British post-war migration policy and displaced persons in Europe

Abstract

Britain’s immediate post-war years are often associated with the nationalisation of industry, the growth of the welfare state and the creation of the National Health Service but seldom with an active migration and foreign labour policy. This chapter will focus on the roughly 80,000 socalled European Volunteer Workers (EVWs), former displaced persons (DPs) recruited by British government officials mainly in Germany and Austria under the Balt Cygnet and Westward Ho schemes.1 The employment of foreign labour was the result of a significant demand for labour in the ‘old industries’ such as mining, iron, steel and textiles but also in the public health system and in agriculture, where large numbers of Italian and German prisoners of war had already been set to work on the land. To fill the gap in the labour market more permanently, Ministry of Labour officials eventually went to DP camps on the continent to recruit foreign workers. This chapter will argue that post-war British ‘migration policy’ had been supplemented by a ‘migrant policy’. Therefore the contemporary idea of ‘assimilation’ will be highlighted, and its translation into practice will be analysed.