On what would have been her birthday, we look back at an unsung working class hero who ventured to Barcelona, helped her anarchist comrades escape prison and became known as the Scots Scarlet Pimpernel
On this day in 1909, Ethel MacDonald was born – a fiery anarchist who would one day become the English-speaking voice of the workers’ struggle in Spain during the bloody civil war.
Aged 27, the working class activist was sent to Barcelona – the beating heart of the social revolution – to cover the events which unfolded as the Republican government faced off General Franco’s Nationalist rebel armies in 1936.
A free-spirited girl – and one of nine children – Ethel was described as a star pupil at Motherwell High School, though like many of her time, she left without qualifications to look for work.
