Heidi Egginton, Curator of Political Collections, writes: We are so grateful to FNL for supporting the acquisition of the Smillie Archive, comprising the personal papers of Robert Ramsay ‘Bob’ Smillie (1917-1937), the labour activist and anti-fascist volunteer, together with papers of his father, Alexander Frame Smillie (1896-1984), and grandfather, Robert Smillie (1857-1940).
Born in Larkhall, Lanarkshire, where his grandfather had been a prominent trade union leader and founder member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), Bob Smillie had been drawn into radical causes as a young man, supporting the hunger marches and campaigning against rearmament. In 1936, aged 19, he abandoned his studies in chemistry at the University of Glasgow, becoming one of the 600 Scots who volunteered to fight for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. After taking part in a speaking tour in France and England to drum up support for the war, he was detained by the government in Valencia on his crossing back into Spain and died in prison in June 1937. He received a posthumous tribute from George Orwell, with whom he had served in the ILP. contingent allied to the revolutionary socialist group Partido Obrero de Unificiación Marxista (POUM.), and whose Homage to Catalonia (1938) helped draw public attention to the unexplained circumstances surrounding his arrest.
The archive is a little-studied and exceptionally detailed record of the Smillie family’s engagement in anti-fascist and left-wing politics. It contains a series of Bob’s own letters to his family, which serve as a detailed diary of his time on the front line of the fighting against Franco’s forces in Spain from November 1936 to his detention in May 1937. This is followed by his parents’ frantic correspondence with the Spanish authorities and members of the ILP. and POUM. during his imprisonment, and a collection of letters of condolence and tribute after his death in custody. The rest of the archive comprises photographs, political ephemera, and unpublished literary manuscripts of Robert and Alexander Smillie. As a whole, it provides a unique picture of how international labour politics reverberated through three generations of a Scottish family in the early 20th century.
The National Library of Scotland holds the pre-eminent collection of archives relating to the Scottish labour and trade union movements, where the involvement of Scots in the Spanish Civil War is a particular specialism. Significantly, with unseen letters to and from Bob’s mother and grandmother, this archive brings out the voices of the women in the Smillie family for the first time. The collection also helps cast light on the papers we hold of David Murray, the ILP. lawyer and journalist who represented Bob during his detention and affords researchers the opportunity to continue piecing together the contested accounts of his final days.
We are indebted to the generosity of FNL which has helped us make this archive accessible for further research and public engagement.
