Roy Campbell (poet) - Support For Franco

Support For Franco

In June, Campbell left Portugal for Spain, going to Salamanca and then to Toledo. He served as a war correspondent alongside Franco's armies, travelling on a journalist's pass issued by Alfonso Merry del Val, the head of the Nationalist Press Service. Leaving Toledo on 30 June 1937, Campbell was driven to Talavera where he suffered a serious fall, twisting his left hip. The following day, the special car travelled southwards from the front, ending its lightning tour in Seville. This visit appears to have been Campbell's only frontline experience of the war. However, that would not keep him from later suggesting that he had seen far more action than he had. He did not fight for the Nationalists during the Spanish conflict, despite later claims.

For a British intellectual to oppose the Spanish Republic was virtually unheard of, as was Campbell's glorification of military strength and masculine virtues. His reputation suffered considerably as a result. According to Pearce,

"Having witnessed the cold-blooded murder of his friends and acquaintances, it was not likely that Campbell was going to support the cause of the perpetrators. Bearing these horrific facts in mind, it is clearly a gross oversimplification to dismiss Campbell's stance in the Spanish Civil War as evidence that he was a Fascist. Such an obvious mitigating circumstance was, however, almost universally overlooked by Campbell's detractors in England, all of whom appended the 'Fascist' label to his person, employing it, and the accompanying stereotypical effluvia with which such an epithet is associated, with the cynical glee of seasoned character assassins."

Campbell had been a strong opponent of Marxism for some time, and fighting against it was also a strong motivation. In his poem, Flowering Rifle Campbell attacked the Republic, praised Franco, and accused Communists of committing far more heinous atrocities than any Fascist government. In a footnote attached to the poem, he declared,

"More people have been imprisoned for Liberty, humiliated and tortured for Equality, and slaughtered for Fraternity in this century, than for any less hypocritical motives, during the Middle Ages."

Marxists the world over were enraged and the Scottish Communist Hugh MacDiarmid wrote a blistering response entitled The Battle Continues. The second stanza included the lines

Franco has made no more horrible shambles

Than this poem of Campbell's

The foulest outrage his breed has to show

Since the massacre of Glencoe!

In September 1938, the Campbell family went to Italy, where they stayed until the end of the Spanish Civil War. After the publication of Flowering Rifle in February 1939, they became popular in the higher echelons of Roman society. They returned to Spain in April, 1939. On 19 May, Roy and Mary Campbell travelled to Madrid for the Victory Parade of Franco's forces.