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Diplomacy and Essential Workers: Official British Recruitment of Foreign Labor in Italy, 1945–1951

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Joseph Behar
Joseph Behar
Affiliation:
Mt. Allison University
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Extract

The recruitment of about seven thousand Italian migrant workers by the postwar British Labour government is an interesting study in the use of foreign labor recruitment as a diplomatic policy. Foreign labor recruitment has generally been regarded as primarily an economic policy, with political ramifications entering into the picture in the form of domestic issues around integration, racism, labor relations and so on. However, the various British schemes to recruit Italian migrant workers from 1945 to 1951, and the discussion around the movement of migrant workers in postwar Europe carried on in various inter-European bodies, illustrate that foreign labor recruitment can be a much more complex phenomenon.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , July 2003 , pp. 324 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2003

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References

Notes

1. See Castles, S. and Kosack, G., Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Castles, S., “The Function of Labour Immigration in West European Capitalism” in New Left Review 73 (05–06 1972)Google Scholar; Kindelberger, C. P., Europe's Postwar Growth—The Role of Labour Supply (Cambridge, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, R., The New Helots: Migrants in the International Division of Labour (Aldershot, 1987)Google Scholar; Harris, Nigel, The New Untouchables: Immigration and the New World Order (London, 1995).Google Scholar

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7. For EVW numbers, see Vernant, Jacques, The Refugee in the Post-W ar World (London, 1953), 365Google Scholar. About 160,000 Polish ex-servicemen were also settled in Britain in these years under a program called the Polish Resettlement Corps (PRC); by 1951 the distinction between PRC and EVWs was blurred in the public eye, and the press referred to workers from either camp as EVWs. For PRC numbers, see Sword, Davies, and Ciechanowski, The Formation of the Polish Community in Great Britain, 229 and 249.

8. Moore, Bob, “Turning Liabilities into Assets: British Government Policy Toward German and Italian Prisoners of War During the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary Studies 32 (01 1997): 117–136.Google Scholar

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10. PRO LAB 8/91: notes dated 20 and 29 November 1945.

11. PRO HO 213/847: letter to Home Office from War Office, 25 August 1945.

12. PRO HO 213/1130: memo by H. Prestige, 18 May 1945.

13. See Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain, chap. 3.

14. See PRO LAB 18/500 for details of the attempt to “anglicize” the terrazzo and mosaic tile industry.

15. PRO FO 371/73150: note by A. L. Rouse, 2 April 1948.

16. For more on this general phenomenon, see Palmer, Robin, “The Italians: Patterns of Migration to London,” in Lunn, Kenneth, ed., Race and Labour in Twentieth-Century Britain (London, 1985), 249–250Google Scholar: Palmer notes that the migration of southern Italians to northern Europe in the postwar period is a departure from prewar patterns. On the north-south hierarchy, see also Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain, and Kay and Miles, Refugees or Migrant Workers. Both books also note the east-west hierarchy that was manifest in the recruitment patterns of Displaced Persons; Balts were preferred to Poles and Ukrainians, again on the premise that they were more politically and socially sophisticated. See also Mason, David, Race and Ethnicity in Moder n Britain (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar, Holmes, Colin, A Tolerant Countr y? Immigrants, Refugees, and Minorities in Britain (London, 1991).Google Scholar

17. PRO FO 371/73151: letter from A. L. Rouse to Crosthwaite, 23 June 1948. Rouse blames the Italians for making “unreasonable demands.”

18. PRO LAB 13/822: Braine to Ball, 20 October 1949.

19. Ibid., Ball to Braine, 27 October 1949.

20. See Kay and Miles, Refugees or Migrant Workers, 38.

21. On 17 January 1951, the Yorkshire Post led with the headline: “Miners: Yes to NCB—And a Promise for Attlee: Coalfields Will Take Foreign Workers.”

22. PRO LAB 13/833: minutes of 38th meeting of Wiles Committee, 13 December 1949.

23. PRO LAB 13/833: note from G. Ball to C. F. Heron, 16 December 1949.

24. PRO LAB 13/833: Braine to Rosetti (Ministry of Labour), 9 November 1950; and Heron to Rosetti, 13 November 1950.

25. PRO LAB 8/1729: see E. A. Ferguson (Ministry of Labour) to Armstrong (Ministry of Fuel and Power), 17 May 1950.

26. PRO LAB 13/833: Ball to Braine, 16 November 1950.

27. PRO LAB 13/833: memo from Sir Laurence Watkinson to Wiles Committee for meeting on 21 November 1950.

28. An internal Ministry of Labour memo dated 29 June 1948, from a Mr. Flindall to a Miss Tavener, reads: “The NCB considered the employment of Italians but came to the conclusion that people of Latin countries are not temperamentally suitable for coalmining.” PRO LAB 13/261.

29. PRO LAB 13/833: Ball to Braine, 23 June 1950.

30. PRO LAB 13/833: see Ball to Braine, 23 January 1951.

31. PRO LAB 13/833: Braine to Ball, 21 November 1950, and 16 December 1950.

32. PRO LAB 13/833: J. B. Howard (Ministry of Labour) to Sir Leslie Brass (Home Office), 20 January 1951.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., Ball to Braine, 25 January 1951.

35. Ibid.

36. See PRO LAB 13/834: The Italian government was responsible for paying the transport of the men to Folkestone, as well as the cost of their medical examination and their travel within Italy to the interview sites. The British government was to pay for their travel within England to the hostels and English Training Centers, and would moreover pay a lump sum of two pounds per annum per recruit to the Italian government as a social security contribution. Language training and subsequent costs, including the cost of repatriation, would be borne by the NCB.

37. PRO LAB 13/834: Weiler to P. L. Rex, Ministry of Labour, and MI5, 19 July 1951.

38. PRO LAB 13/834: K. C. Benton to Ball, 1 August 1951.

39. PRO LAB 13/833: Ball to Rosetti, 19 February 1951.

40. PRO LAB 13/834: Weiler to Keith, 17 August 1951.

41. PRO LAB 13/834: see Staff Instruction Number 2.

42. PRO LAB 13/834: Benton to Ball, 1 August 1951.

43. PRO LAB 13/57: Braine to Ball, 29 May 1951.

44. PRO LAB 13/834: Staff Instruction Number One to all recruitment officers was that they should not lower standards under pressure to admit a certain number of recruits: “If it should transpire that the proportion of rejections is unduly high it was better to adjust this in Italy later on than to face the risks inherent in faulty selection.”

45. PRO LAB 13/57: Ball to Braine, 10 June 1951.

46. PRO LAB 13/57: Ball to W. C. Gordon, 13 June 1951.

47. PRO LAB 13/834: Braine to Ball, 14 August 1951.

48. PRO LAB 13/57: internal memo from Starritt, 11 January 1952.

49. PRO LAB 13/57: British Consulate, Milan, to M. J. Starritt, 31 December 1951.

50. PRO LAB 13/57: clipping from Manchester Guardian, 8 December 1951.

51. PRO LAB 13/57: clipping in file.

52. PRO LAB 13/460: Braine to Ministry of Labour, letter dated 15 March 1951.

53. Ibid., Keith to Lloyd Davies, 19 August 1951.

54. Ibid.: In a note from Keith to Braine, dated 24 May 1951, Keith refers to the various “schemes of group recruitment by employers of Italian workers under Ministry of Labour permits.” He also calls these “employers schemes” in quotation marks, as well as “assisted schemes.”

55. PRO LAB 13/460: Keith to Braine, 5 September 1951.

56. International Migration 1945–1957: Studies and Reports, New Series 54 (Geneva, 1959), 141.Google Scholar

57. Manchester Guardian, 23 February 1951, f 4.

58. Sassen, ibid., 37.

59. See Freeman, Gary, “Migration and the Political Economy of the Welfare State,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 485 (May 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60. PRO LAB 13/460: Keith to Sellar, 11 August 1951.

61. See Clark, Martin, Moder n Italy, 1871–1995 (2d ed.), (London, 1996), chap. 15.Google Scholar

62. PRO LAB 13/247: report by British Labour attaché in Rome, 24 July 1946.

63. PRO LAB 13/247: dispatch from Labour attaché in Rome, 14 September 1947.

64. PRO LAB 13/247: dispatch from Braine, 14 August 1946.

65. PRO FO 371/73150: note by F. D. W. Brown, 2 March 1948.

66. PRO FO 371/73150: draft minutes on Italian elections, ref. no. 71916/65/22.

67. PRO FO 371/73150: note dated 5 March 1948, containing comments by Rouse (Ministry of Labour).

68. PRO FO 371/73150: note by F. D. W. Brown, 8 April 1948.

69. Ibid.

70. PRO FO 371/73151: Spears to F. Roberts, 6 May 1948.

71. PRO FO 371/73152: This file has mainly to do with schemes to employ Italian men in colonial development projects in Africa and South America. See also Clark, Moder n Italy, 15.

72. Brief histories of these agencies are contained in Kostelecky, Vaclav, The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe: The Beginning of a History (Goteborg, 1989)Google Scholar; Anon., At Work for Europe: An Account of the Activities of the Organization of European Economic Co-operation (Paris, 1956).Google Scholar

73. PRO LAB 8/1440: draft report by Rouse, 18 February 1948.

74. PRO FO 371/71748: FO telegram #562 to Rome, 7 March 1948.

75. PRO FO 371/71746: Braine to Rouse, 13 April 1948.

76. Ibid.

77. See: PRO LAB 13/54: report by Rossetti on 11th session of OEEC Manpower Committee (April 1951), undated; PRO LAB 13/55: Lloyd Davies to Veysey, 15 May 1951; PRO LAB 13/56; PRO LAB 13/63: telegram #656 to Foreign Office, 9 September 1951.

78. PRO CAB 130/71: see E.S.(51)57, 22 October 1951.

79. International Migration.

80. PRO LAB 13/813: Veysey to Rossetti, 13 March 1951.

81. Harris, The New Untouchables, 7.