'Spilling The Spanish Beans' (1937) by George Orwell

'Spilling The Spanish Beans' is an article, in two parts, by George Orwell, that first appeared in the New English Weekly of 29 July and 2 September 1937.

In the first part of the article Orwell argues that in the case of the Spanish Civil War, even more than pro-fascist newspapers like the Daily Mail, left-wing papers such as the News Chronicle and Daily Worker had "prevented the British public from grasping the real nature of the struggle."

Orwell said, "The Spanish government (including the semi-autonomous Catalan Government) is far more afraid of the revolution than of the Fascists."

Orwell describes the imprisoning of those whose opinions were too much to the left and that the people responsible for putting them there were the Communists: "The real struggle is between revolution and counter-revolution."

In the second part of the essay Orwell describes the Communist propaganda that denounced 'Trotskyism' : "In Spain, anyone professing revolutionary Socialism is under suspicion of being a Trotskyist in the pay of Franco or Hitler." If the Communists had saved the Government from October 1936 onwards they had also, Orwell wrote, "succeeded in killing enthusiasm. It is significant that as early as January of this year [1937] voluntary recruiting had practically ceased."