Indomitable spirit
Michael Vestey
IVs difficult to imagine how grim life could be for many in the post-war years in Britain. It was even worse for the 80,000 Eastern European displaced people who from 1947 were encouraged to come here to work and to keep industry going, as The Archive Hour: European Volunteer Workers on Radio Four revealed (Saturday).
They were people from the Baltic States, the Ukraine and Yugoslavia who'd been forcibly taken to Germany either to fight for the Nazis or to work for them and who felt unable to return to their Soviet-occupied countries. After the war Britain and other countries went to their camps in Germany to recruit them for largely menial jobs. As Mark Whitaker, the presenter of this independent production, explained, they were needed to work in the coal mines, textile mills and agriculture as there was a shortage of workers in these industries.
Other countries also wanted them and were ruthlessly selective. Australia would take only families with no more than three children; Brazil wanted agricultural workers as long as they weren't Jewish; Canada preferred miners and maids; and New Zealand searched the camps for 300 women under 40 to work in mental hospitals. The British government wasn't wholly straight with them, saying they could choose from a wide range of jobs whereas they were restricted to a few and had to sign a contract; failure to take a particular job would entail arrest and their return to the camps.
When some women from the Baltic States arrived, the Daily Express noted that one young doctor would work here as a sick-berth attendant and floor scrubber. 'It's not a very high price to pay for freedom,' the paper quoted her as saying. A Ukrainian doctor in a camp cried when he was rejected as a hard-rock miner by Canada. They were classified as emergency workers rather than refugees, though later the government offered them citizenship, One middle-class Latvian girl of 18, a student, was sent to a Lancashire cotton mill and was shocked by the noise and the dust. After initial doubts, she decided to see it through.
We heard their voices because 20 years ago the Bradford Heritage Recording Unit, a pioneer of oral history, interviewed dozens of them, anonymously. Those who overcame the early difficulties stayed to form significant communities in West Yorkshire and elsewhere. Some were clearly still bitter about their treatment here, others grateful for the opportunities. One man spoke of the hardship in the camps and was amazed to find that when he came here he could sleep in his own bed, his own room even, eat three meals a day and could spend some pocket money. He was young and more adaptable but he thought older people were often depressed by life in Britain.
Many encountered deep prejudice. Some British workers refused to work with them and the trades unions accused them of taking their members' jobs. At first they were housed in hostels but the more successful and resourceful amongst them looked for lodgings only to come up against the fearsome British landlady who would either slam the doors in their faces or impose draconian restrictions once they were tenants. Others resolved to work hard to start families and become homeowners. All were victims of the two greatest evils of the 20th century, nazism and communism and one couldn't help marvelling at their courage and fortitude as they described what they'd endured in Germany and what they found here.
I felt pretty much the same listening to the victims of kidnappings, in Kidnapped on Radio Four this week (Monday). Tom Hargrove, an American who worked for an agricultural non-governmental organisation in Columbia. was picked up by FARC terrorists and held in a mud hut for nearly a year. When he was allowed out he was chained to a post for three hours a day. Recalling the morning of his kidnapping, he said that he'd chosen to take the 'scenic route' to the office to admire the Columbian countryside. Had he taken his usual route it wouldn't have happened.
John McCarthy, the television journalist held by terrorists in Beirut for more than five years, underwent beatings and solitary confinement. When he asked his captors why he was there they replied, 'Don't worry, it's not your problem, it's your country's problem.' I thought, that's great, but my country is not here. I'm here.' Hargrove lost a huge amount of weight and his hair and beard turned orange from malnutrition and vitamin deficiency. Somehow, they and the others in this programme survived and in McCarthy's case it took another five years to feel completely back to normal. It is extremely difficult, though, to completely destroy the human spirit.
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