‘The Dark Millions in the Colonies are Unavenged’: Anti-Fascism and Anti-Imperialism in the 1930s

Abstract

The quotation in this title expresses a dilemma, as the ‘dark millions’ were likely to remain ‘unavenged’ so long as authors were asked to take sides on the Spanish Civil War rather than colonial oppression. Indeed, anti-fascism might well be thought of as, in a sense, antithetical to anti-imperialism. This article explores the relationship between anti-fascism and anti-imperialism, focusing on Britain and France. The first part looks at anti-imperialism in the era of the Popular Front; the second looks at how the tensions between anti-fascism and anti-imperialism were played out in the case of the major conflicts of the later 1930s in Abyssinia, Spain and China; the third discusses the imperialist assumptions of many anti-fascists. The article concludes by looking at the early phase of the Second World War.

German seafarers, anti‐fascism and the anti‐Stalinist left: the ‘Antwerp Group’ and Edo Fimmen's International Transport Workers' Federation, 1933–40

“…The anti-colonial dimension of Die Schiffahrt's internationalism was striking. In 1935, the Comintern started to show a strong tendency to downplay the anti-colonial themes that had until then been a major feature of its anti-fascist activities (Buchanan 2016). This arose in large part from a desire to appeal to nationalist sentiments and middleclass opinion in Britain and France, the main colonial powers.…”

“…Fimmen and his circle also brought to the mixture a strong strand of anti-racism and support for labour organization in colonized countries, which was highly unusual during this period in the world of western European trade unionism. The Antwerp Group was receptive to this anti-imperialist politics, which was notable in that, in the second half of the 1930s, the Comintern showed a strong tendency to back away from anti-colonial politics in the interests of unity with liberals in Britain and France (Buchanan 2016).…”