Britain’s betrayal of the Chinese men who served
JVL Introduction
The Guardian is to be congratulated on publishing this compelling investigation as The Long Read on 25th May.
It tells the astonishing story of rampant racism in the Home Office, in collusion with other senior ministries and police, in a project for the “Compulsory repatriation of undesirable Chinese seamen”.
These were men who generally worked below deck in keeping the British merchant navy afloat, and many gave their lives in the process.
Those who survived found themselves subject to a xenophobic onslaught – carried out in secret lest anyone should protest.
Hancox sums up how extensive it was:
- “In the preceding war years, hundreds of Chinese seamen had met and married English women, had children and settled in Liverpool. These men were deported, too. The Chinese seamen’s families were never told what was happening, never given a chance to object and never given a chance to say goodbye. Most of the Chinese seamen’s British wives would go to their graves never knowing the truth, always believing their husbands had abandoned them.”
All this took place under a Labour government. A lot is still not known about this episode and the article says nothing about the government of the day’s complicity in it.
But it beggars belief that Labour’s Home secretary James Chuter Ede, progressive in all kinds of other ways, was not aware of what was happening. Did he protest or collude? Who else knew and was complicit?
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Tue 25 May 2021. Read the original here.
The secret deportations: how Britain betrayed the Chinese men who served the country in the war
During the second world war, Chinese merchant seamen helped keep Britain fed, fuelled and safe – and many gave their lives doing so. But from late 1945, hundreds of them who had settled in Liverpool suddenly disappeared. Now their children are piecing together the truth
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This is on my list of shameful days in the history of the Labour Party which I compile after Starmer’s comment re the EHRC report on antisemitism in the Labour Party
Either Starmer is ignorant of Labour’s history – as a party or in government or is disingenuous.
The Guardian is late on the scene on this issue which has been an open wound in Liverpool
We also shouldn’t forget that shortly after this shameful action by the Attlee government, a whole lot of young men from the Baltic States, many with downright dubious wartime records as volunteers with German armed forces, were welcomes into Britain by the government. David Caesarani wrote a book about this.