Tom Picton, why d’you go to Spain,
some bastard get you drunk again?
Was in the Railway Bar,
never knew his name.
Said he’d see me in Espanya,
put me on the Cardiff train.
Tom Picton, why d’you go to Spain,
you punchy now, got clots on the brain?
Had his fill of punching holes
in butties on the mountain,
a gutsful of picking coals
now Maudie’s gone again.
Tom Picton, why d’you go to Spain,
think you’ll stand a bullet’s pain?
Can always duck and bend
see boy. Only bullet
that can kill me, friend,
has got my name on it.
Tom Picton, Twmmy boy, why d’you go to Spain?
For Christsake, mun, I came.
by Robert Harvard
Fun fact: Tom Picton actually existed.
Thomas Issac Picton was born in 1895 and became a miner in Treherbert, Rhonnda Fawr, South Wales. He was one-time amateur middle weight boxing champion of Wales. During the 1914-18 War he was light-heavy weight champion in the Navy. His ships were torpedoed on two occasions and received decorations for bravery on two occasions. Tom was a noted bare-knuckle `mountain’ fighter in the years after the war…
Like most of his generation, class and nationhood, Picton became radicalised by the experiences of the 1920s and 1930s. He was a close friend of Communist Councillor George Thomas of Treherbert but little else marked him out from the ordinary until he became aware of the consequences of the passing, on the 11th January 1937, by the British Government of the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870 applicable to the Spanish Civil War. The effect was to criminalise the finest segment of British youth of the 1930s in the shape of all who volunteered to fight for the International Brigade in Spain…
Enraged by the unfairness of this Act and despite his age – he was 52 years – Picton must have convinced his way into the IB due to his fitness and legendary prowess as a fist-fighter. He joined the Communist Party either just before going to Spain, or actually while in Spain. But, unfortunately, he was one of those detained in France. Yet, miraculously, even inexplicably, he found himself freed from jail and finally arrived in Spain…
Tom Picton was taken prisoner and executed despite being a prisoner of war in San Pedro de Cardeña, a prison in Bilbao, by Franco’s fascists in April 1938. His widow, Maud, had always refused to believe the news, as no body was found. Maud spent years on several futile visits to Spain to try to establish his whereabouts, on which she took her daughter.
The poem was probably written prior to the confirmation of his death hence the discrepancy with the later confirmed date of death. Tom was likely deemed a casualty of war and his date of death only given as that of the civil war’s end as no more accurate information was available at that time.
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