Ethel MacDonald

Another Kate Sharpley Library paean to forgotten and little known anarchists of history, this is the life story of Ethel MacDonald, who travelled to Spain, became a significant media reporter via radio of events of the war, and was imprisoned by the communists.

MacDonald left home at sixteen and did a variety of jobs over the next couple of years, then joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Impressed by her revolutionary zeal Guy Aldred appointed her secretary of the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation (APCF), a breakaway group from the Communist Party of Great Britain.
In June 1934 MacDonald and Aldred and were both involved in the formation of the United Socialist Movement (USM), an anarcho-communist political organisation based in Scotland. Several members of the Independent Labour Party who had lost their belief in the parliamentary road to socialism joined the party.
On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War she travelled with Jenny Patrick, to Barcelona as a representative of the USM. Soon afterwards she was employed by the CNT-FAI's foreign language information centre. Later she gave nightly English-language political broadcasts on Radio Barcelona.
MacDonald claimed that Durruti had been killed by a member of the Communist Party (PCE) and did what she could do investigate the killing.
MacDonald soon had a strong following for her radio broadcasts. The Glasgow Herald reported: "A prominent news editor in Hollywood says that he has received hundred of letters concerning Ethel MacDonald..."