On 23 May 1937, the Spanish ship SS Habana docked at Southampton, carrying nearly 4000 children, aged 7 to 15, together with 95 teachers, 15 Catholic priests and more than a hundred volunteers.

The children were evacuees from the Spanish Civil War, wrenched away from their parents and their homeland for their own safety in what was probably one of the most remarkable humanitarian efforts of recent times.

Civil war broke out in Spain in July 1936 when Nationalist rebels staged a military coup against the recently-elected Republican government, taking control of vast swathes of Spain, particularly in the south. Under the leadership of General Franco, and with support from Mussolini and Hitler, the violence against Republican loyalists escalated quickly, with aerial bombardment being used on an unprecedented scale.

The Luftwaffe’s bombing of the tiny, defenceless Basque town of Guernica on 26 April 1937 was one of the most high-profile attacks of the war. The merciless brutality of the assault caused shockwaves around the world and inspired Picasso’s famous painting, Guernica. In a campaign lasting just over three hours, more than a thousand civilians perished and the town was razed to the ground.

George Steer, a reporter for The Times, wrote an eyewitness account in which he reported that Guernica was “completely destroyed” by “insurgent air raiders”. In addition to the bombing, the fighters also “plunged low from above the centre of the town to machine-gun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in the fields”.

Survivors fled to the town of Bilbao, just over 23 miles (37.6km) away, after rescuing whatever possessions they could from the remains of their homes.

Steer described Guernica as “a horrible sight, flaming from end to end. The reflection of the flames could be seen in the clouds of smoke above the mountains from ten miles away. Throughout the night houses were falling until the streets became long heaps of red impenetrable debris”.

Rescue operation
Despite the non-interventionist policy adopted by other Western powers – including Britain – an immediate rescue operation for the region’s children was set in motion. The relief effort was spearheaded by Labour MP Leah Manning, who was in Spain at the time of the attack on Guernica. Manning helped set up the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief, an alliance of several major organisations including Save the Children, The Society of Friends, Spanish Medical Aid, the Catholic Church and the TUC.

Over the next few weeks, more than 20,000 children were rescued from the Basque region and taken to safe countries in Europe and elsewhere.

The UK government agreed to offer refuge to up to 4000 Basque children, on the condition that they were not selected according to political or religious allegiances and that the operation was funded entirely by voluntary contributions.

And so, slightly less than a month after the attack on Guernica, SS Habana arrived in Southampton with its young charges. Initially the children were taken to a temporary camp at North Stoneham, just outside the city, where they were given medical checks and had their details recorded. They were then dispersed to various residential homes – known as colonies – throughout the UK. There were around a hundred colonies, stretching from southern England to Scotland, and many of the buildings are now marked with blue plaques.

Stories from the colonies
It is not hard to imagine the feelings of the children brought to Southampton eighty years ago. Already suffering psychological trauma from the war, they had now been separated from their parents, their homes, their culture and most of their belongings. Many arrived here with little more than the clothes they were wearing at the time.

Shortly after the arrival of sixty Basque children in Worthing in May 1937, The Worthing Gazette poignantly reported that each child was “clutching a parcel of treasured goods, just as much as could be got away in leaving a war-afflicted area”.

Yet, despite the children’s horrific experiences, contemporary reports suggested that they were generally in good spirits, and they seem to have received excellent care from the staff at the colonies and the many volunteers who rallied round to help. They attracted a great deal of interest and sympathy, with local people donating clothes, blankets and toys to the colonies, putting on fund-raising events and visiting the colonies to befriend the children and help them to learn the English language.

According to The Worthing Gazette, the children who arrived in a bus from Southampton “were watched by a crowd of about 200 who had waited over two hours to give them a welcome”.

When forty youngsters arrived at St Joseph’s House in the Oxfordshire village of Aston, near Witney, the Witney Gazette of 25th June 1937 reported that “a large crowd gave the little visitors a good welcome: there were 25 girls and 15 young lads who seemed little disturbed by their journey from Southampton or by their new surroundings…The children appear very happy and the work for them appears all the more worthwhile when their sincere appreciation is clearly evident.”

The generosity of locals towards the children was extraordinary. In Worthing, local traders donated regular supplies of milk, bread and groceries, while at Aston the children were each given one of the famous Witney blankets as well as bicycles from a local cycle shop.

The colonies appeared to have operated strict regimes, but ones that allowed for plenty of leisure as well as learning and household chores. An article about Penstone House, in the West Sussex village of Lancing, appeared in The Herald on 26th March 1938 and reported that “their day starts at 7.30 in the morning and they are all in bed by 8.30 at night. They scrub floors and launder their own clothes, and then have time to learn our language and play with toys given them by sympathisers”.

As well as English, the children were taught useful skills such as needlework and typing. They were also encouraged to do gymnastics and other sports, and each had their own plot of garden in which to grow vegetables. There were also daily walks and weekly outings to the local cinema.

Voices of dissent
Perhaps unsurprisingly, not everything ran smoothly. In her paper Researching the Basque Children, presented at a day school in Oxford in April 2012, Natalia Benjamin – daughter of one of the teachers on board the Habana, and co-founder of the Basque Children of ’37 Association UK – talked about the “horrific” way in which some of the children were taken onto the Habana and the “harsh treatment meted out by the nuns to the Basque children in some of the convents”.

Reports of bad behaviour from some of the children threatened to turn the tide of public sympathy, although it appears such incidents were rare. One of the most notable incidents took place in the Brechfa colony in Wales, where twelve boys went on the rampage through the village, vandalising cars and shop windows and threatening locals. An eye-witness account appeared in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner from Harry Ducksbury, the manager of The George Hotel in Huddersfield, who had been on holiday in Wales at the time.

The fall-out from this was that when authorities in Huddersfield were making arrangements to house twenty of the Basque children, the same newspaper felt the need to reassure local residents that the refugees were “all very nice children and we need not expect the slightest trouble from them”.

Repatriation
Repatriation of the refugees began after the fall of Bilbao in the summer of 1937. The first mass repatriation, involving 160 children, took place in November that year, and the process of repatriation continued throughout 1938 and 1939. Many more were repatriated after the end of the Second World War. Around 250 settled permanently in the UK, as did many of the teachers and other helpers.

Many children returned home with mixed feelings. Although naturally glad to be returning to their parents and their homeland, they were sad to be parting from new friends in the UK.

When twenty-five children returned to Spain from the colony at Caerleon, Wales, in June 1939, the Cambria House Journal quoted one of the refugees as saying: “It is a great joy to go back to our parents, but it is a sad thing to have to part after living together like brother and sisters for two years…I shall never forget the friends I am leaving behind in Britain. Goodbye and thank you for all you have done.”