Home

JOCS-Journal of Catalan Studies

General information

History

Annual Conference

Publications

Scholarships

Lectors

Constitution

Subscriptions

Contacts

Archives

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies

Institut Ramon Llull

Centre Català d'Escòcia

Derby Hotels

Fundació Congrés de Cultura Catalana

Institució de les Lletres Catalanes

Institut d'Estudis Catalans

NACS

Deutscher Katalanisten- verband

Biblioteca Virtual Lluís Vives

Lletra

Setting the Record Straight on John Langdon-Davies: the Joan Gili Memorial Lecture 2002.

In the course of his lecture on Orwell to the Anglo-Catalan Society, Dr Miquel Berga makes a number of references to John Langdon-Davies which misrepresent his thinking and his work. We thank the Anglo-Catalan Society for offering us this space in which to state our objections. These are not a matter of ideology, but are directed at Berga's incorrect and unsavoury portrayal of Langdon-Davies, to the extent of associating him with the persecution suffered by political dissidents following the events of May 1937 in Barcelona. For reasons of space it has not been possible to cover every point, so we hope readers will consult the linked documents where they can see the facts for themselves.

Although Berga has always been over-fascinated by Langdon-Davies's relationship with communism, he appeared at the time of his doctoral thesis and the biography (John Langdon-Davies (1897-1971): una biografia anglo-catalana) to share his subject's awareness of the confusion of factions and ideas surrounding the events under discussion, a muddle which has not been sorted out to this day. Langdon-Davies, except for his hatred of fascism, stood as far apart as possible from this ideological conflict.

Many people today do not fully understand the concept of fellow traveller. In Langdon-Davies's case, as in that of thousands of intelligent and concerned people, it could be taken to mean 'a left-wing intellectual with Marxist leanings who is not a member of the Communist Party'. In the thirties, as Langdon-Davies saw it, there was nowhere else to go. He was a fellow traveller before, during and after the civil war, which he saw as a fight, ideally a united fight, against a fascist uprising. Although he admired the spontaneous response by the workers' organisations to this uprising, he very rightly foresaw that international fascism posed a serious threat for the whole of Europe and felt that this was not the moment for social revolution. This was his personal conviction and had nothing to do with any blind adherence to a party line; he was perfectly capable of thinking for himself, which is why he was a fellow traveller and not a party member. If everyone with similar convictions qualified as a Stalinist, we would have to include such unlikely candidates as Companys, Montseny or even Azaña himself.

Orwell took a different stance from Langdon-Davies, and it could be argued that he was influenced in this by his connection with the POUM. In defending this organisation from the widespread attacks and ultimate repression it suffered he systematically rejected anything in the least critical of it, including Langdon-Davies's account of the fets de maig for the News Chronicle.

Out of this difference, Berga has built up a 'polemic' which he uses as a pivot in his homage to Orwell. In fact, he gives it more importance than the two writers themselves did. What is more, he presents matters entirely from Orwell's standpoint. But a polemic involves argument, or discussion, whereas in fact the 'textual battle' Berga mentions did not extend beyond a few lines. It is noticeable that when writing in defence of the POUM in the Socialist Forum in August '37 Orwell makes no mention of Langdon-Davies or his article. Neither did Langdon-Davies make any further significant reference to Orwell. So there was no 'polemic', no 'wounds healing slowly' and certainly no 'political and literary victory' such as Berga claims for Orwell against Auden.

Berga's faith in Orwell's infallibility seems to exceed the latter's own. In Homage to Catalonia Orwell warns his readers that he may be mistaken, a warning which is repeated and extended in a letter to Frank Jellinek in December '38:

'I have no doubt that I have made a lot of mistakes and misleading statements, but I have tried to indicate all through that the subject is very complicated and that I am extremely fallible as well as biassed...I entirely agree with you that the whole business about the POUM has had far too much fuss made about it and that the net result of this kind of thing is to prejudice people against the Spanish government...Actually, I've given a more sympathetic account of the POUM "line" than I actually felt, because I always told them they were wrong and refused to join the party. But I had to put it as sympathetically as possible, because it has had no hearing in the capitalist press and nothing but libels in the left-wing press...'

In a lecture on Orwell in Catalonia, this illuminating passage would have added a lot. But instead Berga chooses to fill his lecture-space with false conjecture about Langdon-Davies which add nothing.

Berga's bias is all the more surprising since he previously gave the impression that he had discovered in Langdon-Davies a more reliable observer than Orwell and one with a first-hand understanding of the political situation and events in Catalonia. For the purposes of the centenary, however, he forsakes the image of someone who 'no milita en cap partit i manté gairebé sempre una actitud d'observador intel.ligent i crític, malgrat les seves simpaties'. Did Berga feel obliged to switch allegiances because of the circumstances?

Orwell's 'instinctive hatred of intellectuals' (p. 14) together with his unreliability in the reporting of facts have long been recognised, and one should be wary of these limitations. But Berga has allowed himself to be led badly astray in the composition of his lecture. In order to strengthen his presentation of Orwell, he has written an account of Langdon-Davies which is factually incorrect and, by conjecture and innuendo, dishonest and offensive. He should acknowledge this with particular reference to the following points:

p.9

In Berga's biography Langdon-Davies notes the changes in Barcelona 'i no les valora pas negativament..., a ell el preocupa, sobretot, l'impacte que està representant l'arribada massiva de refugiats a Catalunya', which was the primary reason for this visit. In the lecture, Berga deduces from Langdon-Davies's observations that he 'has moved from his initial fascination with Catalan anarchism to an ever-closer siding with the theses of the Communists'. This far-fetched deduction, a complete non sequitur, shows how little he has understood of Langdon-Davies's long-standing interest in anarchism.

p.12

Why was it 'mischievous' of Langdon-Davies to describe the POUM as Trotskyist? This was no machiavellian fabrication; the term has always been widely used by writers of all persuasions to refer loosely to any non-orthodox form of Communism. One can even find instances of the term used by POUMists in reference to themselves. It may, with half a century's hindsight, be inaccurate , but it is certainly not 'a way of saying that there is full justification for the effort under way, determined by Stalinist strategy, to pursue and capture the POUM leader, Andreu Nin, and other dissidents'. This statement would probably be actionable if Langdon-Davies were alive today and it should be removed from the public domain.

p.12

What Berga calls a 'lengthy, patient and detailed refutation' by Orwell of Langdon-Davies's account of events is in fact two pages of hair-splitting and a rather crude attempt at ridicule. The rest of that chapter is devoted to a defence of the POUM against general charges.

a)There is no suggestion in Langdon-Davies's article that anyone waited for the enemy to build a barricade before attacking. He describes how buildings were barricaded as it became clear that fighting was likely to break out. Obviously no-one was going to start shooting from an undefended position.

b)Langdon-Davies does not put the effects before the cause as Orwell claims. The poster he speaks of (or leaflet, if you prefer) reveals the prevailing attitude of certain groups who openly opposed the Generalitat and were calling for an uprising.

c)The pacos were active throughout the Republican zone. Langdon-Davies correctly explains to his readers who they were. There was no need for anyone who was even minimally informed to 'ask them' if they were fascists. Orwell's attempted irony suggests he either did not know what was going on or simply wished to mislead his readers. If anyone is so naive as to swallow this sort of nonsense, they hardly deserve to be taken seriously.

p.12

In the biography and in his introduction to La setmana tragica de 1937, Berga says that Langdon-Davies dismisses Homage to Catalonia in a few lines. For the Orwell centenary this becomes 'a couple of malicious sentences directly inspired by the communist orthodoxy of the moment...Orwell is a poor, misguided devil who is incapable of accepting revolutionary discipline, meaning, naturally, that the tiresome “purists” fail to understand that the end justifies the means, however squalid these might be'. First of all, honest criticism is not malicious, which implies the intention to do harm. Secondly, we once again see Langdon-Davies's personal convictions attributed to an orthodoxy he did not even subscribe to. And thirdly, there is nothing 'natural' about Berga's 'squalid' conclusion.

p.13

For two years, Langdon-Davies published nothing with political overtones. When he did so he gets a condescending pat on the head from Berga with the words 'Langdon-Davies will become a fervent anti-Stalinist' (our italics). There is nothing in his writings or actions to suggest he had ever been otherwise and this damaging innuendo should be corrected.

p.15

Langdon-Davies is supposed to see himself in Orwell's satirical description of the 'good party man'. A 'good party man' is a member of the Communist Party, which Langdon-Davies was not, so this comment begins with an assumption which is known to be untrue and goes on most offensively to a personal denigration of character.

p.17

In his critique of Homage to Catalonia, Langdon-Davies is apparently '...providing reassuring arguments to the militants who have to carry out or connive at the dirty work demanded by the circumstances in accordance with the party line'. Does Berga really think this interpretation is an honest one? It fits in well with his lecture, but not with the facts, and it certainly bears no resemblance to any comment, opinion or utterance made in the course of conversations between Berga and Langdon-Davies's widow.

It is not the task of the serious researcher to fill the gaps he finds with partisan conjecture, but Berga does exactly this, demonstrating his complete failure to get inside his subject. If he had taken the trouble to speak at greater length to those who knew John Langdon-Davies personally, his picture of him might have been more accurate.

Common decency demands that Dr Berga should acknowledge these misrepresentations and that they should be eliminated from the Anglo-Catalan Society's website.

Links:

http://www.arrakis.es/~ald/newschronicle.htm John Langdon-Davies's article for the News Chronicle, 10 May 1937.

http://www.arrakis.es/~ald/htcap.htm George Orwell's 'refutation' of John Langdon-Davies's account, from the appendix to Homage to Catalonia.

En relació a la nota publicada a la pàgina de l’ ACS, “Setting the record straight on John Langdon-Davies: The Joan Gili Memorial Lecture 2002”, signada per membres de la família Langdon-Davies, i en la qual se m’acusa de diverses males intencions i d’haver fet afirmacions “incorrectes, deshonestes i ofensives” al voltant de les posicions polítiques de l’escriptor respecte als Fets de Maig de 1937 que l’escriptor va presenciar a Barcelona voldria afegir els següents comentaris:

(...) I thought that, after all, the Orwell polemic about the Events of May was a rather remote historical episode to which I had referred in detail in the biography (I was not adding anything new in the lecture) and that it could be seen as a particular “moment” in the ideologically rich life of a man always concerned with the social and political issues of his time. The whole biography could not be compressed in that part of my lecture but I think I gave enough background about JLD before and after the war, mentioning also his efforts on humanitarian causes during the conflict. Obviously, historical considerations of this type are always arguable but I was careful to quote, both JLD and Orwell’s own words. The story unfolds itself though I admit that, were I to write it again, I would not use a couple of adverbs (my own) which “qualify” his words. That was careless of me and perfectly unnecessary (…)

You seem to have taken particular offence to my stating that JLD became a “fervent antistalinist” in 1939 because you infer that this is a way of calling him a “Stalinist”. But, as you know, I only refer to him in the lecture as a “fellow-traveller” of the Communist Party and I quote amply from his comments on Roldán Cortada’s funeral which show –to any intelligent reader- that his views on the situation were quite sophisticated and that if he was a fellow-traveller there were sound reasons to take that stand in the circumstances or, as you put it, it was “a reasonable inclination for any intelligent left-winger at that time”. I quite agree with you on that, but that does not change the nature of the polemic. And this polemic (and Auden’s) are, in my view, absolutely substantial to what “Homage to Catalonia” is all about and very relevant to many of the things Orwell’s work has come to represent. For better or worse, JLD happened to be very sympathetic to the Communist Party in that period and, quite legitimately, he used his influence to help in what he considered a good cause then. Manent mentions him broadcasting from the Casal Carlos Marx (the headquarters of the Catalan Communist Party). In his personal notes, with many interesting and detailed descriptions of the situation in the streets of Barcelona during those days, there is not a single reference to the POUM (That, I did not mention in the lecture), and yet his article for “The News Chronicle” begins declaring the whole tragedy “a frustrated putsch by the Trotskyist POUM”. And, of course, his review of Orwell’s book for “The Daily Worker”, in 1938, is consistent with that view.

There is now conclusive evidence about the way the Spanish communists were led to act following instructions from Moscow and how deliberately planned the elimination of the POUM was carried out. But this, of course, you know. And it was, for this and other reasons, that John Langdon-Davies changed his views on Soviet communism and wrote so many strong and vigorous denunciations of that kind of policy and became, politically, the kind of man you got to know. It is, indeed, because there is so much more about JLD than that particular polemic that I believed he deserved a full-scale study and, as you are well aware, I have done my best to make known his interesting life and work. You know all my writings and references and I am sure that, precisely because of my work, his figure has come to be seen in a broader context (I have, in the past, written to scholars like V. Cunningham and P. Davison correcting them on the reductionist view of JLD which sprang from Hugh Thomas first edition of his history of the Civil War

…………………………

(…) I don’t portray him as a Stalinist but as someone who, at the time, was openly sympathetic with the politics of the Communist Party. To say, as you do, that since I wrote that he “became a fervent Anti-Stalinist” I am suggesting he was previously a Stalinist is your own guess. One can –in view of some developments- “become” anti-francoist or anti-pujolista without having previously been in the Falange or a militant of Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya… You and I could go on and on about the whole affair but the facts speak for themselves. Some amount of conjecture, though, is inevitable since JLD himself –as far as I know- never answered Orwell’s direct criticism of his reporting on the May Events of 1937 in Homage to Catalonia. My “conjecture”, of course, is that his silence for so many years was related to the fact that he was not proud of it and felt he had been helping a cause he came to loathe heartily. The German-Soviet Pact was “la gota que va fer vessar el got” and, from then on, he became a formidable critic of Stalin’s policy.

This is but an episode in JLD’s extraordinarily rich life but its main interest, in the context of my lecture, is that illustrates a “moment” in history which was crucial in the development of the Spanish war and which is obviously significant in connection with Orwell’s experiences in Spain.

¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨

(...) I realize, to my great dismay, that you are entirely dismissive about all my explanations in connection with that lecture. I believe you have always approved of my JLD biography, my introductions to new Catalan editions of his writings and the various articles in the press. I offered a public note in order to make sure my points in the lecture concerning JLD are read without historical or semantic misunderstandings… But, in spite of all that, you seem to have decided I’m not a person to be trusted. I can’t do anything against that. So, let me just say in answer to your letter that I’m totally in favour of your making your own statement in the ACS.

MIQUEL BERGA