PAUL PRESTON at AYEWRITE

Paul Preston is the foremost and highly respected Historian on the Spanish Civil War.His take on the History of the Region is that the Spanish Peninsula was a platform on which failing older empires and the newer protagonists tested each others nerve.It came in three types of segment.The British and French imposed an arms embargo which clearly favoured Francos Army in the guise of non-interference in Spanish Internal Affairs , Fascist Mussolini and Hitler saw how far they could get away with without appeasement turning to a genuine effort to stop Fascist expansion ( the reason for this was Britain had a hopelessly unprepared military which would not be in any form of fighting shape , it would not be ready until 1940 whilst France was in heavy debt), and the Soviet Union tried to see if it could get a foothold in Western Europe.The Catholic Church did not miss out on the act by declaring Francos crusade as legitimate cleansing.None of these external powers had Spains best interests at heart.Preston rightly concludes that the reconquest of Spain by Francos military coup against a democratic government undermined by so-called extreme socialist partners was the first Battle of WW11 , the loss of which to the Fascists ushered in the World war which may have been prevented earlier.

Preston expressed a fear , though only shared by a minority of the sell out audience , that the History of Spain may turn out to be a "dead" history like the French Revolution of 1789 rather than a living lesson which should serve as a beacon and warning to the pitfalls which yield fascist tendencies and the rise of the hard core right.

Preston regards journalism as the first draft of History , with the the supreme responsibilities this entails on the profession , and has recently written a Book on the legacy of foreign Spanish War correspondents.




The reason Preston gives for the alleged British dominance in the field of Spanish Civil War History , even though some 20,000 or more Books have been published about the Civil War by Spaniards , though most cover regions and single towns experiences rather than an overview of the whole experience and its consequences is the British Historian is free to specialise in foreign History without having to first graduate in a "national" "official" history which is not always the case on the Continent , this means they can access archives and come to conclusions which local Historians would find difficult to get past inhouse self-censorship.

One extremely important point Paul made was on the issue of objectivity in Journalism and consequentially History that should be well learned by the BBC with their absurd Gaza Charity Appeal debacle as well other other newsfeed managers.He quoted Martha Gellhorn , the poor broad who was Hemmingways girlfriend and 3rd wife ,As a journalist she abhorred what she referred to as "objective bullshit", believing that there was a right and wrong side to every conflict, and that it was her job to separate the bastards from the decent people.