MILLIONS of visitors flock to the London Eye each year, earning it a global reputation as the city’s top attraction.

It’s probably the most well recognised, and critics have claimed it’s iconic, innovative — even inspiring. Well, up to a point, says this cynical Londoner. It’s not exactly on a par with the Eiffel Tower, is it?

It’s now 25 years old, has carried more than 85 million customers, and seen a few hundred marriage proposals, as lovers pop the question in a pod.

Just opposite, in the quieter green space of Jubilee Gardens, is a much more humble creation. You won’t find this one on postcards, or starring in Hollywood films. It’s not showy, this gentle, curved sculpture of blackened bronze. But it attracts outpourings of love, and deep abiding respect. People gather around it, bring flowers and wreaths, sing and raised clenched fists.

This is the International Brigade memorial by the sculptor Ian Walter. On one face of the plinth is an inscription honouring “the 2,100 men and women volunteers who left these shores to fight side by side with the Spanish people in their heroic struggle against fascism 1936-1939. Many were wounded and maimed, 526 were killed. Their example inspired the world.”

Another face carries the words, “They went because their open eyes could see no other way,” an adaption of a line from Cecil Day Lewis’s poem, The Volunteer.

There is more poetry on another side of the plinth, with Byron’s line from Childe Harold quoted by Shelley in his Ode to Liberty: “Yet freedom! Yet the banner, torn but flying, streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.”

It’s here that so many of us will gather on July 5, at the annual commemoration held by the International Brigade Memorial Trust (IBMT). Families of brigaders, nurses and ambulance drivers who served in Spain will stand alongside trade unionists, socialists, anarchists, every one pledged to anti-fascism today and every day.

The memorial itself, standing four metres high, is a thing of great beauty. The Imperial War Museum has a description of it: “Sculpted abstract group. Four figures support a wounded, kneeling figure, their free arms outstretched. Two of the figures have open palms in the act of fending off to protect, and two have their fists clenched, expressing defiant resistance.”

This year sees the 40th anniversary of the memorial’s unveiling. That’s special enough, but there is much more to the story, as IBMT chair Jim Jump explains. The project was fraught with “politics and cliff-hanging drama,” involving “Red Ken” Livingstone (then leader of the Greater London Council, the left-wing GLC), brigaders themselves, and interference from Livingstone’s arch nemesis Margaret Thatcher.

Says Jump: “The impetus for a national memorial emerged in the years following Franco’s death in 1975 and the process of restoring democracy in Spain.

“Through the International Brigade Association [forerunner of the IBMT], the veterans had, until Spain’s often fraught ‘transicion,’ concentrated on campaigning against the country’s brutal dictatorship and on behalf of its many political prisoners.

“Now, with the approach of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Spanish civil war in 1986, they could devote efforts to a national memorial to their more than 500 fallen comrades and to all those anti-fascist volunteers who had, as the memorial says ‘left these shores’ to go to Spain. These were carefully chosen words to include all the Irish, Cypriots and those from the dominions and colonies who didn’t count themselves as ‘British’.”

The GLC provided important allies in the quest. Its chair Illtyd Harrington was the son of a brigader, Timothy Harrington. In fact, the GLC man’s mother Sally had also formed his beliefs. Once hearing the national organiser of the British Union of Fascists speak, she went at him, beating the fascist with her shoe.

The GLC agreed to prove a site for the memorial next to its headquarters in County Hall.

Jump picks up the story: “The International Brigade Memorial Appeal was set up, bringing together Brigade veterans with family members and supporters. They began raising the necessary funds, including an £18,800 grant from the GLC.”

After six leading sculptors had submitted ideas, in December 1984 the commission was given to Ian Walters. The artist, who died in 2006, came with perfect credentials, having  taken part in Tito’s public sculpture programmes in Yugoslavia in the early 1960s and worked with the African National Congress in the 1970s. His other work includes the head of Nelson Mandela, outside the Royal Festival Hall since 1984, and the full-length statue of Mandela in Parliament Square.

Jump again: “‘Red Ken’ was becoming a thorn in the side of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She announced that she would abolish the GLC. Her attack galvanised campaigners. At the meeting of the IBMA on January 8 1985, the appeal’s chair Bill Alexander said it was now ‘essential to hold the unveiling ceremony while the GLC is still in control.’

“With the clock ticking, plans for an unveiling on 19 July 1986 were scrapped and Ian Walters was told to speed things up for the new deadline in October 1985. The deadline was met, though even after the unveiling uncertainty still hung over the memorial’s future.”

The IBA wanted a public event at the memorial on July 19 1986, the 50th anniversary of the fascist revolt, but the GLC allies would be out of office by then.

Jump: “Thankfully, not only did the 1986 event go ahead but a commemoration has taken place in July ever since.”

The fight to get the memorial made is a story of grit and defiance.

As Judith Dupre, historian of architecture, says: “More important than the monument that is finally built is the work that proceeds it.

“Finding a memorial’s most appropriate expression is a necessary psychological process that helps people work through issues, allowing resolution and healing. You could say that the monument we see is the tip of the commemorative iceberg.”

The bronze next to the London Eye certainly embodies the spirit of those it honours.

Thanks to the Marx Memorial Library (MML) archives, we have the words of the former British Battalion commander in Spain, Bill Alexander, who wrote of the London memorial in the December 1985 newsletter of the IBA.

“It symbolises, together with the many local memorials, the respect and admiration for those who stood up for their ideals and struggled against reaction and war at a critical point of mankind’s history.

“The tribute paid to the International Brigades and ‘all those who left these shores’ expresses the solidarity and brotherhood between all peoples, regardless of colour, creed or nation, united in their aims of liberty and peace.

“The memorial was made possible by the generous help of so many people and organisations of the widest range of political views and philosophies. The breadth of this support shows the deep, lasting commitment to the ideas of democracy and peace — from this we can draw more courage and confidence for the struggles of today.

“Since then the Establishment have made continuous and wide efforts to distort, denigrate and slander the achievements of the Spanish people and especially the role and motives of the international volunteers. We were dupes, adventurers taking part in a ‘civil war’ — and the lessons of the struggle never mentioned.

“The Tories and reactionaries did what they could, to the very last moment, to prevent the memorial coming into being.

“Its erection, its visible presence, seen by people from all parts of Britain and every country, will remind all of the eternal lesson of Spain — unity in struggle can halt reaction and war.”

Alexander, who died in 2000 at the age of 90, had been a prominent member of the CPGB, and president of the MML.

His words serve as a prescient warning to anti-fascists now, with the far right on the rise worldwide. Part of the purpose of this memorial, and others like it, is that it’s a place to rededicate ourselves to our anti-fascist action. Join us on July 5. Sing the Internationale in whichever language you can, as the brigaders did. Bring flowers, bring banners, bring your solidarity. No pasaran!

For more information visit international-brigades.org.uk.