The British Communist and scholar who died fighting fascists in the Spanish Civil War

"I am not just paying a conventional tribute to a dead man when I say that he was a real hero."

On this day in 1936, Ralph Winston Fox was killed. A Yorkshireman, scholar and communist, he died fighting fascism in Spain.

Born in Halifax on 30 March 1900, Fox went to Oxford University during the Great War. But instead of catching the jingoistic fever of the day, he embraced socialism.

Fox was a Marxist from a young age, and eventually became one of the leading Marxist scholars of his time.

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At Oxford, Fox joined the University Labour Club and helped to form the local ‘Hands Off Russia Committee’, protesting against British intervention in the Russian Civil War.

In July 1920, he was present at the Cannon Street Hotel in London for the founding of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

Among the early British Communists were some giants of radical history, including Sylvia Pankhurst and Shapurji Saklatvala MP. The young Ralph Fox found himself in their ranks.

A photograph of Ralph Fox

During his twenties, Fox made several visits to the newly formed Soviet Union, and even worked there for some time as a librarian at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow.

Fox’s literary output was incredibly wide-ranging: from detailed studies of Marxist theory, to the more polemical articles he wrote during his time as a columnist for the Daily Worker.

He even published two biographies: one of Lenin and one – perhaps unexpectedly – of Genghis Khan.

By 1936, Fox had been back in England for four years working as a writer and making a name for himself in leftist circles.

Then, in July of that year, war broke out in Spain.

A 'Help Spain!' campaign was launched by the Artists Rifles International Association in Britain to encourage people to join up and fight for the republicans

Click to view our Help Spain tea towel

As soon as the International Brigades were formed to defend the democratic government of Spain against Francisco Franco’s rebellion, Fox joined up.

"Our little army is of every nation, French, Belgians, Germans, and Poles… I have talked to Ukrainians from Poland, fellows who have been soldiers nearly all their lives, happy at last to be fighting for something worthwhile."

Fox was soon made a senior officer in the British Battalion. Writing home from the International Brigades HQ in Albacete, he marvelled,

"The whole atmosphere is revolutionary, the very streets full of the people."

But Ralph Fox’s time in Spain was to be short.

At the end of December 1936, just a few months into the Spanish Civil War, he was killed leading a counter-attack at the Battle of Lopera. John Cornford, another Oxbridge-educated communist, is said to have died the same day.

A golden generation of British radicals died fighting fascism in Spain. Few still remember their sacrifice.

But Ralph Fox shares a monument in Oxford with the five others linked to the city who died in the International Brigades.

On the monument is written a quotation from C Day Lewis:

‘We came because our open eyes could see no other way.’

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