Britain and the Basque Campaign of 1937: The Government, the Royal Navy, the Labour Party and the Press.

To a large extent, the reaction of foreign powers dictated both the course and the outcome of the Civil War. The policies of four of the five major protagonists, Britain, France, Germany and Italy were substantially influenced by hostility to the fifth, the Soviet Union. Suspicion of the Soviet Union had been a major determinant of the international diplomacy of the Western powers since the revolution of October 1917. The Spanish conflict was the most recent battle in a European civil war. The early tolerance shown to both Hitler and Mussolini in the international arena was a tacit sign of approval of their policies towards the left in general and towards communism in particular. During the Spanish Civil War, it became apparent that this British and French complaisance regarding Italian and German social policies was accompanied by myopia regarding Fascist and Nazi determination to alter the international balance of power. Yet even when such ambitions could no longer be ignored, the residual sympathy for fascism of British policy-makers ensured that their first response would be simply to try to divert such ambitions in an anti-communist, and therefore Eastwards, direction