6 - Workers

Summary

Washington’s abrupt cancellation of Lend-Lease after World War II accentuated Britain’s chronic indebtedness to the United States. Redressing Britain’s balance of payments deficit required the orientation of much domestic production for export. Textiles lay at the heart of this export drive. But workers in the cotton and woollen industries, as in the garment sector, were lacking. This chapter analyses the campaign to encourage women to enter the mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire, exploring why women resisted official entreaties. With tens of thousands of Britons emigrating annually, the government turned to displaced persons (DPs) in occupied Germany and Austria. In 1947, the Ministry of Labour launched ‘Operation Westward Ho’ to recruit DPs as so-called ‘European Volunteer Workers’. The majority of female recruits were channelled into textile work. The chapter concludes by exploring the tensions surrounding these female migrants, including a perception that they received too many perks and anxieties over women’s reproductive agency. Unmarried pregnant ‘volunteers’ risked deportation if they sought terminations, or invasive attempts to compel them to marry.