Word: bilbao
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Immingham Dock, Humber River, in the north of England, the little freighter Backworth last week loaded $10,000 worth of sugar, flour, fruit and dried salt fish for starving Basques in Spain's besieged Bilbao. More than one-tenth of the cargo was paid for by David Lloyd George who seldom misses a chance to make political capital of anything. Down to the dock hurried Britain's Wartime Prime Minister to wring Captain Russell of the Backworth by the hand...
...Bilbao blockade went the Backworth with the blessings of most Britons behind it. Not Lloyd George or even the Back-worth was responsible for the sudden pro-Leftist switch in British opinion last week but a group of blustering captains of rusty little British freighters. While the British Cabinet worried over Generalissimo Franco's blockade, the captains, three of whom were named Jones, and their cargoes of spoiling food remained marooned in the French harbor of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. First to catch the public eye was Captain David ("Potato") Jones, part-owner of the Marie Llewellyn and nicknamed...
Potato Jones and Captain Roberts having started the parade, within six days half-a-dozen freighters ran the blockade into Bilbao, if not with the official protection of Britain's Navy, at least within range of its guns...
Doubting Thomases suggested that there was more to the British sympathy for Bilbao than pure altruism for a besieged city. Vitally needed for Welsh steel mills, now on 24-hour schedules as part of Britain's rearmament, is iron ore from Basque mines. And Welsh farmers have long had a private arrangement with Basque potato growers. From carefully tended fields they ship high-priced seed potatoes to Bilbao twice a year, take back in exchange mature food potatoes, grown in Spain's warm and dry climate...
England exhausted her iron faster than coal, and now finds it convenient to export coal to such a city as Bilbao, bringing the ships home laden with ore. British capital and coal has enabled the city to build up a steel industry, though three-fourths of the iron that reaches the city is exported to England. Germany has never had sufficient iron. It is no accident, therefore, that the headquarters of the German "volunteers" in Spain have been set up at Devo, thirty miles from Bilbao, and these troops are leading the attempt to reduce the defenses of the Northern...