Title: Anti-Fascists: Jim McNeill and his mates in the Spanish Civil War

Author: SAMARAS MICHAEL

Format: PAPERBACK

Publication date: 12/04/2025

Imprint: CONNOR COURT PUBLISHING

ISBN: 9781923224575

• Hello, and welcome to this SEARCH Foundation podcast.
• Michael Samaras’ book Anti-Fascists: Jim McNeill and His Mates in the Spanish Civil War was published in March 2025. The book has been launched in Sydney, Melbourne and Thirroul. This podcast was created on 10 June 2025, and by the time you hear this, the book will have been launched in Canberra.
• Michael’s book concentrates of the stories of two Australian Spanish brigade members – brigadiers – Dickinson and McNeill, and Michael has included some details on other brigadiers in an appendix. These brigadiers fought on the side of the elected Spanish Republican government against the Spanish fascists, led by Franco who were supported by Nazi Germany.

My name is Stephen Rix, a SEARCH Foundation member and I spoke with Michael about the book on 29 May 2025, following the Sydney launch and after I had read the book.

Podcast of the Sydney launch: As of 10 June 2025, the podcast of the Sydney launch had not yet been published.

The ABC Radio National Late Night Live podcast can be found on the ABC’s Listen App or here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/australians-spanish-civil-war-michael-samaras-sarah-gold-mcbride/105139648. If that does not connect, copy the url and paste into your browser.

You can hear the Anthem of the Republic here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8-5QmWJH00. If that does not connect, copy the url and paste into your browser.

In the podcast, I refer to a review of a biography of a British historian. That Review appears in the London Review of Books Vol. 47 No. 9 · 22 May 2025. The reviewer was Stefan Collini, and the book being reviewed was Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian by Michael Braddick Verso, 308 pp. February, 978 1 83976 077 8

The podcast was made on unceded Dharawal land.

In this sixteenth, and final, Episode of Series 2 of the Postwar Communists podcasts, 20 of the 23 interviewees talk about their political lives following the dissolution of the CPA. The other three interviewees can be heard on this topic in Episode 1.

Thanks to our interviewees, currently younger-than-old-but-older-than-young (aka baby boomers).

This series can be seen as a complement to the other material produced for the centenary year of the CPA. In SEARCH's book Comrades! Lives of Australian Communists (SEARCH, 2020) we published biographies of 50 women and 50 men, some famous and some not, who had been part of the CPA. SEARCH also produced a one-day series of six one-hour online forums to commemorate the Centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of Australia in October 1920, co-hosted by the State Library of NSW which you can view on the SEARCH YouTube Channel.

In this fifteenth Episode of Series 2 of the Postwar Communists podcasts, 7 of the 23 interviewees talk about their experiences as members of the CPA.

Thanks to our interviewees, currently younger-than-old-but-older-than-young (aka baby boomers).

This series can be seen as a complement to the other material produced for the centenary year of the CPA. In SEARCH's book Comrades! Lives of Australian Communists (SEARCH, 2020) we published biographies of 50 women and 50 men, some famous and some not, who had been part of the CPA. SEARCH also produced a one-day series of six one-hour online forums to commemorate the Centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of Australia in October 1920, co-hosted by the State Library of NSW which you can view on the SEARCH YouTube Channel.