was ongoing fundraising after their arrival local, or coordinated regionally/nationally? Also, as a shot in the dark: did the locales which hosted the Basque children have a history of similar generosity – did they perhaps host Belgian refugees in 1914-18, for instance?

Oh and one last minor point of curiosity – the Basque children have been fairly well remembered and commemorated in Britain (not least in recent years as a response to current events we can’t discuss here…). To what extent were Britain’s efforts here unusual or exceptional? Did other countries take in comparable numbers of Basque refugees?

Edit: tagging in u/AlmightyB because I just realised I didn't reply to their post directly. Sorry!