FRANCO’S WAR ON RAIL WORKERS

24 RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: february 2022 :: RMTnews The war against fascism is fundamentally a struggle for the rights of working people. That is why the Welsh International Brigaders overwhelmingly came from the working class. They were people who, as Hwyel Francis wrote, went to Spain predominantly because of their personal experience of the suppression of organised labour. They knew better than anyone that under fascism it is working people who suffer most. The rights of workers are one of fascism's prime targets, trade unions amongst the first casualties. The dignity of labour disappears. I want to focus on what happened to one key group of workers in Franco’s fascist Spain, the railway workers. The story of their suffering and humiliation demonstrates how right those brave Welsh volunteers were to take up arms in support of the working people of Spain and their legitimately elected government. Thanks to the work of CCOO and UGT unions and Spain's socialist government, 82 years after the end of the Civil War and over 40 years since the return of democracy, the Spanish railway company, RENFE, has finally acknowledged how their workers suffered under fascism. They now have a website detailing the horrific treatment meted out to workers whose only crime was to have been employed in an industry that had strong trade unions and to have stayed loyal and kept the trains running for the Republic. In Franco’s “Purification Courts” (established by each of the railway companies) all railway workers were presumed guilty and had to prove to the fascists that they were not a threat to the regime. Nearly 90,000 railway workers had to present a sworn statement setting out any links they had with the parties that had supported the democratically elected Republic. Around 83,000 railway workers were purged, 88 per cent of the workforce. At one point they had to pause the witch hunts because they didn’t have enough train drivers to run the railway. Nearly 7,000 were jailed, for terms varying from months to life imprisonment. One hundred were condemned to death. Nobody knows how many were just taken out and shot, without any charge or trial, but they were many. In 2011 in Burgos an unmarked mass grave was opened to reveal 59 bodies, it is known locally as the tomb of the railwaymen. Just one story from a railway family: “It was 1936. The fascists took my father and uncle - José and Rafael Machuca - to a makeshift prison. One night they came into their cell to FRANCO’S WAR ON RAIL WORKERS Chris Roberts speaks at a commemorative ceremony in Cardiff for Welsh International Brigaders who fought and died fighting fascism in Spain