User:Sayerslle/Walter Tapsell

Walter Tapsell was a British Communist - having been circulation manager for the Daily Worker - he became a political commissar in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. -

In April-May 1937 in Barcelona he met George Orwell - Orwell wanted to join the International Brigades at this point because he wanted to go to Madrid were it seemed he could be more useful - Tapsell had been instructed by the Communist Party to mingle with the ILP members. He wrote a report on Orwell for his Communist boss Harry Pollitt - saying Orwell was a man who had little political understanding but had grown disillusioned with POUM.

Events overtook Orwell's desire - and he no longer wished to leave the POUM militia - after the Barcelona May Days -