At the beginning of November 1940, Sir Alexander Cadogan, with a bureaucratic sense of detachment from the passions of politics, commented, thus, upon an apparently perplexing aspect of British political behaviour: ‘Any Spanish topic makes the politicians go all hay-wire and Attlee, otherwise a dormouse becomes like a rabid rabbit. Why?’ However, if Cadogan had forgotten already the emotions aroused by the Spanish Civil War, then many British politicians had not. Churchill himself, had testified, on 5 April 1938, to the fundamental cleavage in British political life caused by the Spanish struggle: ‘As between Spanish Nationalists and Republicans, British sympathies are divided. Strong elements in the Conservative Party regard the cause of Franco as their own. All the Parties of the “Left” feel outraged by its triumph.’ But it was naturally amongst Labour and radical circles that vestigial civil wartime loyalties remained most vital, sustained as they were by resentment at the defeat of their Spanish comrades. Prominent members of the Labour movement, of course, were now part of Churchill's National Coalition government, and they might be expected to feel uneasy about the Hoare-Halifax policy for Spain. All the more so, when this policy bore the marks of the despised and discredited appeasement. Halifax reminded Hoare, on 24 September 1940, that large sections of British parliamentary and public opinion rejected, or only accepted very grudgingly, ‘our present policy towards Spain’.