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In December 1936, 250 men boarded three packed double-decker buses in Glasgow's George Square and headed off to Spain to fight General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

Taking an armed stand against fascism, 35,000 volunteers from 50 countries joined the International Brigades to defend the Spanish Republic against the dictator's rebel armies between 1936 and 1939, who were marching on Madrid to overthrow the Popular Front government.

Political activist James Maley, then 28, was one of those who were willing to put their lives on the line for the cause.

Born and raised in the Calton as one of nine children, James' firebrand politics were forged growing up in the working-class east end, a hotbed of radical leftism long before the Red Clydeside era. He was at George Square, aged 11, on Bloody Friday in 1919 – when thousands of striking workers clashed with police in their campaign for a 40-hour work week. He would also spend Saturdays going to watch politician Jimmy Maxton speak at Glasgow Green and the City Hall.

After returning from a stint as a factory worker in Cleveland, Ohio, he joined the Communist Party, becoming a familiar face at the Green himself as a speaker in 1932.

(Image: Getty)

But it was a speech he heard on the radio from Basque politician Dolores Ibarruri, 'La Pasionaria', that fuelled his desire to go with hundreds of others to defend the Republic in Spain.

James' son Willy Maley, a professor of English Literature at Glasgow University, wrote a play with his brother John inspired by his father's experiences in 1990: 'From the Calton to Catalonia.'

"He saw a lot of familiar faces when he got on the bus that day. Some of them were from his school, and many of them were from the east end and in the Communist party," said son Willy.

"It was an epic journey across land and sea, but that didn't bother them. They were excited to be going off out into the world alongside each other to fight."

The buses travelled through London, Paris, the Pyrenees and to Albacete, where the new recruits trained for six weeks. Jimmy described it as "running out of a tenement into a pitched battle," as many of the young men had never seen a real rifle outside of films, let alone held one.

"There was a lot of bravery and courage, but not a lot of organisation. They had little experience of war but were familiar with violence, harsh life and poverty. They were never going to be a trained professional army, except the uniforms they were given. No state of the art weaponry.

"Being a bit older, my father had a bit of discipline experience and knew how to fire a gun from being in the Territorial Army. But it took a group of them to operate a machine gun.

"When they were told they were going to the front to fight, my father said 'Thank God, finally something's happening'. I think it was a frustrating heel-kicking time for them all."

Thousands were sent to the sandy valleys of Jarama to fight Franco's Moorish Regulares on February 11 – a costly, bloody battle in which around half of the battalion died in a few days. Sixty-five of the victims came from Glasgow.

James had described the carnage in one interview as "a mass of f*****g hell."

"He told me a lot of good men died on that first day," Willy said. "The men jumped out of these lorries into the heat of battle and just started shooting. It was a very violent and bloody conflict which these young people were ill-prepared for."

After running out of artillery, James and his comrades in the machine gun company hid in the olive groves for two days before being surrounded and captured by Moorish enemy soldiers on horseback. One man was shot in the head in front of the rest.

Believed to be Russian soldiers, the 30 men would have been executed one by one, were it not for the Spanish nationalist troops who arrived at the scene, one of them shouting "Ingles?"

"As British prisoners – and I say this through gritted teeth – they were considered worth something," Willy said. "They were negotiable."

The captives' thumbs were tied together in wire and they were marched to Talavera de la Reina, then later to a temporary prison in Salamanca. Three of his captured comrades were shot in cold blood, five were sentenced to death and the rest were given 20 years’ imprisonment.

(Image: Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty)

The captives were crowded nine to a cell sharing one toilet that didn't flush. The jail was rife with rats and lice, which infested their clothes and hair, keeping them awake at night.

The ravenous men would huddle around a large tureen of soup at lunchtime – their only meal for the day – dunking in hunks of bread. The lack of toilet paper and running water meant their hands were filthy, but they were so hungry they didn't care.

"The conditions were very poor but my dad never complained," Willy said. "He never said he was beaten but, having read other men's published memoirs, I know some of the men were. I know there was violence. In one interview he mentions being punched in the face but it was typical of my father to play down any knocks he took."

"My father always remembers being worried for other people in the prison including Spaniards and young Germans against Franco. They were in a much more precarious position."

Despite being guests of Franco, James had said the Spanish wardens "weren't all bad". They gave them money in exchange for their British-made combat boots and brought them in cigarettes and beer.

When it came to making the days go by, the men would stage debates, play noughts and crosses and card games – and Canadian prisoner Yank Levy taught them how to play baseball in the yard.

Needless to say, there was also plenty of time to reflect on the experiences which led them there.

"Someone once complained in prison that they were badly equipped, poorly led and didn't have the resources, that they were on the losing side. My father had no time for that because, as far as he was concerned, nobody went there with any guarantees of victory. They hadn't gone over there for a picnic."

Willy added: "He was, to use the language, a hard case from a hard part of the city of Glasgow. He was a very matter-of-fact person.

"I never saw him cry. A psychologist might say that suggests trauma or switch-off. I would be amazed if they didn't suffer some form of PTSD, having watched their friends die alongside them."

Back home, James' worried mother learned of his fate while on shift cleaning the Palaceum Cinema in Shettleston, when a news reel showed him on the back of a lorry and being paraded before the cameras with other prisoners.

Relieved that he was still alive, she pleaded with a projectionist at a picture house in Paisley to cut her two frames from the reel and had copies made in Boots. She kept them as a memento until his safe return home.

After three months, the news reached the Brigaders that they were to be released and repatriated back to Britain as part of an exchange with fascist prisoners held by the Republican forces.

The Times ran an article with an address made on behalf of the dictator Franco, accusing the hostages he was freeing of being 'induced by false propaganda to take up arms against our cause.'

"You were not fighting for a just cause, but for foreign Muscovite barbarism," it sneered.

But, as Willy said: "My father's communism had always owed more to the Calton than to the Kremlin."

And the moment James crossed over the border from Spain into France with his comrades, defiantly raising his clenched fist in the air, would be one he would remember forever.

He may have spent much of his time away in a prison camp, but the 29-year-old was welcomed like a hero when he returned to Glasgow.

One Scottish newspaper ran a story with the headline 'Jimmy Maley comes home.'

James' mum, who had been fearing for his life, was delighted to have him back – and made him promise never to return to Spain.

Neither was it long before the huge Celtic fan was going back to games with his friends, having managed to keep up with the scores while he was behind bars in Salamanca.

Even in his day-to-day life back in Glasgow, James fought tooth and nail for his beliefs; whether on his soapbox, his workplace or on a battlefield.

With a collapsible platform under his arm, he returned to public speaking, trams tooting the horn at him in greeting as he walked along Argyle Street. Galvanised by his experiences in Spain, he would dare spectators to disagree with him at the end of his fiery sermons against fascism. Few of them ever did.

James later led 2000 workers out on strike while working at Beardmore's – and had described winning the brickies and labourers their elusive bonus as his own "proud boast."

As World War 2 broke out, James tried to enlist in the RAF but was turned down by recruitment chiefs "due to his time in Spain." It emerged MI5 had secretly enforced a policy which restricted the admission of former volunteers of the International Brigades into the military, fearing they would spread 'revolutionary propaganda.' He instead joined up to the King's Own Scottish Borderers then the Highland Light Infantry to fight in India and Burma in 1941.

"My dad was in America during the Depression, civil war in Jarama and in Burma during World War 2, where he drank out of the Irrawaddy River with dead bodies floating in it. He had a very strong stomach," Willy said.

"He had so many experiences that I wish I could have asked him about before he died. But he was never nostalgic or sentimental; he was only interested in what was happening today, in the world of politics. He wasn't someone to look back."

Following the war, Jimmy wed Anne Watt, 26, in 1949 after meeting her at a dance in the Highlanders Institute. They had five daughters and four sons.

He later worked in the railways and Glasgow Corporation and religiously followed current affairs all his life, a staunch trade unionist and card-carrying communist until the party disbanded in 1991.

James died at the Western Infirmary, 10 months before turning 100 on April 9, 2007. Right up until his death, he remained obsessed by politics and interested in what was happening in the world.

In an interview shortly before his death a journalist asked if he’d learned Spanish, and he uttered a few Spanish phrases he learned from his days in the International Brigades, much to the surprise of his family.

The death-or-glory heroes who left their communities to take up arms in Spain have undoubtedly cemented their place in the history books. But Willy believes there are smaller, vital ways in which people today can challenge the rise of the modern far right.

Willy said: "I think his legacy will resonate in the sense that fascism is back again. It has never really gone away. There are real right-wing machinations afoot and the billionaire-owned tabloid press, which has been producing lies and fostering xenophobia for decades, part of an ideology that my father fought against in the 1930s.

"My father was part of a very decisive anti-fascist struggle which was almost a rehearsal for World War Two. He never regretted going. He never complained about how things turned out – he was an uncomplaining, unsentimental hard b****d.

"He and many others were willing to put their lives on the line for their political beliefs. He was fighting for something that he thought was worth fighting for."

Willy paused for a moment.

"I'm my father's son but I am not the same as him." he added. "I would never have gone to Spain. But are there other ways of fighting back? There always have been.

"You can argue. You can educate. You can agitate. You can inform and debate.

"There will be drastic times when push comes to shove and then it is about conflict. In that case, somebody like my father and his comrades are willing to make that sacrifice. "