of the rest of the contingent returned to Britain over the next six months. Meanwhile, in Britain, the Communist Party press had been accusing both the ILP and POUM of being agents of fascism. The press published two interviews with former contingent member Frank Frankford claiming he had witnessed fraternisation at the front with the enemy, that Kopp was receiving his orders from Huesca and that the Nationalist faction even supplied the POUM with arms. The situation for the members of the ILP contingent in Spain was made extremely uncomfortable by the attacks on POUM and it became more so as the Communists banned the ILP's Spanish 'brother party'. The ILP made considerable efforts to get its members home safely and several of the ILP contingent made furtive returns home escaping police arrest. For example, Cottmann, McNair, Blair and his wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy, who had been working for McNair at the ILP office, made an escape across the border by train posing as wealthy English businessmen. Of those closely associated with the ILP contingent, the arrest of Kopp, the unit commander, and Milton, one of the American members of the contingent, were of particular concern. However, both were eventually released. Milton did not spend long in jail, as McNair ensured his release. Kopp on the other hand, despite attempted intervention on his behalf by the ILP, remained in prison for a further eighteen months. However, most attention both at the time and since, has focused on the case of Bob Smillie who died in jail in Valencia, officially of appendicitis, on 13 June. Smillie's death has been surrounded in mystery, and has been the subject of much speculation, focussing on accusations that he was "done to death" by the Communists. Although the issue remains controversial, recent scholarship tends to concur with the contemporary findings of the official ILP report into the investigation, conducted by David Murray of Motherwell ILP, found that the authorities were guilty of carelessness rather than violence or direct malice. Orwell had this to say on the matter, in Chapter 14 of Homage to Catalonia: Smillie, the first foreigner associated with the POUM to become a mortal victim of the Stalinist repression, had been detained at the French border accused of "carrying arms" - a dud hand-bomb was found among the various souvenirs he had with him. By November 1937, there were claimed to be 15,000 anti-fascist