IT IS to Colin Carritt’s credit that he seeks to honour the memory of his uncle, who died tragically in the Spanish Civil War.

However well-intentioned he may have been though, the Republican struggle can hardly be described as a “fight against fascism”.

Democracy was sadly not an option offered by either side in this war, and liberal democracy had already been abandoned when the military insurrection began in 1936.

Opposition leaders were arrested or assassinated by government forces, and the election result of 1936, which was a close tie, skewed so as to exclude any parties not of the left.

Today's Letters

Spanish nationalism, for all its myriad faults, had little in common with its pagan counterparts in Germany and Italy, and the malevolent involvement of these two countries in Spain was countered by that of Soviet forces.

Had they won, Stalin would undoubtedly have turned Spain into a brutal Communist regime to rival any that emerged later in eastern Europe.

A memorial such as this would be the equivalent of one to those young people today who go to fight in Syria as mercenaries for Daesh: a monument to war on Christian civilisation. Nearly 7,000 priests were murdered in cold blood by the Reds.

Bob Price, leader of Oxford City Council, despite the protests of some of his Liberal Democrat colleagues, has hidden behind a planning application, when in fact the land on which this aggressive memorial would stand is owned by the council.

Why has he not engaged with the many people who have voiced their objections on moral and religious grounds? Why does he seek to offend the Catholics of this city?

The siting of the monument on St Giles’ is triply offensive: on a street with three well-respected Catholic institutions; next to a churchyard, when Christian burial was outlawed in Republican Spain, and next to the Cross of the War Memorial, when religious symbols were desecrated all over Spain.

It is time for the city council to explain why it proposes to glorify bigoted violence. Can a memorial, cleansed of Stalinist imagery, not record the senseless death of those on both sides of this terrible conflict?

MICHAEL BRETT

Divinity Road,

East Oxford