Michael Samaras’s research credentials are well known. It was his work that exposed the dark past of Wollongong Art Gallery’s first benefactor and won 2022’s Local History Prize with the essay, Discovering A Secret Nazi: Bob Sredersas And The Gift.

For his new book, Anti-Fascists: Jim McNeill and his mates in the Spanish Civil War, Michael has again delved deep into forgotten histories – travelling to Spain, sourcing documents from Russia, finding archival treasure in an old box. The result is a unique history of Australia’s pioneers against fascism, including Wollongong steelworkers who fought Franco’s forces in the 1930s.

“What people like Jim and his friends did is quite remarkable,” Michael says. “They're very important, courageous people who had the courage of their convictions to stand up and say no to fascism.”

Copies of the book are arriving today at Collins Booksellers Thirroul and at an event on April 30 Michael will be sharing his story in conversation with Stephen Jones MP, a friend since his student days at University of Wollongong.

City no longer ‘honouring a Nazi’

Michael is Wollongong born and bred, serving as a councillor from 1991-1995. His varied career ranged from working as political staffer with the Labor Party to corporate roles, including as media manager at Sydney Airport. Now retired and living in Sydney, Michael says “an affinity with Wollongong” drew him back to local history.

“Then once you start, it gets addictive,” he says.

“During the Covid lockdowns is when I did all that work on the art gallery benefactor and uncovering that he had a very dark Nazi past was quite incredible.

“I got a lot of satisfaction from uncovering that and resulting in a change. They no longer have the Sredersas dinner or lecture in his honour, which is a good thing. We weren't being conned into honouring a Nazi.”

This time, Michael’s not rewriting history; with Jim McNeil, he’s breaking new ground.

“People have known about him, but not at the detail that I've looked into.”

While he acknowledges readers may draw modern parallels with Anti-Fascists, Michael says, “The book's not didactic. It's not talking about current events, it is a history book. But people no doubt will contemplate his life and take their own lessons from it.”

Striking it rich, historically

Two years ago, Michael started his research, as he always does, with a death certificate.

Jim’s showed he had a daughter named Vanessa. Michael realised he knew Vanessa – a councillor on Holroyd Council when he was on Wollongong Council – so he paid her a visit and struck gold. 

“She pulled out a very dusty suitcase from under a bed in the spare room. And there was all her dad's stuff from the Spanish Civil War.”

There were more rich seams to mine.

“In 1974, he'd done an oral history interview with Wendy Lowenstein – a small part of it had appeared in her book, Weevils in the Flour, which is an oral history of the Great Depression in Australia. So I thought, 'Oh, well, I'll find out where that tape is'.”

It wasn’t in the National Library of Australia, where interviews were meant to be kept.

“They're all there except Jim’s. But then I tracked down Wendy Lowenstein’s daughter, Marty, she turned out to be a lovely person and found the tapes in the garage – incredibly, the tapes could still be played.

“So I had this voice that no one had heard for 50 years talking about his life and his experiences and the people he met and what he did. It's untold histories.”

Three times into the breach

Michael says it’s inexplicable that Jim McNeil’s history has been overlooked.

“He's an extraordinary person because as far as I can tell, he's one of only two or three Australians who fought fascism three times.

“Firstly on the streets of Sydney, he fought the New Guard and was shot at in Drummoyne. The New Guard was around in the Great Depression and like the Australian version of Mussolini's Blackshirts or Hitler's Stormtroopers.

“Then he went to the Spanish Civil War, stowed away on the bottom of a meat ship and fought Franco's fascists in Spain and then got injured, got machine gunned.”

Invalided out of one war, Jim returned to Wollongong until, in 1939, it was time for another.

“He was pretty much first in line to join up in World War II, to go back to Europe to fight the fascists again. This man was an anti-fascist soldier, a fighter.”

Jim had no ties with Spain and didn’t speak the language. “But he'd been up close and seen them in Drummoyne, how much they hated working people and what they would do if they were in power,” Michael said.

“The war in Spain had started when there'd been this fascist military insurrection against a democratically elected government, so it was sort of fascism versus democracy, and that's why they all went. It was the last great cause.

“[Ernest] Hemingway went, George Orwell went, Stephen Spender went. Through the 1930s, there was appeasement, where people didn't stand up to the dictators. They let Hitler get away with things, step by step. They let Mussolini get away with things. And there was a feeling amongst people on the left that now was a time to take a stand, to say stop.”

When World War II came, Jim lowered his age to enlist, claiming to be 34 when he was 40, and sailed on the Queen Mary with thousands of Australian troops. He got as far as England before being reassigned to the Australian Forestry Company in Scotland, and ended up making timber for the war effort.

‘A very committed political person’

Jim was born in 1900 into working-class Sydney and it was his political conscience that drove him to fight, Michael says. 

“He wasn't looking for fame and fortune… he was a very committed political person.”

In the 1920s, Jim joined the Industrial Workers of the World (aka the Wobblies), then the fledgling Communist Party. He remained a member until he died but didn’t toe the line on matters of conscience, including going to fight in World War II.

“On many of the big decisions, he makes his own mind up and gets things right,” Michael says.

The book also tells the stories of Jim’s mates in Spain, including two from Wollongong: a seaman named Ken McPhee and a fellow steelworker Joe Carter.

Both Jim and Joe came to Wollongong to find work.

“They'd suffered terribly, these men in the Depression, being hungry,” Michael says. “You can't imagine it in Australia. That's one of the things that come through in the book is just how terrible the Depression was. The degradation and humiliation of the depression of mass unemployment and how it damages people.”

Research from over the world

Michael sourced photos from New York University Library and primary documents from websites in Moscow. He travelled to Spain, to the walled town of Montblanc in Catalonia and the vineyard where Jim was machine-gunned in the Battle of the Ebro.

Jim described it like this: "It was part of our plan to go about 300 yards in advance and then if we were forced back to retreat, 300 yards behind and take up our real position. On the way, in that 300 yards, I was hit in the leg, and I was a cot case. I was laying out there, bullets going all around me, and I crawled down, there was a terraced grapevine, and I got down behind the first terrace, about 18 inches, and I was quite safe.

"Grapes were hanging on the vines around me, but the slightest move resulted in a burst of fire that kicked up the dust unpleasantly close, so I couldn’t use the grapes to quench my thirst."

Michael also went to Hill 481, where two of Jim’s friends were killed, and Jarama, where another was captured and executed in one of the first battles with the international brigades.

“It was a very intense and moving experience to actually go where it happened, and to walk the places and understand how hard it was, what they were trying to do. Hill 481 – I just think, how could you have a battle here? You couldn't even dig a trench. It's just rock. It's just extraordinary what they did, the sort of the bravery and determination and commitment that they believed in.”

What’s next

Published by Connor Court, Anti-Fascists is hot off the press and stocked locally at Collins Booksellers Thirroul. Meanwhile, Michael has started on his next book.

“I'm going back to write up some more Nazis in Australia,” he says. “They didn't successfully hide like Sredersas did, but people don't know their stories and what they mean. And I want to explore that a bit more.”

On April 30, Michael Samaras will be in conversation with Stephen Jones MP, discussing Anti-Fascists. Alexander Brown will host the evening at Ryan's Hotel, Thirroul, 6.30 for 7pm start. Book via Humanitix or contact collins@thirroulbooks.com.au