IN SPRING, in the presence of relatives of some of the Teesside Volunteers, we dedicated the Stockton International Brigade Memorial. This meant that on Teesside we had both the youngest and the oldest International Brigade memorials in the UK.

My friend Bob Beagrie, a Senior lecturer at Teesside University, performed at the dedication events that day; since 2020 he has regularly performed his poems at our annual commemorations. A collection of his poems inspired by the International Brigade entitled Romanceros is due to be published shortly. Whilst working on this collection, just six weeks after the dedication, Bob asked me about Thomas Carter; a volunteer from Hartlepool who is named on the Teesside memorial. I replied adding a eulogy written in 1937 by George Short, the Communist Party district secretary for Teesside.

After rereading the eulogy the line “In a letter from his commander, also of Teesside . . .” caught my eye because the only company commander from Teesside at this time was Bert Overton of No 4 Company and Thomas Carter was in No 2 Company. Bill Meredith would command No 2 Company but he was from Bellingham in Northumberland, not Teesside. 

Two weeks earlier I’d been in Teesside Archives to make notes on a 1982 interview of George Short conducted by Bert Ward. George had spoken about the 21 International Brigade volunteers that he had organised, and crucially about the 10 volunteers named on the Teesside Memorial. George’s testimony shows the Northumberland-born Ron Dennison was on Teesside before going to Spain; he recalled that Ron joined the Communist Party in 1932 after the West Hartlepool Police beat him up and that he was active in the National Unemployed Workers Movement. He must have kept his Communist Party membership secret because he was also branch secretary of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers and was Labour Party secretary for Chilton and St Cuthbert’s ward in Billingham, which is now Billingham South – by a remarkable coincidence this is my electoral ward.

It appears that Ron Dennison was a trusted and respected Communist Party activist; he was made “responsible” for 37 volunteers who travelled from London and arrived in Spain on the January 14 transport. In Spain he used the alias Bill Meredith, was appointed as sergeant in the No 2 (Machine Gun) Company. He wrote the battalion military diary which means he has left us vivid testimony, especially of the first engagement of the British Battalion at the Battle of Jarama. His account of an incident on February 13 1937, when 30 members of the machine gun company were captured, tells us how two north-east England volunteers fought side by side:
 
“A moment later Overton led a bayonet charge to save our comrades who had been shamefully deceived. Forty men climbed to the top of the parapet and charged. Their faces showed their determination to take back the trench or die in the attempt. But the enemy machine guns were turned against us, and out of forty men only six of us came back.”

After the battle Bill Meredith commanded No 2 Company and was promoted lieutenant on June 25 1937. Tragically he was killed a fortnight later in the Battle of Brunete on the evening of July 6 1937. Fred Copeman, who was battalion commander at the time, recalls in his memoir:

“A runner from No 2 company reported that Bill Meredith had been killed. I couldn’t believe it. I had only spoken to him a moment before. Bill was very sentimental but had a heart of gold. He was a member of the Labour Party, very conscientious, anxious to become a good officer, and even more anxious to make a contribution to the Republic. He had gone to help a wounded man lying in the road. Bending over in the semi-darkness, he received a bullet in the heart. The lad who reported it was sobbing like a kid. I didn’t feel at all nice myself. . . . A bloke was lying on the road calling. And by now the only light was the flames from the village. Bill Meredith went over to help him and it was one of these fascists, as old Bill bent over to help him the fascist shot him.”

After some research I have since established that Joseph Ronald Dennison was born in Billingham, Stockton-on-Tees in October 1912, and not Bellingham in Northumberland as it has been recorded since 1939. He is named on the Teesside Memorial; but this is not accessible to the general public and irritatingly he is not named on the Stockton Memorial. 

We will remember Lieutenant Ron Dennison at our Teesside commemorative events and I have launched a funding campaign to erect a memorial to this volunteer for liberty who served my local community before losing his life fighting fascism in Spain.

What is especially pleasing is that Abby and Owen, the designers of our wonderful Stockton memorial, have agreed to work with me on this memorial to Ron Dennison. Picasso’s Guernica inspired their design for the Stockton memorial, this new memorial will be inspired by the work of Joan Miro whose mural The Reaper was displayed along with Picasso’s Guernica in the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exhibition. We feel that this link will help associate Ron Dennison’s memorial to the memorial we already have to his fellow Stockton International Brigade volunteers. 

If you would like to support the memorial campaign visit: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/Ron-Dennison-Memorial or visit https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091841936969