Stephen McGinty: Gone ...but not forgotten THOMAS Watters was the last of a large band of brave and proud Scots who volunteered to fight fascism and face the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, writes Stephen McGinty ON THE corner of Clyde Street, on a raised plinth of steel, stands a statue of a woman with outstretched arms. La Pasionaria, as Dolores Ibarruri was known, did not receive a warm welcome when she first arrived in Glasgow. Fearful of protests, she was unveiled in December 1979 without a public ceremony and with the prospect that her days spend gazing out over the Clyde would be numbered. The Conservative Party had vowed to demolish her when their councillors were returned to power. And yet still she stands. Thomas Watters, a former bus driver for Glasgow corporation, paid a visit to her in 2010, after she had received a restoration and the public dedication of which she was deprived 31 years before. The engraved message read: "The City of Glasgow and the British Labour Movement pay tribute to the courage of those men and women who went to Spain to fight fascism 1936-1939. 2,100 volunteers went from Britain. 534 were killed, 65 of whom came from Glasgow. Last weekend, the last frail living thread linking Scotland to the Spanish Civil War snapped. No longer will a Scottish living witness speak of what he saw and did among the dust and mud of Madrid. Death missed Thomas Watters by mere inches in 1938, when an ambulance he was driving near Madrid was bombed and set ablaze, but they were re-united 63 years later at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Welwyn Garden City. Mr Watters was 99. In truth, we really didn't know we had him until he was gone. It had been thought that the last Scot of the International Brigade passed away in 2008, but when the Spanish Embassy in London held a ceremony in 2009 to bestow honorary Spanish citizenship on British veterans, Mr Watters, who had lived for decades in England, emerged into the light. Born in Tillicoultry, Clackmannanshire, he studied first aid for five years, between the ages of 16 and 21 and, as a trained bus driver, decided in 1936 to combine the two skills and to travel to Spain as part of a Scots ambulance unit. It is difficult to appreciate, today, the impact that the Spanish Civil War had on Scotland. When the democratically elected socialist government was subjected to a military coup led by General Franco in the summer of 1936, it was a shock to the majority of those Scots who had embraced socialism as a promising path out of the slums and poverty of what was then one of the poorest countries in Europe. The tension between socialism and fascism was not a distant conflict, but one being fought out in pubs and meeting halls in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. The general strike of 1926 had galvanised workers and later the mass unemployment and hunger strikes had toughened their will and desire for a better world. When the British Union of Fascists came to speak north of the Border, each meeting rarely lasted more than a few minutes before being violently disrupted by the Unemployed Workers Movement. When conflict in Spain broke out, posters quickly appeared declaring: "Bombs on Madrid today, bombs on Glasgow tomorrow." Within five years, they were proved correct. In total, 549 Scots men, and a few women, including Ethel Macdonald, an anarchist from Motherwell who became a celebrated war correspondent reporting from the front line, joined the International Brigade of volunteers who arrived in Spain determined to return the republican government to power. By head of population, Scotland sent more men than any other nation, and what they did was illegal. Britain had signed a non-interventionist agreement which banned citizens from participating as well as the sale of arms. Yet Scotland was a radical nation, one where street preachers attracted mass crowds, and political meetings took place nightly, and those volunteers did what they believed to be right. They were manual labourers, factory workers, farmers, bus drivers and even an accountant, and each took the same route. They punched out of work on Thursday afternoon, allowing them time to collect their bags and head for the Glasgow to London night train. In London, they bought a ticket, priced at two shillings and six pence, for what was then known as a "dirty weekend" in Paris. For many, it would be the longest in their lives. Each would be met by a contact in the Communist Party, and it was common for them to be given a packet of cigarettes on which was written a secret message to be read by their French contact. One volunteer from Dundee reached for the wrong package of cigarettes during the ferry crossing, only to see his contact go up in smoke. From Paris they were united with other volunteers and led on the long hike over the Pyrenees. In Spain, they were greeted with hot coffee, freshly baked bread and a rousing chorus of the Internationale. John Dunlop described it as "the most inspiring moment of my life, taking people from all over Europe and hearing them singin" this song of the oppressed people of all nations." Yet the Scots who fought Franco were in the vanguard of what would soon enough embrace the whole of Europe: the horror of total war. In Barcelona, John Longdraggan saw for the first time the bodies of men, women and children among the rubble. John Dunlop was carrying ammunition down a communication trench when they came under shell fire. His friend was decapitated. George Cowans was lucky to survive an attack by the Condor Legion of German aircrafts lent by Hitler to assist Franco's cause: "The Stukas were coming down, the Junkers were bombing us. It was absolute terror. I was lying in a ditch that the planes were buzzing, down the side of the road. It would be wrong to suggest that all of Scotland sided with the Left. For many Catholics, their sympathy lay with those priests and nuns who were being persecuted by the Communists. As a young boy, Thomas Winning was inspired in his faith (which would one day lead him to receive the red hat of a cardinal) by a photograph which appeared in the Universe newspaper, of a Jesuit priest shouting out before a firing squad: "Vivo Christo Rey!" Long live Christ the King. He pondered long and hard about stoning the windows of the local Co-op in Wishaw, which was raising money for the International Brigade, before deciding his unemployed parents couldn't afford to pay for the damage. When the radio announced that the siege of Madrid ended with Franco's victory, the whole family cheered. Today we know that there were atrocities on both sides. A member of the Iberian Anarchist Federation, Pascual Fresquet Llopis, led the "Death Brigade" which toured Aragon, Teruel and Tarragona in a 35-seat bus, painted with the skull and crossbones (like the SS, they also wore it as a cap badge), executing anyone suspected of siding with Franco. However, the buckets of blood have now been carefully weighed by the historian Paul Preston in his new book, The Spanish Holocaust, with the conclusion that Franco's forces broke the scales with atrocities carried out by the likes of Captain Manuel Diaz Criado, who signed hundreds of death warrants while drunk and, once, led a group of women to spectate, offering them the chance to finish off the dying. As of last Sunday, for Scots at least, the Spanish Civil War belongs no longer to now, as it would have been were we to engage in a conversation with Mr Watters, but firmly, irrevocable to then. So what can we take from this short moment, when the life of a Glaswegian bus driver is still rippling out? I would say, firstly, a sense of pride in a nation that per head of population saw more volunteers than any other nation go to the assistance of Spain. For all Moscow's plans for Communist infiltration, history has concluded that it was a just cause. Second is to marvel at the strength of character and determination of those young men who, while aware of the grim reality of war from those who, less than 20 years before, fought through the Great War, still put themselves in harm's way for what they believed to be right. So, if you get the chance and, are of a mind too, La Pasionaria waits for you still with outstretched arms ready to greet all those who wish to pay their respects to that other Tartan Army.