Lou Kenton (1908 –2012) was an English potter, who served as
an ambulance driver with the International Brigade and was its oldest surviving
member at the time of his death.
Lou Kenton during the SCW (seated, with beret)
Kenton was born in Stepney, east London to a Jewish
Ukrainian family who had escaped the Tsarist pogroms. His father died from
Tuberculosis when he was young, and as he left school aged 14 he worked in a
paper factory where he first encountered anti-Semitism. This led him to join
the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1929.
In early 1937, Kenton left Stepney to join the International
Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. His wife, an exiled Austrian nurse from Nazi
Germany, shortly followed him. When he arrived at the International Brigades
headquarters in Albacete, he applied to join the International Brigade's
Medical Unit. It was from there that he spent nearly two years in action as an
Ambulance driver on the front lines, as well as distributing medical supplies
to hospitals across the country. He left for Britain in late 1938 on an 'Aid
for Spain' fund-raising mission to raise money for a new Ambulance but by the
time his tour was over, the International Brigades were withdrawn.
After the International Brigades were withdrawn, Kenton was
hugely depressed. One of his missions was to hand the Basque refugees given
asylum in the United Kingdom back to the Spanish authorities. It was "the
first time I saw the fascist police in their three-cornered hats. All the
children were in tears and all of them were hanging on to me as we checked each
one and handed them over."
After the Lidice massacre in Czechoslovakia in 1942, Kenton
joined the British "Lidice Shall Live" organisation. He was an active
member for many years and in the 1990s served as its chairman.
Kenton remained a devout communist, working tirelessly on
trade union organisation, unemployed marches and party activities until 1968
when the Prague Spring was suppressed by the Soviet Union. He then joined the
Labour Party and remained a member for the rest of his life.
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