19th July 2008: International Brigade Re-union and memorial, Jubilee Gardens, London

As a follow up to the gig that Rob and I played at in London to celebrate the Spanish Republic, we were kindly invited by the organiser Marlene Sidaway, to play some music as people assembled for the Annual Re-union of the International Brigade. This year it was in Jubilee Gardens in London, near the statue commemorating those Britons who gave their lives to fight fascists in Spain in the 1930s.
Clearly, this was a great honour. Marlene had sent us a DVD of the event the year before and whose face should be on the front (and who were following in the footsteps of – none other than Billy Bragg. So, we certainly wanted to do something special and Rob worked hard to gather together some Spanish tunes to ensure that we did an entirely relevant Spanish set. So, we needed to rehearse pretty hard for this and I’m pleased to say that we played well. The place we were playing was right next to the queues for the London Eye and so we not only had the 200 or so people who had come to the memorial service but another couple of hundred people queuing up. The leading war veterans were there, including Jack Jones. The Spanish Ambassador was there and gave a brief speech, and some leading Labour politicians also spoke. Rob and I then returned to lead the communal singing with the soldier’s song The Valley of Jarama and, of course the Internationale.
We then returned to a nearby hotel and had a buffet lunch and, as we do find these days, Rob and I fell into an interesting conversation with an Irishman who had been passing the event and had got completely involved in what, for him, was a story that he knew virtually nothing about. This well read man knew very little about the Spanish Civil War, the role of Britons in that fight or that Irish fighters had fought on both sides of the conflict.
Marlene and the organisers kindly gave Rob and I a commemorative mug to thank us for our involvement. Amazingly, given that we had only met Marlene once before, it turned out that she had lived in my home town of Middlesbrough and knew my half-brother. It is indeed a small world.
Despite threats of showers, it turned nice in the end and was a boiling hot afternoon - and I’m afraid my thinning locks did nothing to save my emerging pate from a good roasting. Just what I needed before going off on holiday!