A FRESH bid to install a memorial to Oxfordshire folk who fought in the Spanish Civil War will be made with funds from a new new book.

Eight sculptors have been asked to come up with designs for the Bonn Square memorial to honour 31 volunteers, including six who died.

Last October, Oxford City Council put on hold plans for a two-metre by one-metre granite stone on a wall, with councillors wanting to discuss other possible locations.

The memorial would honour those who worked, lived or studied in the city and fought fascism in the conflict between 1936 and 1939.

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Designs will be submitted by the end of the month to the Inter-national Brigade Memorial Trust.

Proceeds from No Other Way: Oxfordshire and the Spanish Civil War 1936-39 will go towards the memorial.

Woodstock’s Colin Carritt wants the memorial to honour his father Noel, who was injured in an air attack on the ambulance he was driving.

When Noel Carritt reached a medical centre, he learned his brother Antony was missing and later learned of his death.

Colin Carritt said: “There are quite a few memorials in other cities, including Reading and Bristol. Some are quite grand, others more modest.”

He hopes the designs will be bolder and might be based on the graphic design posters that epitomised the 1930s.

There have been discussions to place the memorial in the new Westgate but Mr Carritt said Bonn Square is a preferred location.

He said: “We like the democratic feel of Bonn Square. After all, the volunteers of the International Brigade were first and foremost, defenders of democracy in Spain.”

The book is by county historians Chris Farman, Valery Rose and Liz Woolley, with a foreword by Tom Buchanan, Professor of Modern British and European History at Oxford University.

Deddington-based co-author Mr Farman said: “Spanish Civil War memorials have been created in other towns and cities – it is high time that Oxford had one.”

The civil war followed a failed coup by right wing army officers in July 1936 to overthrow the democratic government.

A total of 500,000 were killed and 35,000 foreign volunteers went to the country but their defeat led to Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, which lasted until his death in 1975.

Among those who died was Christ Church student Lewis Clive, godson of the then Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Clive was shot in the head in July 1938 while attacking a heav-ily fortified hill in Aragon.

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