Standing on deck waving handkerchiefs and even sliced bread that they had pocketed at breakfast, thousands of half-starved children from northern Spain arrived in Southampton aboard the Habana, an old cruise liner that had gone to rescue them.
Their arrival was covered by a host of newspapers, including the Manchester Guardian.
The refugees had fled Guernica, a small town of no military significance that had been destroyed by Nazi bombers acting on behalf of General Franco weeks earlier.
Hundreds were killed and thousands injured in the atrocity that was later captured in a famous painting by Picasso. A Guardian editorial called the attack a ‘senseless bombardment’
Before the bombing of Guernica the British government had a strict policy of non-intervention in the Spanish civil war. Stanley Baldwin, the prime minister, had even told refugees from Spain it was pointless coming to the UK as “the climate would not suit” them.
But public pressure forced Baldwin to do a U-turn, the Prime Minister agreeing to allow the entry of child refugees. The terms, however, were inflexible as the refugee committees which organised the exodus had to guarantee they would be responsible for the upkeep of the children for the entire length of their stay.
With the negotiations over the evacuation could begin.
On arriving in the UK the children were bused to a camp near Eastleigh, Hampshire, where many stayed until they were repatriated at the start of the second world war. The Guardian interviewed a child refugee, in 1937, asking him what he remembered of the terrifying events that forced his parents to send him away.
