workingclasshistory:

On this day, 21 January 1950, George Orwell, celebrated British author and socialist who fought against the fascists in the Spanish civil war and revolution, died aged 46.
Orwell fought with the anti-Stalinist, socialist POUM militia, and was shot in the neck by the fascists, while many Western journalists and authors just hung out in Barcelona hotels.
He vividly described the atmosphere in revolutionary Barcelona in his excellent account of the conflict, Homage to Catalonia:
“The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing… It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle…
Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Senor’ or ‘Don’ or even 'Usted’; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade’ and 'Thou,’ and said 'Salud!’ instead of 'Buenas Dias.'… Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low…
Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom.
Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. In the barbers’ shops were Anarchist notices (the barbers were mostly Anarchists) solemnly explaining that barbers were no longer slaves.”
In this podcast episode we tell the story of the Spanish civil war: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/07/29/spanish-civil-war-podcast/
Pictured: Orwell, the tall man at the back, with his wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy and his militia unit https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1329873453864468/?type=3