Hi, everyone. My name is Barbara Mowgli's and I'm a pitch the candidate in history at York University in Toronto.
And I'm here to talk about trans national Francoism, the British and Canadian Friends of National Space.
In this presentation, Ali, introduce you to the friends of National Spain, and I'll talk a little bit about what's been said about them so far,
and then I'll dedicate some time to my own contribution in my own research.
And I'll finish by suggesting that this study, all the friends of national Spain as a transnational network,
is actually illuminating to better understand today's transnational right.
Today's presentation is largely based on my recently published article entitled Transnational Francoism,
the British and Canadian Friends of Spain, 1930s, 1950s, which has been published in the contemporary British history.
So for more detail, you can always refer to the article.
And if you still have questions, you can always email me or contact me at the end of this presentation.
I'll share my e-mail address so you can do so. In July 1936,
when the Spanish Civil War breaks out because a group of so-called national
is launched a coup against the democratically elected Republican government.
British loyalist and author of a biography of Benito Mussolini Shores Italy leads defamation of friends of national Spain.
In London.
The Friends of National Spain was originally established by a small group of friends composed largely of dissatisfied conservative politicians.
Their goal was to foster a positive attitude in British government towards Franco's
costs against the republic into improve Anglo Spanish relations in general.
Their motto, as was that of the Nationals, was to restore the Christian order in the West.
The members of the Friends of National in Spain, in England included Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists and Protestants.
The ecumenical character of the Friends of National Spain was partly the result of seeking to develop a
mass membership which would cut across existing political divisions and would reinvigorate the right.
The friends of National Spain constituted a group of Christian nationalists so different from secular or civic nationalism.
Christian nationalism advocates Christianity as a social political ordering mechanism.
So it is as ethnic and political as it is religious SWIP,
because Christian nationalism does use religious based understandings of differences to implement new social political orders or states.
That's why they understood the Spanish Civil War in religious terms. They saw the Republican side of the conflict as anti Christian, as anti God,
as communists in general, and so the enemy of Western Christian civilisation.
That is why they thought to defending Franco's right to revolt against the republic was, in fact, defending Britain's interests as well.
He on the right up included a nationalist propaganda poster that shows you what is that the nationalists were promoting that they were against.
So you see Bolshevism, Masand, re symbols of Judaism and separatism.
So essentially nationalist sentiment in Catalonia and the Basque regions in Spain.
It is hardly surprising that London in England had become the headquarters of an organisation like The Sounds of Spain.
London's conservatives had been riding against the Spanish Second Republic since before the Spanish Civil War broke out.
So in July of 1936, they ruled against this social and economic carlos that,
according to their view, resulted from the removal of the Spanish monarchy.
So the Spanish monarchy fell in April of 1931 when the democracy was finally established in Spain.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out, they supported the nationalists passionately, largely because of their anticommunism,
but also because they saw in the coup against the Republic the possibility not only for national but also transnational
conservative revolution towards the restoration of what they thought was the natural order of the monarchy in the church,
not democracy, but the monarchy and the church. The propaganda said by defensive Nigel Spain, by means of pamphlets, lectures and meetings, though,
was far less successful in mobilising British opinion than that said by Republican groups.
In fact, for Fonkoze supporters constituted a minority.
For example, in January 1937, only 14 percent supported the nationalist led by at the time already, General Funchal.
I've included here a picture of Franco for those who are not familiar with what he looked like.
Less than six months after the friends of Donald Spain was officially established in England,
a Scottish branch was inaugurated in Glasgow under the gaze of General Franco's portrait and Edinburgh branch followed in June 1938.
Echoing the objects of the London based Friends of Spain,
the Scottish branch explained that the society aims at spreading the true facts about the conflict
in Spain and thereby offend the Christian religion against the attacks of the anti got campaign,
meaning the Republican campaign.
Its founder, Walter Scott, revealed that the Scottish Friends of National Spain had been established out of sympathy with the Spanish Christians who,
according to him, were suffering against the forces of communism.
So establishing a Scottish branch of the Friends of National in Spain was based on moral grounds.
The Scottish Friends of National Spain collected financial aid and other contributions for the nationalist
Tasco received by Marie-Louise Louis Mocksville Scott of urban anti-communist woman who promoted fascist Italy,
Nazi Germany and, frankly, Spain. So what I've explained thus far is not new.
Until now, historians knew about the friends of national Spain, but they understood it as a British organisation,
a pro nationalist network resulting from domestic concerns on economic and political interests.
Specifically, the friends of National Spain had been studied as part of a broader into word mobilisation in Great Britain for a Christian revolution.
Although these accounts reveal the existence of an organised and influential forum over its support for Franco with divisions in England and Scotland,
they failed to identify the transnational nature of the network.
Last year, while I was doing research on Christian nationalism in Canada for my dissertation,
I discovered a series of pamphlets and leaflets that had been published by the English headquarters of the Friends
of National Spain and had been shipped to Montreal to be delivered to a local branch of the Friends of Spain.
This discovery proved the defence of national Spain was not an exclusively British organisation, but was actually a transnational pro Frankl movement.
Identifying cross-reference is related to the friends of national Spain in the English, Scottish and Canadian newspapers,
as well as sure printed material and long personal papers of former friends of National Spain members.
I demonstrated the defensive national Spain was, in fact, an international phenomenon.
What I found out is that the Montreal based Friends of Spain was recruiting members by July nineteen thirty eight,
becoming a member of the Canadian Friends of Spain, men paying five dollars in fees towards propaganda, which was a lot of money at the time,
and which tells you what sort of membership the organisation in Canada have.
So we're talking here about upper class Canadians.
The members of the Canadian Friends of National Spain were not as ecumenical as those in England, but they were multi-ethnic.
So, for example, members included Catholic Canadians of Irish, Ukrainian, English and French.
The son. They constituted Canadians in between with identities that did not fit into the two nations narrative of Canadian nationalism.
So, for example, you'd have Irish and English Canadians who are not Protestants, but Catholics,
Ukrainian ethnic minorities and French Canadians whose first language was not French but English because of their mixed the son.
The British friends of National Spain would have embody that upward looking sense of identity based on religious fraternity.
And then to surpass ethnic and nationalist quarrels, to engage, to set in a global quest for the survival of Western civilisation.
I call national Francoism the international and coordinated support for Franco.
And we know that the friends of national Spain was a form of transnational Francoism because from 1938 to 1939.
The press reported that the talks and still being organised by friends of National and Spain
in Montreal was permanently in contact with the London Friends of National Spain headquarters.
The London headquarters not only printed and shipped material to Montreal for the local branch of the friends of nationalist Spain,
but they would also recommend visitors who could deliver speeches on their view of the Spanish Civil War.
So, for example, in my article, you will find a case of Bernard Fay,
a Frenchman who was an anti-Semite and a sympathiser of Nazi Germany and Italy, who visited Spain and actually became friends with Franco burnout.
They met the two men are the friends of National Spain in London and gave a speech in London as well as in Montreal.
Only months later. So we do know that through the exchange of material and contacts,
the friends of National Spain became a trans national network that exemplified
very much the transnational Francoism that I'm talking about in my article.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, though, ideological companionship with fascism was considered unpatriotic and so soon
enough of national Spain disappeared from sight both in Britain and in Canada.
In 1950, though, a new version of the Friends of National Spain was formed in July that year,
the Scottish Society of Friendship with the Peoples of Spain was formed.
And shortly thereafter, an Anglo Spanish Lake of Friendship was formed in London.
Unlike the original friends of National Spain,
this new network was theoretically more concerned with diplomatic relations supposedly than it had no political aims.
Older than the restoration of formal diplomatic relations with Spain,
the society presented itself as a new, non-sectarian, voluntary and self-appointed body.
I've included here a picture of Jean Maxwell Scott, the Scottish Friends of National, a stain honour president in the 50s.
It must be noted that neither Montreal or London ever had any women in leading positions of the organisation.
But Scotland always had women of the Maxwell Scott family occupy leading positions in the Friends of Nationals fan bases.
I like Scotland and England in post-war Canada. The friends of national Spain seem to have been completely disbanded.
Quebec's demands for more independence led to a concern that Canada was to fall apart and be divided between Catholics and Protestants.
And so the former members of the Fence of National Spain became more and more concerned
about local events rather than being concerned with transnational networks and movements.
A new local focus was taking place in Britain as well, with the dismantling of the British Empire while in the 30s, the friends of national Spain.
We'll talk about Christian interest in America and in Europe after World War two, they would limit their discourse to Christian Europe.
Only the secretary of the Scottish Friends of nationalist Spain seemed to still persist in the idea that the revolution had to be transnational.
However, even he believed that the leader of that transnational conservative revolution resided in Europe.
In the process of relocating Francoism at the centre of a new discourse on European Christian identity,
the possibilities for a new front British movement to have an international significance diminished as a consequence.
Canada never experienced the resurgence in organised with support inspired by Britain.
By specifically focussing on the transfer of reaction or imaginary on events in Spain from Britain to Canada,
this study discloses the impact that the British Friends of National Spain had upon the Canadian extreme right.
It demonstrates that Francoist propaganda that in Canada was significantly influenced by reactionary groups in
Britain and suggest that Canadian pro Franco mobilisation was reline is not dependent on British Francoism.
In stressing the cooperation between different Christian denominations for the establishment of defensive national in Spain, at home and abroad.
I argued the defence of national Spain became a means for the development of a form of Christian nationalism that was, in fact, transnational.
Today, the idea that Europe is formed by a group of associated Christian states has emerged once again in the wake.
Write this course. Radical populism in countries like the Netherlands,
the United Kingdom or Germany have referred to their Christian roots to the pick an idea of who they
are as nations and as Europeans will also defining those who represent a threat to their identity.
By insisting that Christian nationalism can be a trans national tool to find belonging.
My study challenges the larger assumption than pluralism and religious nationalism are
inherently opposed and suggest that it is precisely the influence of the latter over the former.
That allows for the institutionalisation of racism. My sure article entitled Christian Europe and the Normalisation of the Radical Right.
I explain it a little bit.
The connexions between today's Christian nationalism and the Christian nationalism expressed by the friends of national Spain.
So for more detail on that topic, please refer to the article. That's all for today.
Thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the presentation. Please don't hesitate to shoot me an email if you have any questions.
My email address is the mullahs are your cue thought, s.A.
Thanks so much for watching and see you soon.