91 years ago today, Aberdeen’s Communists, Socialists and trade unionists won what has since come to be known as ‘The Battle of The Music Hall’. Ahead of a planned meeting of the British Union of Fascists headlined by national policy director A. Raven Thomson, Aberdeen’s united front ‘requisitioned’ over 360 tickets from less than security conscious fascists, and then proceeded to jeer, heckle and bully Thomson and his goons from the hall and indeed Aberdeen to the tune of the ‘internationale’ and ‘one, two, three, four, five – we want Mosley dead or alive!’.
Among the leading lights of what was then Aberdeen’s Communist movement and United Front was Bob Cooney (1907-1984), who remains one of Aberdeen’s greatest sons. Born in Sunderland but growing up in the Granite City, he joined the CPGB in 1928 and immediately became instrumental in the growing Communist and workers movement in the city– in his words his membership of the Party gave him ‘the good fortune to participate fully armed in the struggle against the enemies of mankind’ . He fought the blackshirts on the streets of Aberdeen, served in Spain from Huesca to the Ebro and chased the Hitlerites across Western Europe – odds would have it he reduced the numbers of these scum both forcefully and permanently. On his return to Aberdeen, he remained active and committed to party, trade union and housing struggles until his death.
Throughout all of this however Comrade Cooney did not neglect the pen for the sword but viewed them as inseparable tools in the class struggle. A proud member of the British working class, he ascertained that ‘the keystone of internationalism is the appreciation of the national traditions and aspirations of other peoples, and how can one appreciate the tradition and aspirations of other peoples if he is not fiercely conscious of his own?’.
His contribution to workers culture in Britain included numerous articles, plays and his memoirs of his time in Spain. In addition to this, Cooney was a poet and often performed these in his later years in the social club of the Aberdeen Trades Union Council, where his song books were rediscovered during a renovation in the early 2000’s. A small selection of these poems are reprinted here, to my knowledge for the first time since Bob’s death, as part of our classes’ and our movement’s long standing and still vibrant cultural heritage.
Notes on Hasta La Vista Madrid
I wrote this narrative poem for a very moving and nostalgic occasion, a reunion in London of the British Battalion of the International Brigade (including the skilled and very brave nurses and doctors who with most scanty equipment and often under fire pioneered surgical operations in the front line).
Also present, were a number of Spanish women and children who sang with spirit of the day they’d return to a free Spain. This is the poem which I take the greatest pleasure. Especially now, that soon we will be back in our old battlefields and the dear warm Spanish people we will never forget.
In addition to the Scots, Irish and Welsh volunteers we remember the Cubans – who has their own rehearsal for their own struggle and victory. We will never forget one other thing that stemmed the fascist flood – and killed the legend of fascist superiority – the defeat of Hitler started in Spain.
Cliveden was the Astor estate where Ribbentrop and other leading fascists were wined and dined by the Astors.
Hasta La Vista Madrid
Seven and twenty years? That long?
It seems but yesterday we left that war-torn hill above Gandesa.
Is it perhaps because I’m growing old?
That thought now skips so slightly down the years
And the travail of a quarter century
Melts in the Vision of those great days,
Those days we lived – and knew that we were living,
We were at war – and yet we were at peace –
We knew a peace we had known at home
Where conscience nagged – and conflict ranged within us
Spain! We woke each morning to the thought of Spain
Spain in our thoughts all day – and into each troubled night
Disturbing thoughts – reproaching thoughts
Home was no longer home – for we were in the rear
While the battle raged at the front
Comrades we’d never seen – yet knew – and loved
How dear they’d grown – leaving their ripening crops
To reap a different bitter harvest
Fighting a war we knew was rightly ours
Since the Fascisct Poision weed drew sustenance
From the rotten soil of Cliveden
Manking England a dirty word!
Oure country had to be cleansed – so we went to Spain
Where the defeat of Hitler started!
And more than that, for freedom’s an infectious thing!
And many a freedom fighter who learned his craft in Spain
Communuciated skills, to a newer generation of Freedom Fighters
Giving this proof – this guarantee –
No freedom fight is ever eeally lost
While folk can learn
Each human minds an outpost
And the fronteirs of freedom expand
Till the world will be wholly free
Then?
Folk will strive for higher freedoms yet
What Does El Caudillo see as he sits and broods
Lonely – and afraid
In his palace – now his self made jail
He fears to leave
What does he see?
Hitler? Gone!
Mussolini? Gone!
Who goes next?
Salazar? Or even…?
Perish the thought!
But the thought won’t perish!
In London today, in Paris today
In Warsaw, Prague and Rido De Janerio
There are men and women
Exiled – These Seven and Twenty Years
But today! There’s a spring in their step
And a meaningful phrase on their lips
A Phrase that is more than a phrase
It is a promise
A promise to Spain – To themselves and to each other
Hasta La Vista Madrid!
How do you like that promise? Caudillo?
Will you be there?
We’d like to know, for we are coming too
We also say ‘Hasta La Vista Madrid’
There is so much we want to see once more
We will stroll in the Puerto Del Sol
And the Ramblas of Barcelona
We will cross the Ebro, and drink with our friends in Mora
Friends who’ll be free!
We will look at them, and at each other
And each of us will thing ‘This is why we came in ‘36’
And if we live to be a hundred
We’ll have this to be glad about
We went to Spain
Because of that great yesterday
We are part of a greater tomorrow
HASTA LA VISTA MADRID!
James Connolly
In windy Edinburgh town – so history does relate
A lad was born on June the sixt of 1868
Against poverty and skickness llong his parents did engage
So young James Connelly at ten was earning his first wage
He learned to read by firelight – made pencils from charred wood
What would have been his parents thoughts? Had they but understood
That millions yet would read his words – and he would win renown
As poet – scholar – rebel – and would earn a martyr’s crown
But his dearest love was Ireland – From whence his parents came
Resolved was he to set her free from dark colonial shame
He crossed the sea to USA where he’s remembered still
He helped organise the wobblies – with Bill Haywood and Joe Hill
Already by young manhood in the union he was strong
In labour’s cause he travelled wide – inspiring many a throng
When 1914 war-drums beat he gave the clarion call
“Neither George or Kaiser shall we serve. We men of Liberty Hall”
No German foot stands on our soil – the only alien feet
Belong to those who stole our land – t’is them we must defeat
Since Ireland is our country – t’is for Ireland we must fight
Our Irish Citizen Army soon will test the saxon might.
And so there dawned that fateful week which shall not be forgot
For six great days against fearful odds the gallant army fought
Artillery and gun boat too. Their Heavy salvoes fired
Still Connolly though wounded twice, his gallant band inspired
And when it was all over, to the castle he was led
To face his mock court-martial soldiers propped him up in bed
With gangrened wound and fever wracked he still found strength to say
‘’You have seen how Irishmen can fight, thank god I saw that day’’
Although he died on that Maymorn, don’t say he fought in vain
For from that day the saxon rule was never secure again
So long as there’s a man alive who’ll fight for liberty
They won’t have killed the spirit of the brave James Connolly
When Nations Go To War
When nations go to war, poor truth must take to fight
The Lord above is on our side – The enemy hell smite
And if perhaps, a deal loved son on foreign soil is slain-
An economic mass-made cross will mark where he is lain
And once a year, there’ll be a date they call “Remembrance Day”
There’ll be a boom in emblem sales – which dividends will pay
Meantime of course we must rearm to keep our free world free
And those who once we called the huns
We now must call the “free”
For wars are good for business – they make the profits soar
That’s why when wars are over, we have to plan for more
Oh – working – who bear the brunt of other’s greed and pelf
Reject these so called “statesmen” and speak up for yourself!
P.S – The headlines now do dramatize the murder of John Lennon
But still support the policies that lead to Armageddon
Reproduced from papers held in the University of Aberdeen Collections
From Aberdeen YCL
