Frank Madigan was a dedicated labor activist and loyal communist. His story provides insight into American labor movements during the Great Depression as well as food shortages the International Brigades faced in the Spanish Civil War.
Early Life
Frank Madigan was born on December 6, 1911 to Irish immigrants Timothy Madigan and Bridget McGuire in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. Madigan had only eight years of schooling and no military training prior to going to Spain. At the age of 18, he submitted his application for the Seaman’s Certificate of American Citizenship to work as a sailor. He became active in labor issues and, like Stuivenberg, Hawkins, and Dean, who also signed the fan, he joined the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (SUP) in the 1930s.
Labor Activist
Oregon Historical Society
Madigan participated in numerous labor strikes, demanding with other sailors fair working conditions and higher wages. In the summer of 1934, he was among the protesters in the West Coast Waterfront Strike. The strike was led by longshoremen, those who loaded and unloaded the ship cargo. When the shipowners refused their demands, the protests turned deadly violent when company goons and West Coast police beat and shot workers. It became known as “Bloody Thursday.” Union leaders called the strike off at the end of July 1934.
As recorded in his application to join the Spanish Communist Party, Madigan’s association with the proletarian movement began in response to the Great Depression and poor labor conditions. Madigan read, What Is Communism? penned in 1936 by Earl Browder, the influential leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Madigan also followed the news through the Daily Worker and People’s World-Communist. In 1936, he joined the CPUSA and, a year later, the Socorro Rojo Internacional, also known as International Red Aid.
Por España
Madigan’s decision to fight as part of the Popular Front for the democratically elected Spanish Republic was similar to that of many American volunteers who became activists during the Great Depression. In 1937, he boarded a ship to France, then crossed into Spain by foot through the Pyrenees mountains. Upon arrival, Madigan was assigned to the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15thInternational Brigade, where he also worked as a cook.
Ben Iceland, a fellow volunteer, remembered the monotony of his days in Villanueva de Castellón awaiting repatriation. He recalled how “Madigan had his regular crew that did all the work, and there was not even any KP [kitchen patrol] to relieve the monotony. To work in the kitchen was a privilege.”
Food Shortages and Hunger
Prior to going to Spain, Madigan had gained experience as a cook working on different ships. This skill was greatly valued in Spain, where the volunteer fighters constantly suffered from food shortages and hunger.
In his Oral History of the Spanish Civil War, Ronald Fraser illustrates the dire food situation. A testimony about Barcelona in the first year of the war states:
“[T]he communists were no better at organizing food supplies. To live on one’s rations was to go hungry…. [Y]ou would eat nothing but broad beans for a fortnight, lentils for the next couple of weeks, chick-peas for the next and so on. Lack of food was one of the major factors in the war-weariness that overtook Catalonia.”
Quoted in Fraser, p. 376.
ALBA Photographic Collection (Tamiment Library, New York University)
Things only got worse as the war progressed. Years after the war, Ben Iceland recalled that food was the volunteer fighters’ “main preoccupation.” Cooks became a valuable resource, though there was often little food to prepare. In Villanueva de Castellón, where they gathered to be repatriated, Iceland wrote, “the cooks had a cookhouse beside the railroad tracks.”
“The food was, if anything, even worse than it had been. Now it was mostly lentils. You had to be watchful of the stones in the lentils. When the men complained, it was explained that, now since we were no longer frontline troops, our rations were smaller.”
Iceland also remembered the cooks’ pet “a large mongrel called Brownie who barked and snarled at any civilian passing by.” Brownie survived the war and returned with Frank Madigan to the United States in 1939.
Back Home
Not much is known about Madigan’s life after he returned to the United States on February 4, 1939 aboard the President Harding. He passed away on April 11, 1986 in San Francisco, California.
FURTHER READING
Ronald Fraser. 1994 (1979).Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War. London: Vintage.
Ben Iceland. 1990. “Last Days in Spain.” The Volunteer. 12/2
Bruce Nelson. 1990. Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
SOURCES
“Food During the Spanish Civil War.” Cooltur.org
“The ILWU Story.” International Longshore & Warehouse Union.
“Frank Madigan.” Personal File. RGASPI. Fond 545, Opis 6, File 939.