John Londragan, International Brigader

Many thanks to Unite member and Aberdeen Councillor
Nathan Morrison for this photograph

This information is taken from the Rebel Road

pages at Unite education. 

Aberdeen Trades Union Council offices are named after John Londragan and the premises at 22a Adelphi have a plaque which states: John Londragan House: Communist, International Brigadier and Life Long Trade Unionist, 1911-1993. The plaque was erected in 1993.

An article by John Landragan appears in the book Voices from the Spanish Civil War: personal recollections of Scottish Volunteers in Republican Spain 1936-39, edited by Ian MacDougall. The railway worker describes his motivation for risking his life: ‘Being a member of the Communist Party and being an anti-Fascist I though it was my duty to go and help the people in Spain.

‘And the fight, whether it be here in Aberdeen against the British Union of Fascists or against Hitler and Mussolini in Spain, was exactly the same to me, no difference at all.’

The Scotsman served in the Anti-Tank Unit of the XVth International Brigade at Jarama, which is south-east of Madrid, before being sent to Brunette, which is where he got wounded in the leg and arm. This finished his career on the military side but when he came out of hospital he was employed on the organisational side of the Brigade. Londragan later served – again in an Anti-Tank Unit - in the British Army during the Second World War.

Writing in 1986, the Aberdeen man wrote: ‘ Looking back, there isn’t a thing changed since 1936 as regards my views…..When I went to Spain I thought I was trying to halt Hitler and Mussolini and their exploitation of Europe……..so when we went to war in 1939 I did exactly the same job…… Both were anti-Fascist wars.’

John Londragan (left) and a fellow International Brigader with the two young daughters of a Spanish
family they befriended