So we sung "Tipperary" marching through Barcelona. I did notice it was rather striking that the tram cars were painted diagonally red and black, anarchist colours I was told. I didn't verify it myself that they were taking fares and paying it to the anarchists' trade union at that time. At that time in Barcelona the anarchists, the CNT, were very powerful. They were not in complete control. Remember we only had a short visit through and we could only see superficially what was happening. I wouldn't give a political estimation of the situation. I only mentioned the thing about the tram cars because it was rather strange for somebody like me, and I suppose the other lads as well, having half of the car diagonally black and the other half diagonally red.

We were then put on the train again and ended up at Albacete, which was the headquarters of the International Brigades. From there we were taken to a bullring which was used as a kind of parade ground and there was a short welcome. Uniforms were then given out, a greenish khaki-coloured uniform. The British lads were sent to a village a few miles from Albacete, Madrigueras, which was the headquarters of the British Battalion. And there they did all their training. The commander in charge at that time was Wilfred McCartney, a former British officer. The political commissar was D. F. ['Dave'] Springhall, who had served in the Royal Navy and was also an active Communist Party member. They had both been appointed by the International Brigades Military Command. The man in charge at Albacete at the time when I was there was Andre Marty. He was assisted by a Frenchman called Videl.

As I remember him in Madrigueeras, he was a tall, well-built man with a thick poll of tightly crinkled hair, as dour and ill-tempered as only a Scot can be, utterly devoid of any trace of humour and with a total acceptance of the Party line.

The early Britishers had passed through the Thaelmann and other battalions, the French at least. I know that there were Slavs as well, because I came across and got very friendly with a little Bulgarian representative who was a base commissar for the Bulgarians. So there were Eastern Europeans and Polish there. Later, among the British, there were Cypriots and others. Among the Americans were Cubans. The battalion at this time was about 600 [men], with my group, No 1 Company, and the other volunteers that were trickling in. In January a big thing happened: a packing case arrived with new Russian rifles. You fired these rifles with the bayonet on and they made a very big difference. There was also the old Maxim, an old-fashioned heavy machine gun, but rather deadly when it was being used, especially if at not too long a range.

The command structure in the British Battalion at this point was that each company had a company commander with NCOs below them. Above them all was the battalion commander (Wilfred McCartney), the deputy commander (Tom Wintringham), the second-in-command and the battalion political commissar. I was the base commissar. It was at about this time that (George) Nathan was taken away to divisional headquarters. He became Chief of Staff at division and he was killed at Brunete. He was a very brave man. He worked by example as well as being disciplined.

I think I should mention here what happened in connection with McCartney, who had to go back to England. He didn't ask to go back but he had to go back. I understand that he had done 9 years of his 12-year sentence for espionage. He wrote a book afterwards called Walls Have Mouths, which was about his experiences in prison. I don't know if he was guilty or not but he was found guilty. Anyway, he was going back and I visited him in his room before he went back to have a talk with him about the situation with the battalion and so on. It was the intention that he would come back. This was about mid-January but he had a big, heavy revolver and I had a rather small Belgian revolver, and he said: "Look Peter, how about you giving me your revolver. I am going through France I don't want to lump this thing about". I said all right. He asked to show me how to operate it. I took the revolver in my hand but I can't say for sure whether or not I touched the safety catch, or whether it was off or not, or whether I touched the trigger, but suddenly there was a shot and I had hit him in the arm with a bullet from the small Belgian revolver. We rushed him to hospital, got him an anti-tetanus injection and he was patched up and off he went.

Why did he go back? I am certain it was not to get him out of the command position although he was, how shall I put it, a British military officer type. He was not terribly popular in the battalion but I think he was respected for his ability. He was a capable military officer. He had a rather arrogant style. I was not given the job of getting rid of him. I have nothing to hide about it. It was an accident.'

McCartney was unpopular. A former British Army officer recently released from prison for spying for the Soviet Union, he was not a Communist. He frequently lost his temper and he held hierarchical views about his status that were out of place in a people's army, however disciplined. When news came through from London that he had to return to England because his ticket of leave after prison parole had expired, no tears were shed. Then an extraordinary accident occurred. On 6 February, Kerrigan entertained McCartney to a farewell dinner in Albacete during which he persuaded him to leave behind his big Mauser pistol in exchange for Kerrigan's Belgian .22. The Mauser was loaded and accidently Kerrigan touched the trigger, shooting McCartney in the arm and instantly rendering him unfit for combat. By such an improbable accident - for it was an accident, despite suspicions to the contrary - did Tom Wintringham become Commander of the British Battalion on the eve of its first battle.

Tom Wintringham was second-in-command and Peter Kerrigan was political commander of the brigade. We were going to the front and Wilfred McCartney didn't want to go back. He said he was going with the fellows to the front. Peter Kerrigan and the rest of us thought he shouldn't, and it so happens that he shot him in the arm to make him go back to hospital. That was the only way to get him back because we didn't want to give him a bad name.

This was a tremendous shock! Nobody liked McCartney with his 1914 ideas but to find your battalion commander is not there when you are about to go into battle and a kind of instructor is in command! Well, it's a very demoralising thing, particularly in these mysterious circumstances. All sorts of rumours started to go round: 'McCartney's deserted!' 'McCartney's committed suicide!' "Pete Kerrigan's shot McCartney!" This turned out to be true.

The boys looked splendid when we left them. They are keen and, I think, very efficient. They know what is expected of them and will do their best to carry out the job. They are anti-fascist, they understand it's got to be fought here and they are prepared to take all the risks implied in this fight. They are too close to it to see that history is being made here and this generation and the one that follows will be filled with a great pride. After all it is no little thing to hold back International Fascism and help save the peace of the world a little longer.

When I got there (Albacete), there were already British volunteers there, including a British Company that had been formed and incorporated into a French volunteer [14th] Battalion commanded by a French officer called Delasalle. The political commissar of that battalion was Ralph Fox, the English writer, a well-known writer who was a member of the Communist Party. The company commander was George Nathan, who had been an officer in the Brigade of Guards. He had the rank of captain. I remember the battalion numbered 600 men. It wasn't like the old 1,100-men battalions that we had been used to in the British Army in World War I; in Spain they were in the continental style. I was appointed the political commissar at Albacete for all the English-speaking volunteers. By this time some of the Americans had already begun to arrive, and I was commissar for them as well. Later we were very strict and sent home 18 year olds when we found out their real age because they were supposed to be 21.

In about mid-December when I got there, Wilfred McCartney was the commander of the British Battalion and Tom Wintringham was his second-in-command. Frank Ryan, a well-known Irish revolutionary, Springhall and myself were taken on a trip to Madrid, where we visited the front and met among others General Kleber, and there I made my first acquaintance with Hans Karl, a commander in the International Brigades who later came to Britain. He ended up as the military correspondent of the Daily Worker, and I think that after the war he went back to East Germany and became the Chief of Police. He died in about 1947. He was a very fine person and an expert at this kind of thing. During our visit to the front we were at a hospital in the University City and came across a firing party for a funeral for a member of the Thaelmann Battalion that had been killed.

Just before Christmas, Delasalle's battalion moved off to the southern front, near Cordoba, and I remember Springhall and myself spending some time with Ralph Fox having coffee and a talk. A few days later, after they had gone south, I was called to Brigade headquarters and sent off to the southern front. They were asking for some responsible people to go down to inspect the situation and to report back. It was quite a long car journey and we arrived at a small village not very far from Cordoba called Lopera, and as we approached the front we were coming through trees. I was a bit worried because my interpreter was a young chap, aged 18 or 19, who spoke French very fluently. He was the son of Professor Haldane, or rather he was the son of the wife of Professor Haldane (Charlotte Haldane). Ronnie Burgess was his name and the bullets were coming thick and fast and I thought, what would happen if this young boy gets hurt?

As we approached the front through these trees we saw General Walter. That was my first dealings with him. He was a little man and a very capable, likeable person. I saw him talking to some of the French soldiers, members of the brigade who were obviously coming back from the front, and I soon realized he was trying to convince them to go back into the line. I spoke to his Chief of Staff, an Italian called Marande, and he explained that there had been heavy fighting and that the fascists were occupying a high ridge and our troops were below them. Anyway we never saw Delasalle. I learned latter that his battalion headquarters was behind the line, further back from the front. When we got up to the frontline we discovered it was an olive grove. They were dug in small, shallow holes behind rather thin little trees. There we had the company headquarters of the British Company; Nathan was in charge and everything was under control. He told us there had been very heavy fighting and that unfortunately they had to launch attacks over open ground, with the fascists and their machine guns pinning them down. There had been quite a few casualties and Ralph Fox had been killed. He had given me some papers that had been taken off his body, but they hadn't been able to retrieve the body. Nathan promised me that during the night they would get the body back...

The British had been trying to take the hill. They had been pinned down and the French companies that were on each side of them pulled back. All the members of No 1 Company were already in action and they suffered heavy casualties; we had lost people in the British section. Delasalle disappeared for a period, but I never saw his headquarters so I can't verify where exactly he was, but I can tell you what happened to him. I stayed the night at a place in the line, in a house. The machine-gunners, Polish anti-fascists, were in pretty good shape. I think they all had military service before they had been there. Anyway we decided to come back the next day to rejoin the British. When we got back they weren't in the line, they had been pulled out during the night. I was told they were sent to Madrid.

The battalion had been regrouped and had been replaced by another battalion. It was obvious they were trying to get them sorted out and they were taken away the next day to Madrid. Shortly after they were back in action in Madrid. I then learned that Delasalle had been arrested, court-martialled and shot. I understood at the time he had been shot for cowardice. Later there were stories that he had been a fascist agent. Personally, I thought it was the only thing that could be done with the man because in my opinion the soldiers had been demoralized by the actions of their commander.

My own experience in the last ten days before polling day in Gorbals is interesting. Apart from factory gate meetings outside such important enterprises as Queen's Park Loco Works (at two different gates), Weir's, and Dixon's Iron Works, I was able to speak inside a number of enterprises either in the canteens or in the workshops. In the United Co-operative Baking Society canteen, where at least 200 men and women workers, including staff employees, heard our case. In Larkfield Bus Garage, in the Uniformed Staff Canteen, with eighty to ninety present. In two different workshops, where 200 and 150 engineering workers attended. In the Corporation Print Works canteen fifty were present (more than three times the number who listened to the Tory candidate in the same place); and in Coplawhill Car Works canteen I spoke to over 300 workers.

In addition I spoke to a group of doctors, nurses and domestic workers on the staff in the lecture room of the Samaritan Hospital. All the other candidates were given similar facilities. The meetings varied in length from half an hour to fifty minutes maximum. My usual practice was fifteen minutes statement, then questions... There were, in my case, at a number of the meetings, small groups of Catholic workers with prepared sets of hostile questions.

The attitude of the mass of the workers on the whole at these meetings was one of serious concern, and while it could not be described as generally supporting, was with one exception friendly. The exception was the Uniformed Staff Canteen meeting, where groups of Catholics deliberately tried to break up the meeting, not only by putting hostile questions and ones that were based on untruths, but interrupting the replies with comments that were just the repetition of falsehoods or slanders. Even here, however, the majority of the workers obviously resented the tactics employed.