How 'no pasaran' became a Scottish battle cry as Fife feared Nazi invasion in 1940

Female Republican soldiers take part in shooting practice during the Spanish Civil War | AFP via Getty Images

“No Pasaran” – they shall not pass – was a famous battle cry of the Republican forces in their ultimately unsuccessful attempt to defeat Francisco Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

Now St Andrews University researchers have discovered the slogan was set into a concrete anti-tank obstacle created in 1940 in Tentsmuir Forest in Fife, as part of extensive coastal defences built during the Second World War.

They also found other graffiti, including a cartoon face of a smiling soldier, an image of someone who looks a bit like Franco, and a nickname for the Scots Guards, “The Kiddies”.  Professor Tom Dawson said: “The anti-tank cubes were tall and surrounded in barbed wire, and I’m sure that the soldiers building them never expected anyone to discover the marks they’d made.”

In 1940 – Britain’s “Darkest Hour” – the prospect of invasion seemed real. The soldiers were preparing to make a stand they may have feared would end in defeat. The famous message of defiance shows their determination.

And, in the end, ‘they’ did not come, they did not pass and tyranny was defeated.