| Main Performers | Duchess of Atholl MP DBE (Chair),
Professor Paul Langevin,
Heinrich Mann,
Professor W G Constable,
Professor J B S Haldane,
Paul Robeson (originally to be broadcast from Moscow),
Pablo Casels (broadcast from Bucharest) - speakers
Isabel Brown,
Lascelles Abercrombie,
Frederick Ashton,
W H Auden,
Sir Arnold Bax,
Vanessa Bell,
John Desmond Bernal,
Professor P M S Blackett,
Henry Brinton,
Professor Wilfred E Le Gros Clark,
Sean O'Casey,
Dr Stella Churchill,
Havelock Ellis,
Jacob Epstein,
E M Forster,
Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (actress),
Duncan Grant,
Viscount Hastings,
Barbara Hepworth,
Prof. Julian Huxley,
Parry Jones,
Edmond Kapp,
Edward McKnight Kauffer,
John Langdon-Davies,
Rupert Lee,
David Low,
Cecil Day Lewis,
Rose Macaulay,
Desmond McCarthy,
Professor John MacMurray,
Henry Moore,
Naomi Mitchison,
Professor Enrique Moreno,
Paul Nash,
Henry Woodd Nevinson, journalist and suffragist,
Algernon Newton,
Ben Nicholson,
Hon. Harold Nicolson,
Philip Noel-Baker,
Sir John Boyd Orr,
Amedee Ozenfant, artist,
D N Pritt,
Professor J A Ryle,
John Robertson Scott,
Hugh De Selincourt,
Evelyn Sharp,
Professor Charles Singer,
Stephen Spender,
Reverend Dr Stewart,
Dame Sybil Thorndike,
Professor J B Trend,
Edward Wadsworth,
Sylvia Townsend Warner,
H G Wells,
Rebecca West,
Dr Ralph Vaughan Williams,
Virginia Woolf |
| Secondary Performers | Dr Osborne H Peasgood - organ |
| Performance Notes | This was an event in aid of helping refugee childrens from the Spanish Civil War. Pablo Casals broadcast from Bucharest, and there were speakers live from Madrid. The Hall was packed with famous artists, writers, scientists and politicians such as Virginia Woolf, Henry Moore, C S Lewis and Julian Huxley. Pablo Picasso designed the programme cover, dedicated to the mothers and children of Spain, but he did not attend the meeting. On the advertising for the event Picasso however had been listed as a speaker.
A quote from Goethe is used on the programme, "Science and Art belong to the whole world and the barriers of nationality vanish before them."
"I have had no more experiences in the great world, unless sitting behind the Duchess of Atholl on the platform of the Albert Hall 2 nights ago can count. Oh what a bore those meetings are! We sat for 3 hours behind the Duchess and talked about Spain - I mean we listened; and they talked, but into megaphones, or microphones, so that not a word came singly but in a kind of double division to us behind. However, by hook or crook, really by means of a fat emotional woman in black velvet called Isabel Brown they collected £1500 for the Basque children."
(Extract from a letter written by Virginia Woolf to Janet Case, 26 June 1937)
"For the Albert Hall rally, he [Paul Robeson] had at first intended to record in a Moscow studio and broadcast the message to London via radio. But Nazi Germany threatened to jam the transmission, while the Albert Hall management expressed a disinclination to receive communications from Red Russia. That joint opposition so redolent of the tacit alliance between fascism and liberal democracy infuriated him. He made the recording anyway, conscious of the huge audience the airwaves could reach and then caught a special flight back to England. Nothing, he said later, was going to stop me from sending or giving my message to the British public on the subject of Spain.
That evening, the stage was studded with celebrities. For the British artist William Townsend, sitting in the audience, there was no question as to who left the biggest impression. Robeson, he said, was the great man of the evening
his personality eclipsed all others as his speech overwhelmed theirs.
By then, Pauls formal study of oratory had been honed by years of theatrical and concert stages. When he spoke, people listened. Fascism, he told the massive crowd, fights to destroy the culture which society has created; created through pain and suffering, through desperate toil, but with unconquerable will and lofty vision. The argument possessed particular force because of the man making it. Pauls people knew about desperate toil, yes, and they knew about pain and suffering. If anyone had the right to scoff at the civilising pretensions of European culture, it was the son of a slave, a man denied basic rights in the most advanced of democracies. Yet here was Paul urging a defence of those achievements, not so much for what they were but for what they might become.
Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers
The battlefront is everywhere.
It was another of the moments that Paul produced so regularly, an occasion that the men and women in attendance remembered for the rest of their lives. His speech, delivered with characteristic sincerity, embodied what they took to be at stake in Spain: all that was good and decent and honest pitched against all that was barbaric and cruel and backward.
The applause went on and on and on."
(Extract from 'No Way But This: In Search of Paul Robeson', Jeff Sparrow, Scribe 2017)
"Friends. I am deeply happy to join with you in this appeal for the greatest cause which faces the world today. Like every true artist, I have longed to see my talent contributing in an unmistakeably clear manner to the cause of humanity. I feel that tonight I am doing so.
Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide NOW where he stands. He has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction - in many countries - of the greatest of man's literary heritages, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear
The challenge must be taken up. Time does not wait. The course of history can be changed, but not halted. Fascism fights to destroy the culture which society has created; created through pain and suffering, through desperate toil, but with unconquerable will and lofty vision. Progressive and democratic mankind fight not alone to save this cultural heritage accumulated through the ages, but also fight today to prevent a war of unimaginable atrocity from engulfing the world.
What matters a man's vocation or profession? Fascism is no respecter of persons. It makes no distinction between combatants and non-combatants. The blood-soaked streets of Guernica, that beautiful peaceful village nested in the Basque hills, are proof of that as are the concentration camps full of scientists and artists which in some western lands dot the countryside, bringing back the dark ages.
The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative. The history of the capitalist era is characterized by the degradation of my people: despoiled of their lands, their culture destroyed, they are in every country save one [the USSR], denied equal protection of the law, and deprived of their rightful place in the respect of their fellows.
Not through blind faith or coercion, but conscious of my course, I take my place with you. I stand with you in unalterable support of the Government of Spain, duly and regularly chosen by its lawful sons and daughters.
Again I say, the true artist cannot hold himself aloof. The legacy of culture from our predecessors is in danger. It is the foundation upon which we build a still more lofty edifice. It belongs not only to us, not only to the present generation - it belongs to posterity - and must be defended to the death. May you rally every artist, every scientist, every writer in England who loves democracy. May you rally to the side of Republican Spain every black man in the British Empire.
May your inspiring message reach every man, woman, and child who stands for freedom and justice. For the liberation of Spain from the oppression of fascist reactionaries is not a private matter of the Spaniards, but the common cause of all advanced and progressive humanity" (Speech by Paul Robeson)
Over £11,000 was raised at this meeting for the Basque refugee children |
| Related Archival Material | Programme (RAHE/1/1937/49)
More records relating to this meeting are held at the Warwick University Modern Records Centre and have been digitised |
| Ticket Prices | 0 (balcony and gallery)-2s 6d |