For all that has been written about the reaction of the British Isles to the Spanish civil war (1936–9), national coverage remains decidedly uneven. While historians such as Hywel Francis and Rob Stradling have extensively covered the Welsh and Irish responses to the Spanish conflict, work on the English regions is patchy and surprisingly little substantial research has been carried out on the Scots. Mates's monograph on grassroots activism over Spain in the north-east of England is therefore a significant addition to the historiography. As Mates explains in his effective introduction, the north-east, although based on coalmining and heavy industry, did not historically have a radical left-wing political culture (as was the case in South Wales); its labour movement was seen as politically moderate and ‘loyal’ to the national leadership. Moreover, the Communist party, although present in the region, was relatively weak, especially after the collapse of the General Strike in 1926.

These were not propitious conditions for a vigorous left-wing response to the outbreak of civil war in Spain in July 1936, but Mates shows in his meticulously researched study that there was an impressive mobilisation of people and resources in the north-east for ‘Spain’. By ‘Spain’, of course, we mean the Spanish Republic: there was little active support for Franco. However, Mates's thesis is not simply that activism in favour of the Republic was significant in the region, but that it was misdirected due to the misguided adherence of left-wing militants to the ‘political nirvana’ (p. 214) of the popular front. In other words, the determination of many on the Labour left and the Communists to create a broadly based alliance of progressives on the French and Spanish models was ‘inimical to providing the Spanish Republic with what it needed to fight Franco’ (p. 209). What the Republic needed, Mates argues, was a mass movement to force the Conservative dominated National Government to abandon its policy of Non-Intervention which de facto favoured Franco; what the Republic got, thanks to popular frontism, was tea and sympathy.

Consequently, a significant part of Mates's book is concerned with the various ‘Spanish Aid’ campaigns organized in the north-east between 1936 and 1939. Significant amounts were raised: the Tyneside foodship campaign of 1938–9 collected £4,500, over double its original target. What is more remarkable is that in the economic context of the Depression, most donors to ‘Spanish Aid’ lived in working-class districts. However, although Mates praises the organization and sheer hard work that went into these campaigns, he is critical of the emphasis on humanitarianism placed by popular frontist activists which ‘depoliticized’ the Spanish issue and obscured the malevolent impact that Non-Intervention was having on the military fortunes of the Republic.

One of the best features of this book is its discussion of the paradoxical consequences of popular frontism for the Communist party. Although Communists were prominent in ‘Spanish Aid’, their determination to present these campaigns as broadly based meant that the Communist party kept such a low profile that it got little credit for its efforts. Mates convincingly argues that aid campaigns did not garner support for the idea of the popular front either within or without the wider labour movement; indeed, in the north-east the Communists probably lost more than they gained over Spain. So while there was an increase in membership, it was more than offset by the losses of key cadres who volunteered to fight with the International Brigades.

Much of this book is at odds with the work of writers such as Jim Fyrth that tended to celebrate Spanish aid campaigns and the attempts to use the Spanish civil war as a base for a British popular front. Nevertheless, Mates is not uncritical of Tom Buchanan, whose critique of popular frontist historiography sparked a debate with Fyrth in the early 1990s. In particular, Mates shows that despite the large Catholic community in the north-east, there was little Catholic opposition within the regional labour movement to the Republic, despite the well-publicized anti-clerical violence in the Republican zone during the first months of the civil war. Thus this book stands a useful corrective to Buchanan's thesis that Catholic pressure inhibited Labour policy towards the Republic.

There is no doubt that this is an important regional study. But case studies, by their very nature, make generalizations problematic. As Mates himself admits, the lack of Catholic opposition to pro-Republican activity reflected the exceptionally high level of Catholic integration in the north-east. More importantly, central to Mates's critique of popular frontism is the belief that there existed a more effective strategy for aiding the Republic. Grassroots political activism, he argues, should have channelled towards creating a ‘coherent, militant, politically focussed, mass movement against Non-Intervention’ (p. 225). Therefore for Mates, those who got the Spanish issue ‘right’ were not popular frontist militants but the much maligned ‘moderate’ activists within the regional labour movement who argued for industrial direct action to force the government to sell arms to the Republic. But it is unlikely that extra-parliamentary pressure would have forced the National Government to ditch a policy deemed necessary to preserve the Empire and European peace. Moreover, Mates admits the existence of ‘massive obstacles’ (p. 142) to any attempt within the labour movement to organize direct action, not least the problem of explaining away the contradiction of carrying out unconstitutional action in the interests of aiding a democratically elected government.

Mates provides an intriguing reference to a pro-Republican steelworker strike in Charleroi to support his thesis that mass strikes against the policy of Non-Intervention would have been the most effective way of aiding the Republic (p. 132). However, Belgium offers an excellent example of the difficulties faced by the European left in providing a coherent response to the civil war. The Socialist leader, Paul-Henri Spaak, signed up to Non-Intervention as foreign minister in the summer of 1936 and recognized Franco's government when prime minister in January 1939. Thus Mates's arguments not only highlight the limitations of a regional, but also of a national approach to his subject. The French historian Rémi Skoutelsky has recently written an international history of the International Brigades. A similar wide-ranging trans-national study of the domestic impact of the Spanish civil war would be welcome.