"In the general interest of peace" - British international lawyers and the Spanish civil war

Abstract

The first section of this study examines the establishment of the international non-intervention agreement and of the London Committee and their combined neutralizing effect on the League of Nations in the light of a series of underlying factors, including the European powers´ leaning towards neutrality in the late interwar period. The second section reviews the core issues and different doctrinal positions present in the international legal debates triggered by the Spanish Civil War. It pays particular attention to the contributions of the first two British judges at the International Court of Justice, A. D. McNair (1946-1955) and H. Lauterpacht (1955-1960) to these debates. Their writings can be seen as respectively representative of the two stages through which British international lawyers went in the international legal debates on the Spanish Civil War. Upto early 1938, British International lawyers adopted a characteristically apologetic approach to the policy undertaken by the British Government on the advice of the British Foreign Office. The second stage, from early 1938 to the end of the Spanish Civil War in March 1939, was in turn informed by a “practitioner´s approach” to the analysis of the domestic cases brought before the British courts as a result of the hostilities. The article concludes with a brief analysis of the case for British “benevolent neutrality to the Nationalists”26 in the Spanish Civil War, reviewing the underlying motives which historians have highlighted as lurking behind the British-led non-intervention policy in the Spanish Civil War.