George Drever

George Drever (31 March 1910 – 1996) was a Scottish communist and volunteer with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.

Early life, education, work, communism Drever was born on 31 March 1910 in Leith, one of eleven children of an Orcadian couple, dock labourer George Drever and his wife Louisa née Balfour. in 1928. Despite his poor home background he was admitted to study pure science and graduated with a B.Sc in chemistry with First Class Honours and completed a Ph.D. Then he was working for Imperial Chemical Industries in Manchester as a research chemist, before being made redundant, which he claimed was due to his political activism as a communist in 1937. in Sheffield.

Volunteering for the International Brigades

Drever was one of around 500 Scottish volunteers who went to Spain in 1937 to fight for the Republicans and the working class struggle against fascism. Drever was also one of those who were pragmatically aware that the Republican cause was unlikely to succeed, even before he left.

He was considered it strange that fellow communist thought he would not need to carry his own pack as a volunteer soldier, as he was from the educated classes.

The volunteers assembled at the London Communist Party HQ before arriving in Paris and sending his mother a postcard "don't worry'.

The group entered Spain secretly on foot through the Pyrenees and were greeted at Figueras by some hungry Republican soldiers and local people before travelling on by train to Tarazona for basic training. despite being only 21 also expected to be chosen (as he had disobeyed an interdict on returning to Spain), and was indeed selected and executed. Jimmy's loss was mourned by his fisher community in Newhaven, and he was described as 'one of Scotland's National Heroes, who gave his life for an ideal'. Drever wrote in code to inform their Communist Party comrades in Edinburgh of his loss. and memorials in Leith and his home area of Westray, Orkney, He was pleased that his mother did not repay the death insurance that had been claimed, although he had to pay his return fare from Spain to the British Government. He had trouble finding employment in any of the Edinburgh chemical firms (having been declared dead, as a known Communist) and so had to move to Sheffield.

Drever also was in a group pictured for Glasgow Herald 5 December 1981 and in the National Galleries newsletter in 2009 with a photograph from 1986, when a memorial to volunteers was unveiled in Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh.

His son David wrote to the National Galleries in 1986, that his family:..have his death certificate, issued by the Republican government in Spanish, which was sent to my grandmother after he was lost in action. Also his obituary, as a well known Leith communist, appeared in local newspapers and in the Orkney Herald at the time (both his parents were from Westray). In addition a memorial meeting was held to celebrate his life - and no doubt to raise further funds for the struggle. The story had a happy ending and he turned up very alive and was repatriated after the fall of the Republic...

...Socialist politics remains the lifeblood of our family and his children and grandchildren are immensely proud of his part in one of the great democratic struggles of the 20th century.