With typical cheeky tone of the independent local publisher, Inside Croyden tells of a spook who served British policy to inject Franco into position for European fascism to spread.
Franco had been exiled to the Canaries by the elected government of the Spanish Republic, who didn’t trust him – with good reason, as it turned out. Once airlifted to Morocco [secretly by a British spy named Pollard], the general took command of Spain’s elite Army of Africa and launched a fascist-backed military uprising that sparked the Spanish Civil War. […]
[Britain’s subsequent public] policy of “non-intervention” was meant to look even-handed. In reality it meant that the Spanish Republic couldn’t buy arms to defend itself, while Germany’s Hitler and Italy’s Mussolini did all they could to help Franco.
After Guernica, Major Pollard had a letter published in The Times in which he said that targeting the town was “perfectly legitimate”, because it was claimed to be a centre of small arms manufacture, one which supplied weapons to terrorists.
In the same letter, Pollard said that the Basques who supported the Spanish Republic were “simply reaping what they have sown”.
In the years after the war, Pollard and his pilot, Cecil Bebb, were personally decorated by Franco, awarding them fascist Spain’s highest military honour, the Imperial Order of the Yoke and Arrows.
The list of other recipients of that same award is a rogues’ gallery of war criminals, from Hitler to Himmler and from Mussolini to Von Rippentrop.
Pollard and Bebb flew from Croyden airport, thus the “local” aspect to the story.
The Pollard and Bebb would be an interesting name for a London public house, perhaps one that could be used to attract and infiltrate groups today attempting to be fascist.
It sounds better than the Musk and Thiel, anyway…
Much like Elon Musk, Major Pollard apparently was known for being deeply racist and a fascist sympathizer, let alone a horrible mess to work with.
His superiors considered that whilst there were ‘certain jobs’ at which Pollard could ‘do well’ these skills were overshadowed by his reputation for being at best ‘most indiscreet’ and, when combined with money and drink, ‘definitely unreliable.’ His further involvement in [WWII] was therefore deemed ‘fatal’.
On a related note, that paper’s fascinating local retelling of how British elites gleefully helped Franco and Hitler take power allegedly has been censored by Facebook.
