WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Refugees at Stoneham camp
On May 23, 1937, the decrepit ocean liner the SS Habana docked at Southampton in southern England, carrying 3,681 mainly Basque child refugees fleeing the barbarity of the Spanish fascist General Francisco Franco. The children, accompanied by approximately one hundred female Spanish teachers, embarked from Santurce, Bilbao, on May 21 and dropped anchor at Fawley, on the entrance to Southampton Water, on the evening of the next day. The following morning, a Sunday, they docked at Southampton.
During the stormy three-day crossing, those evacuated were laid head to toe throughout the entirety of the ship. The Habana was designed to carry just eight hundred passengers. At the time, the evacuados comprised the largest single influx of refugees ever to arrive on British shores. The child refugees were aged between five and fifteen.
The British government had unofficially acquiesced to Franco’s illegal blockade and mining of Spanish ports held by Republican forces. Officially the British government strongly advised against any travel to Spain. But since the destruction of the Basque town of Guernica in April by German and Italian bombers, anger in the British working class mounted. As a token the government agreed to accept Spanish refugees from the Basque region. The governments of France, Belgium and the Soviet Union had already accepted thousands of civilians fleeing the fighting, especially from the ongoing siege of the Basque port of Bilbao.
The British government refused to make any financial contribution to help the children. All costs would be incurred by those who sought to offer the children shelter, and it would be government policy to send the children back to Spanish shores at the first possible opportunity. Shortly after their arrival, 20 Spanish children deemed by the British government to be “troublemakers,” most likely the most vociferous in their Republican support, were sent to France.