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

Journal of Policy History

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 324-344

  Behar, Joseph ^a  

^a Mt Allison University   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248048179     PISSN: 08980306     EISSN: 15284190     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jph.2003.0015     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. See S. Castles and G. Kosack, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe (London, 1973)
2. S. Castles, “The Function of Labour Immigration in West European Capitalism” in New Left Review 73 (May—June 1972)
3. C. P. Kindelberger, Europe's Postwar Growth—The Role of Labour Supply (Cambridge, 1967)
4. R. Cohen, The New Helots: Migrants in the International Division of Labour (Aldershot, 1987)
5. Nigel Harris, The New Untouchables: Immigration and the New World Order (London, 1995).
6. Saskia Sassen, The Mobility of Labour and Capital (Cambridge, 1988), 40—
7. Jim Tomlinson, Employment Policy: The Crucial Years, 1939—1955 (Oxford, 1987)
8. Jim Tomlinson and Nick Tiratsoo, Industrial Efficiency and State Intervention: Labour 1939-1951 (London, 1993)
9. Peter Hennessey, Never Again;
10. Corelli Barnett, The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities, 1945-1950 (London, 1995).
11. See Diana Kay and Robert Miles, Refugees or Migrant Workers: European Volunteer Workers in Britain, 1946-1951 (London, 1992)
12. Keith Sword, Norman Davies, and Jan Ciechanowski, The Formation of the Polish Community in Great Britain, 1939-1950 (London, 1989)
13. Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca, 1997).
14. Stephen Castles and Mark Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, 2d ed. (London, 1998), 9.
15. See Alec Cairncross, Years of Recovery: British Economic Policy, 1945-1951 (London, 1985)
16. R. Eatwell, The 1945-1951 Labour Governments (London, 1979)
17. K. O. Morgan, Labour in Power, 1945-1951 (Oxford: 1984)
18. Jim Fyrth, ed. Labour's High Noon: The Government and the Economy, 1945-1951 (London, 1993).
19. For EVW numbers, see Jacques Vernant, The Refugee in the Post-War World (London, 1953), 365.
20. 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.
21. Bob Moore, “Turning Liabilities into Assets: British Government Policy Toward German and Italian Prisoners of War During the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary Studies 32 (January 1997): 117—36.
22. Bob Moore and Kent Fedorowich, “Britain, the Allied Negotiations on Italian Co-belligerency, and the Prisoners of War Question, 1943-45,” International History Review 18 (1996): 28-47.
23. See Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain, chap. 3.
24. For more on this general phenomenon, see Robin Palmer, “The Italians: Patterns of Migration to London,” in Kenneth Lunn, ed. Race and Labour in Twentieth-Century Britain (London, 1985), 249-50: 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
25. 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.
26. See also David Mason, Race and Ethnicity in Modern Britain (Oxford, 1995)
27. Colin Holmes, A Tolerant Country? Immigrants, Refugees, and Minorities in Britain (London, 1991).
28. PRO LAB 13/822: Braine to Ball, 20 October 1949.
29. Braine to Ball Ball to Braine, 27 October 1949.
30. See Kay and Miles, Refugees or Migrant Workers, 38.
31. 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.”
32. PRO LAB 13/833: Braine to Rosetti (Ministry of Labour), 9 November 1950
33. Heron to Rosetti, 13 November 1950.
34. PRO LAB 13/833: Ball to Braine, 16 November 1950.
35. 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.
36. PRO LAB 13/833: Ball to Braine, 23 June 1950.
37. PRO LAB 13/833: see Ball to Braine, 23 January 1951.
38. PRO LAB 13/833: Braine to Ball, 21 November 1950, and 16 December 1950.
39. Braine to Ball
40. Braine to Ball Ball to Braine, 25 January 1951.
41. Ball to Braine
42. PRO LAB 13/833: Ball to Rosetti, 19 February 1951.
43. PRO LAB 13/834: Weiler to Keith, 17 August 1951.
44. PRO LAB 13/834: see Staff Instruction Number 2.
45. PRO LAB 13/834: Benton to Ball, 1 August 1951.
46. PRO LAB 13/57: Braine to Ball, 29 May 1951.
47. PRO LAB 13/57: Ball to Braine, 10 June 1951.
48. PRO LAB 13/834: Braine to Ball, 14 August 1951.
49. PRO LAB 13/57: clipping from Manchester Guardian, 8 December 1951.
50. PRO LAB 13/57: clipping in file.
51. PRO LAB 13/460: Braine to Ministry of Labour, letter dated 15 March 1951.
52. Braine to Ministry of Labour Keith to Lloyd Davies, 19 August 1951.
53. Keith to Lloyd Davies: 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.”
54. PRO LAB 13/460: Keith to Braine, 5 September 1951.
55. International Migration 1945—1957: Studies and Reports, New Series 54 (Geneva, 1959), 141.
56. Manchester Guardian, 23 February 1951, f 4.
57. Sassen, Manchester Guardian 37.
58. See Gary Freeman, “Migration and the Political Economy of the Welfare State,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 485 (May 1986).
59. PRO LAB 13/460: Keith to Sellar, 11 August 1951.
60. See Martin Clark, Modern Italy, 1871-1995 (2d ed.), (London, 1996), chap. 15.
61. PRO LAB 13/247: report by British Labour attaché in Rome, 24 July 1946.
62. PRO LAB 13/247: dispatch from Labour attaché in Rome, 14 September 1947.
63. PRO LAB 13/247: dispatch from Braine, 14 August 1946.
64. Braine
65. 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, Modern Italy, 15. 72. Brief histories of these agencies are contained in Vaclav Kostelecky, The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe: The Beginning of a History (Goteborg, 1989)
66. Anon. At Work for Europe: An Account of the Activities of the Organization of European Economic Co-operation (Paris, 1956).
67. At Work for Europe: An Account of the Activities of the Organization of European Economic Co-operation
68. Harris, The New Untouchables, 7.