ABSTRACT
In May 1937, over 3,800 children from the Basque Country entered Britain as refugees from the Spanish Civil War. The children were initially placed in a transit camp near Southampton, which was split into a Basque Nationalist section and a Spanish Republican section. In effect, this spatial segregation divided the children along national, political, religious, and class lines. This chapter examines the role of competing political and humanitarian agendas in shaping life at the North Stoneham Basque Children’s Camp. It argues that North Stoneham was a site of collision between the progressive pedagogical ideas associated with the Second Republic, the Catholic and Conservative ideology of the Basque Nationalist Party, and British humanitarian ideals of childhood as a pure, innocent, and apolitical period of human life. Due to a combination of administrative, diplomatic, and political reasons, Basque Nationalists and British humanitarians wielded greater influence on education and recreation in North Stoneham. Although children of socialist and communist backgrounds constituted the majority of the group, these political identities remained largely marginalized in the camp.
