A year after he joined the CPGB the British police launched a widespread campaign to incarcerate supposed communists. Between 1933 and 1934, approximately twenty-eight leading Cypriot communists were imprisoned with sentences ranging up to four years. Michael remained steadfast. He did not rescind his party membership and he continued reading the Daily Worker newspaper - founded by the CPGB in 1930. On more than one occasion Michael and his comrades disrupted Oswald Mosley and his fascist thugs from meeting at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
The awful living conditions Michael had to contend with meant that he and his close friend Ezekias Papaioannou (SGSI: 21 August 2026) spent more time in Soho than their home in north London. Nowadays, fancy coffee shops selling matcha lace the streets of Soho. However, back then, the London neighbourhood welcomed activists across the progressive political spectrum. Both Michael and Ezekias spent hours in coffee houses discussing politics which, by 1936, gravitated towards the growing crisis in Spain.
Then, on 3 August 1936, the Communist International (Comintern) announced a campaign of solidarity to defend the Spanish Second Republic. Not long after the announcement, a protest erupted in London. When Ezekias heard someone spreading the word for enlisting in the International Brigades, he found Michael and fellow compatriot Tony Theodolou and went to London Victoria station.
Only Tony managed to board a train. The CPGB refused Michael permission because he did not fit the criteria for men with certain skills (carpentry, building, plumbing, electrical, mechanical and radio) nor possess prior military experience. On top of that, British Special Branch were monitoring his movements. As they knew he was a communist wanting to go to Spain, they delayed the renewal of his passport.
Eventually, his British passport was renewed. Then, after a couple of weeks, the CPGB changed its policy to allow those without military experience to go. A certain R.W. (Robbie) Robson greeted Michael and Ezekias when they tried to leave for Spain a second time. A First World War veteran and a leading CPGB official in London, Robbie oversaw the interviewing of prospective volunteers for the Brigades. Once Robbie gave them the go ahead, Michael and Ezekias departed from London Victoria station and took the train and Channel ferry crossing to Paris.
From Paris the two took a train to Perpignan. After a medical check-up they got on a bus and crossed the border into Spain; arriving in Figueras on 7 December 1936. They then travelled (via Barcelona) to Albacete, finally arriving at the International Brigades base in Madrigueras.
Membership of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE)
Part of his role as political commissar of the British Battalion of the 15th (XV) Brigade included safeguarding the well-being of the volunteers. Things sometimes got out of hand. On one occasion a British volunteer insulted a Cypriot by calling him a greasy Greek. Michael responded by pointing out that the Brigades was the last place he expected to hear such offensive language.
When the Brigades eventually withdrew from Spain in September 1938, Michael passed through the Catalonian village Ripoll before taking a train through France, arriving back in London on 7 December 1938. His wounds in Spain meant that he could not fight in the Second World War. He did, however, contribute indirectly to the war effort by working in munitions factories in both London and Cambridge.
After the Greek Civil War erupted in 1946 some of his comrades from the Brigades assisted the Greek resistance. Michael, however, stayed in London. As an active member of the Cypriot struggle for independence, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Committee for Cyprus Affairs, to which he later became its Secretary. In 1946, he even attended the Paris Peace Conference as part of the Cypriot delegation.
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| Michael (second right) in Dublin |
Throughout the period of the Greek junta (1967-74), Michael attended marches and other events in London to protest the plight of the Greek people. Alongside his son Kim, he attended a rally in Trafalgar Square in 1968. Kim still remembers the actor Melina Mercouri denouncing the junta as 'butchers'.
Things eventually came full circle on 5 November 1996 when Michael received his honorary Spanish citizenship along with other veterans of the International Brigades. A celebratory concert at a sports stadium in Madrid marked the special occasion. Out of the blue Michael appears on the stage. As he approaches the microphone a dead silence falls across the stadium. Michael starts reciting Rafael Alberti's 'Capital de la gloria. Madrid-otono'. All of the emotions and memories coalesce in this lovely moment, as a rapturous applause greets Michael when he finishes.
When Michael recited the poem in Madrid he was already very ill. Not long after he returned to Britain he was admitted to Exeter hospital. And, on 25 November 1996, he sadly passed away.
After Michael died the baton for keeping alive his memory passed to his son Kim. Now, Michael's grandchildren Zoe and Alex are currently also applying for Spanish citizenship under Article 33 of the Spanish ‘Democratic Memory’ law, which grants Spanish citizenship to descendants of the Internationals who have worked to uphold the memory of their ancestors. When Kim was granted this at the end of 2025, he met with me for a beer not far from the British Museum.
To be sat with Kim only a stone's throw from where Michael once discussed politics with Ezekias and others could not have been more fitting. Kim described the ignorance in Cyprus about the Spanish Civil War. With only two memorials to Cypriot antifascists, Kim believes that Cyprus has a ‘moral debt’ to erect a monument to his father Michael, and the other Cypriots who travelled to Spain in 1936.
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