During the Spanish Civil War, between 1936 and 1939, more than 4,000 Britons traveled to the front lines in southern Europe to fight the fascist coup d'état.

They were not soldiers, but civilians like Eric Blair, who later recorded his experiences in the International Brigades in “My Catalonia” under the author name George Orwell.

Is Britain now at the beginning of a similar movement?

Jochen Buchsteiner

Political correspondent in London.

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After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi called for the formation of an international volunteer legion to help resist the Russian army over the weekend, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said: "I support it." British mean, she replied, "Absolutely.

If that's what they want."

Since then, there has been a dispute on the island as to what Truss means and whether it is compatible with current law.

"Unless the UK government formally allows people to go to Ukraine, they would be violating the Foreign Enlistment Act and committing a criminal offence," warned former Attorney General Dominic Grieve.

The Conscription Act dates back to 1870 and made it illegal to serve in a foreign army at war with a country with which Britain was at peace.

Secretary of Defense Wallace: Better donate money

During the Spanish Civil War, the interpretable ban was hardly enforced.

The secret service kept lists of participants up until the 1950s, but mainly because many of them were suspected of being communists.

In contrast, for the past decade, the British government has threatened prosecution for any Brits who volunteered for Syria, including those who wanted to fight "Islamic State" or the dictator Bashar al-Assad.

The British prosecutor also referred to the anti-terror laws.

Even if the volunteer work in Ukraine shouldn't affect anti-terror laws, the legal situation seems unclear.

Bob Neill, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called the Enlistment Act an "antiquated piece of legislation" and said, "Whatever was good enough to fight Franco is good enough to fight Putin." His colleague Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Defense Committee, on the other hand, considers Truss' advance to be "irresponsible".

He doesn't want to have to comfort parents "because a few untrained youngsters followed this call".

It also doesn't seem logical to him to encourage untrained Britons to travel to a war zone but to bank on those who have been trained precisely for that task.

Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, who unlike Ellwood does not want to see NATO soldiers in Ukraine, recommended on Monday that war-ready civilians should join the British army, which is stationed near Ukraine.

He interpreted the foreign minister as saying that she was primarily talking about the Ukrainians in the kingdom.

For Britons there are "better ways to work for Ukraine's security," Wallace said on Monday -- such as donating money to the Ukrainian embassy in London.

According to the Daily Telegraph, fewer checks have been received there than inquiries from volunteer fighters.

Former British soldier Macer Gifford has also set up a website for recruiting volunteer fighters for Ukraine.

He knows of dozens of interested parties and can "imagine