John McNair
The Independent Labour Party's representative in Barcelona, who walked through blacked-out streets under two Anarchist patrols to deliver two packets of Lucky Strikes because Orwell had made a joke about cigarettes on the telephone.
In Orwell's account, to be where the people he was responsible for were. He crossed back into Spain after the party he represented had been outlawed, and stayed until the last of the English were over the frontier.
The book
At a glance
- The I.L.P. representative in Barcelona
- Chapter 10, on the first night of the May fighting
- Wanted by the police; in hiding with Orwell and Cottman
- By train to Port Bou, then on to Paris
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeJohn McNair ran the Independent Labour Party's operation in Barcelona, which is how the English volunteers reached the P.O.U.M. militia rather than any other. He enters the book on the first night of the May 1937 street fighting, at the end of a telephone. Orwell, stuck in the P.O.U.M. local committee building with a rifle he had already had stolen off him, spent an hour searching room to room for a guide-book that would give him the number of the Hotel Continental, failed to reach his wife, and got McNair instead. Asked whether they needed anything, he said as a joke that they would be all right if they had some cigarettes.
Half an hour later McNair turned up with two packets of Lucky Strikes. He had crossed the blacked-out city on foot and been stopped twice at pistol point by Anarchist patrols who examined his papers. "I shall not forget this small act of heroism," Orwell writes, and then adds, without changing register, that they were very glad of the cigarettes.
He did the same thing on a larger scale a month later. When the P.O.U.M. was declared illegal on 16 June he was in France and safe. He came back across the frontier into a city where the police were arresting everyone connected with the party — a rash thing to do, in Orwell's words, but he had not cared to stay in safety while his comrades were in danger. There was already a warrant out for his arrest. He spent the following nights in hiding with Orwell and Stafford Cottman, sleeping in long grass at the edge of a derelict building lot, and the days behaving like a prosperous English tourist in restaurants where nobody knew his face.
How the book draws them
- Two packets of Lucky StrikesDelivered on foot through streets emptied by rifle fire, after Orwell mentioned cigarettes on the telephone as a joke. He was stopped twice at the pistol's point by Anarchist patrols on the way.
- Back across the frontierHe was in France when the P.O.U.M. was suppressed and re-entered Spain afterwards. Orwell calls the decision rash and explains it in one line: he had not cared to stay in safety while his comrades were in danger.
- The warrantThere was one out in his name while he was still walking around Barcelona. The first newspaper the party saw after crossing into France announced his arrest for espionage, which had not happened.
- Sleeping roughA night in long grass at the edge of a derelict building lot with Orwell and Cottman, cold for the time of year, nobody sleeping much, and a long wait before any café opened for coffee.
- The British ConsulateThe rendezvous, at ten in the morning. It was there that he and Cottman told Orwell that Bob Smillie was dead. The consul, who Orwell says must have had a very trying week, got their passports in order.
- Looking bourgeoisThe four of them spent the daylight hours in the fashionable quarter, in expensive restaurants, being very English with the waiters, on the theory that after a night outdoors a shave and a shoe-shine do most of the work.