Britain gets involved in Spanish Civil War?

Here's an interesting nugget that I read last night...

Apparently, back in 1937, the then Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden warned that Britain would consider actively interfering on the Republican side of the Spanish civil war if the Nationalists continued to attack British shipping in the Mediterranean. Now, for someone who knows very little about the era, what would be the likely repercussions of this? Could WW2 break out two years earlier?
 
Active involvement from the British and possibly the French is going to very quickly tilt the balance in the favour of the Republicans. I don’t know if by 1937, the government was already too far down the wrong path to get British and French support.

Let’s just say for the sake of it that Britain and France were committed to getting involved, I would expect at the bare minimum the withdrawal of German and Italian Forces and significant weapons supplied to the Republicans. The problem with this idea is Britain at the time thought Franco was the least objectionable and was content to see him victorious, so you would have them throwing in their lot with communists and anarchists against a Right wing group with the support of Conservative Spain...
 
I always thought it was a bit of a bluff to be honest. There was no political appetite in National Government circles for intervention on the Republican side (or any side for that matter) - Conservative opinion wanted to see the Nationalists win with the monarchist section, as opposed to the Falangists, on top. Even the Labour Party was divided over whether to back the Republicans.
 
If the British started pumping the small Republican Left Party (and the centrist separatist/regionalist parties) full of gold and telling them to play nice, and hosting talks with say the Alphonsines, would a peaceful settlement to create a Western-backed central faction even be possible at this point - or would the ultra-Catholic Carlists and the Socialist government of the Republic (who were at this time thoroughly indebted to the Soviets despite not being the Communists, right?) thoroughly muck up the works?
 
Do you mean a central faction fighting in the war or organising a cease-fire?

I dout either the Falange or Anarchists will be keen on peace while their respective revolutions are underway.

Also negotiations by a third party get tripped up by the Popular Front being the legitimate government of Spain, regardless of the radicals pulling them into chaos, the Republicans would no doubt be pretty offended if Britain brought in some Catalonian nationalists and moderate Monarchists to 'sort things out'.
 
Yeah, but if the Republican Left held onto power in the Republican government longer or if they were able to mount an electoral comeback with promises of British support, that would make negotiations legitimate. That's what I was speaking of.
 

Cook

Banned
Active involvement from the British and possibly the French…

France’s Popular Front Prime Minister Leon Blum wanted to provide support to the Spanish Popular Front but the proposal was so unpopular that there were fears that it would result in a Civil War or Coup in France.

that Britain would consider actively interfering on the Republican side of the Spanish civil war if the Nationalists continued to attack British shipping in the Mediterranean…

The problem is that British Intelligence and the Foreign Office were well aware that the Republican attacks on British shipping were carried out by the Italians. A wider war loomed.
 
France’s Popular Front Prime Minister Leon Blum wanted to provide support to the Spanish Popular Front but the proposal was so unpopular that there were fears that it would result in a Civil War or Coup in France.
Actually, I believe Blum agreed to send artillery and aircraft, but Baldwin applied pressure on Blum (along with more right-wing members of the French cabinet), so it was rescinded.
 

Cook

Banned
Actually, I believe Blum agreed to send artillery and aircraft, but Baldwin applied pressure on Blum (along with more right-wing members of the French cabinet), so it was rescinded.

Don’t know about that bit.

When Blum proposed it in cabinet the Radicles threatened to walk out which would have toppled the government and his advisors warned that the army could not be counted as reliable. There were still mutterings of ‘better Hitler than Blum’ in the army when the panzers rolled in in 1940.
 
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