| Biography | The National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief chaired by a Conservative MP, the Duchess of Atholl, was supplemented by local Aid Spain committees that mushroomed in almost every town. However the uniqueness of the solidarity movement lay in the fact that it inspired men and women to actually go to Spain in the service of the Spanish Republic. From many countries, Britain included, volunteers were recruited to the International Brigade to fight alongside their Spanish comrades-in-arms, risking death and injury from the superior military strength of the fascists. Two thousand British volunteers went, attached first to different units, but later forming the British Battalion under the command of Bill Alexander. Five hundred and twenty six of them were killed and many more were injured. Alexander's estimate of the total number of international volunteers is 42.000 of whom 20.000 were killed, reported missing or were badly injured. In January 1937, the British Government made it illegal to volunteer to fight in Spain, but this did not stop the process, it just made it more difficult.
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