Spain woke me up politically. I rediscovered democracy, the power that can come from people working together when a popular front is not just a manoeuvre but a reality. Drawing on his political and fighting experience in the Spanish Civil War, Tom Wintringham wrote the best-seller New Ways of War a do-it-yourself guide to killing people but also a highly subversive call for a socialist revolution. He called for a Peoples war and the phrase stuck. Recalling the English Civil war he likened the Home Guard he trained in guerrilla warfare to the New Model Army and later he helped found Common...