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Roman Marquez Santo standing beside the sculpture honouring the Brigades |
¡No pasarán! Honouring the International Brigades that stood firm against Franco
THE inscription on the side of the sculpture reads: “We came because our open eyes can see no other way.”
As I stood on the South Bank recently at a memorial meeting to honour the International Brigades who went to Spain to fight Franco in the 1930s, I had the words of the poet C Day-Lewis pointed out to me by a wizened old man wearing thick glasses.
I turned to speak to him, and in a thick Spanish accent he began telling me what brought him to London on this fine July day.
His name was Roman Marquez Santo and he had come to the annual meeting from Barcelona.
“I was in a workers militia in 1936,” he told me. “I was with three friends in Barcelona and when Franco rose, we went on to the streets to do something abut it.”
He was involved in the fighting in the Catalonian capital as rebel troops tried to secure the city for the Fascists.
“We were up against trained and armed men but we were determined,” he recalls. “Later in the war, when we heard help was coming from the
International Brigades, it was such a wonderful feeling. I have come to honour them.”
I asked Señor Santo where he had learnt English, and this remarkable 94 year old told me he started learning it just 12 months ago.
“I came here last year and made a speech,” he said. “It made me realise I should work on my English.”
Patron of the International Brigade Memorial Trust and Professor of Spanish History at the London School of Economics, Paul Preston, also spoke.
Among the crowd I also spotted veterans Sam Lesser and Jack Jones – the former leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union – and Bob Doyle. Bob, who lives in Tufnell Park, was in the merchant navy and jumped ship to fight the fascists.
He was captured and spent a horrific nine months as a prisoner of war before being repatriated. Seeing these veterans singing “The Internationale” with tears in their eyes brought home the sacrifice this generation made.
Doc for sale: with full tax and MOT!
I FELT grumpy the other day when our wiseacres in Whitehall had a go at doctors – for the umpteenth time!
Not that I am an innocent in this field but, at least when I wield the knife, I do so with a sense of regret.
But really, what a daft idea from Britain's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, that all our family doctors should be given an annual MOT!
Once we go down that route, why not give our police and MPs an annual once over as well?
By the very nature of their work, doctors are likely to make a mistake just as the police or social workers are – but it would be the height of absurdity to set about checking them every year. And the sheer cost of it would be enough to send the Chancellor into a fit.
My GP at the Caversham surgery in Kentish Town is like a friend of the family.
Whenever I see him he smiles, listens attentively, carefully checks my notes and has always given me the soundest of advice. What a beautiful bedside manner!
A few days after I had sent him a note about the symptoms of a particular condition, he rang me at the office and solicitously went over the options. Not only that, but a few moments later he rang me back to advise me to go to the Caversham for a blood test – just to be on the safe side!
There are difficulties with a large surgery like the Caversham, which houses 14 or so GPs; it is almost like a mini-hospital and, sometimes, the personal touch can be missing from a large anonymous reception desk.
But I cannot really complain. As for my own GP at the Caversham, how dare some nitwit behind a silly desk in Whitehall – admittedly supinely, supported by the General Medical Council – suggest that a doctor of his skill, aptitude and conscientiousness should be monitored like an errant schoolboy!
Old Hutch played more than the piano, it seems...
HE was the pure essence of charm. And as he sat at the piano playing and singing romantic tunes he captured many fluttering hearts.
Hutch, otherwise Leslie Hutchinson (pictured right), became the highest-paid entertainer in England and a Belsize Park gigolo.
Now Channel 4 is to throw the spotlight on the cabaret star in a 60-minute documentary that will reconstruct the dark and dramatic moments of the life of Hutch, who lived for many years in Steeles Road.
Unless you have already read the 1999 biography by Charlotte Breese there are some shocks in store. For Hutch, born on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada in 1900 and who died in 1969, was apparently famously bisexual. And his partners over the years ranged from Tallulah Bankhead in New York to Cole Porter in Paris, and Noel Coward and Ivan Novello in London.
But, more remarkably, there was a royal on his hit list: Countess Edwina Mountbatten. How this is treated in the documentary, working title Hutch – High Society’s Favourite Gigolo will show whether or not it disastrously brought to an end Hutch’s fabulous career.
Channel 4 specialist factual commissioning executive Liz Hartford describes Hutch as a “trail-blazer for black entertainers” whose story has “largely been forgotten”. She explains: “We want to put that right. The film will chart Hutch’s spectacular rise and fall. It will also explore the prejudices of the period and how Hutch, as the first black superstar in Britain, challenged the class system in less socially mobile times.”
The documentary is being made by Maroon Productions and is scheduled to be broadcast in October.
Life in the trenches? Surely too much for young David
WHOEVER would have thought that the school-boy – sorry, I mean one David Miliband – whom I saw in Primrose Hill a few years ago, surrounded by gushing fellow Labour Party members, would be touted this week by the commentariat as the next Prime Minister?
I believe former education minister Estelle Morris got it about right on Radio 4 yesterday (Wednesday) when she said that Miliband had still to be “completed” as a man. Baroness Morris clearly admires the man, and sees him as a possible leader sometime in the future, but thinks he has still got some growing to do.
Schoolboy? A bit harsh perhaps, but really the man, like so many Oxbridge policy wonks brought into high
government by New Labour, has never held down a real job of any sort – so how can he possibly know what life is like in the trenches?
Not for someone of the officer class like him, surely.
For the record, Miliband’s father was a renowned Marxist academic. Miliband left Haverstock School with middling A-level results, and soared afterwards with New Labour.
The occasion I saw him was a by-election campaign in Primrose Hill which Labour won.
Miliband stood in the doorway of a shop in Primrose Hill – a few hundreds yards from his then home in Chalcot Square – looking a bit shy and reserved.
Oddly missing in the pieces by the commentariat this week is any list of his achievements by our present foreign minister.
Not difficult really, because there aren’t any.
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