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Refugee Children and the Emotional Cost of Internationalism in Interwar Britain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2021
Abstract
This article explores the complexity surrounding the politics and emotions of internationalism and humanitarian work in interwar Britain by using as a lens the public and official responses to assisting “refugee children.” Analysis of British responses to refugee emergencies after the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Nazi persecution of Jews and other minorities suggests that attitudes shifted dramatically between the arrival of Basque child refugees in May 1937 and the Kindertransports in late 1938. Charities and refugee committees, many of them faith-based, had to negotiate the spaces between nation, ideology, and emotion to successfully raise funds for refugees. All appeals were to “save” children, and yet the responses and the amounts raised were vastly different. Campaigns to support almost four thousand Basque children proved politically polarizing and bureaucratic. In contrast, the immediate and widespread response to fund-raising to bring ten thousand children to Britain in 1938 suggests that a significant change in attitudes and fund-raising practices had taken place in a short time. Unlike the political divisions that hampered support for the Basque children, Britons from all walks of life appeared by 1938 to embrace the emotional and financial cost of internationalism in a way they had not only a year before.
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References
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43 John Presland, A Great Adventure: The Story of the Refugee Children's Movement (London, 1944), 2. The Inter-Aid Committee for Children from Germany was affiliated with the Save the Children Fund and chaired by Sir Wyndham Deedes.
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47 Welshman, Churchill's Children, 15–16. Rabbi Schonfeld enrolled 350 Kindertransport children in his Orthodox Jewish secondary schools. Fast, Children's Exodus, 63. Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld (1912–84) was also the presiding rabbi of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregation, president of the National Council for Jewish Religious Day Schools, and executive director of the Chief Rabbi's Religious Emergency Council. Schonfeld was personally involved in escorting groups of Jewish children from the ghettos in Poland to Great Britain.
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68 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), MEPO 2/3097, Details of the Jarrow March sent from the Ministry of Labour to the Home Office, 26 September 1936. See also Ellen Cicely Wilkinson, The Town That Was Murdered: The Life-Story of Jarrow (London, 1939); Laura Beers, Red Ellen: The Life of Ellen Wilkinson, Socialist, Feminist, Internationalist (Cambridge, MA, 2016).
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71 Baldwin and his government also were dealing with what became the abdication crisis after the death of George V in February 1936.
72 Mr. A. H. Findlay recommended support for the non-aggression pact signed by Britain, the USSR, and Franco, in his address to the Trades Union Conference in Plymouth in September 1936. See “Spanish Civil War,” Belfast News, 8 September 1936, 11.
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74 Brian Shelmerdine, “The Experiences of British Holidaymakers and Expatriate Residents in Pre-Civil War Spain,” European History Quarterly 32, no. 3 (2002): 367–90.
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76 Left-leaning papers included the Daily Herald (London), Daily Worker (London), and the News Chronicle (London). See for example, “Democracy and the Empire Are at Stake,” News Chronicle, 8 August 1936; “Tomorrow May Be Too Late,” News Chronicle, 19 January 1937. Right-leaning papers included the Morning Post (London). See “Spain,” Morning Post, 21 July 1936; “Unparalleled Horrors of Spanish Civil War,” Western Daily Press, 14 September 1936; “Spanish War Atrocities,” Coventry Evening Telegraph, 20 August 1936, 1. Roman-Catholic papers include the Tablet (London) and the Catholic Herald (London) and the journals Dublin Review, Clergy Review, and Blackfriars.
77 The Trades Union Congress sponsored a “Save the Basque Children's Fund,” which raised £2,840 by the end of June 1937, including £500 from the Transport and general Workers Union and £300 each from the Postal Workers and Railwaymen. T. Buchanan, “The Role of the British Labour Movement in the Origins and Work of the Basque Children's Committee, 1937–9,” European History Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1988): 155–74.
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84 Susana Sabin-Fernandez, “The Basque Refugee Children of the Spanish Civil War in the UK: Memory and Memorialisation” (PhD diss., University of Southampton, 2010), 113.
85 Letter to the editor, Duchess of Atholl, Conservative MP for Kinross and West Perthshire, and Ellen Wilkerson, Labour MP for Jarrow, Times (London), 1 May 1937.
86 Tom Buchanan, “Role of the British Labour Movement,” 155.
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88 Sabin-Fernandez, “The Basque Refugee Children of the Spanish Civil War,” 114. While the BCC claimed to be nonpartisan, most of the members were ardent supporters of the Republicans and there was only one Roman Catholic member who resigned after a few weeks.
89 The Holidays with Pay Committee formed in 1937 estimated the working-class wage at £250 per year, or almost £5 per week. Sandra Trudgen Dawson, Holiday Camps in Twentieth-century Britain: Packaging Pleasure (Manchester, 2011), 11.
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96 Catholic archbishop Hinsley claimed that he was railroaded into caring for the refugees. Quoted in Anderson, “Symbols and Souls,” 310.
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99 Anonymous evacuee, quoted in Sabin-Fernandez, “The Basque Refugee Children of the Spanish Civil War,” 120. Other refugees had good experiences in Britain. See Davies, Hywel, Fleeing Franco: How Wales Gave Shelter to Refugee Children from the Basque Country during the Spanish Civil War (Cardiff, 2011)Google Scholar.
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105 The Basque children returned to Spain in the summer of 1938. Gray, Homage to Caledonia, 114–15.
106 “1,500 at Special Caird Hall Concert by Dundee School of Music,” Dundee and Montrose Courier, 17 June 1937.
107 Modern Orphans of the Storm: The Story of the Refugee Basque Children, directed by Basil Charles Wright and Ian Dalrymple (Realist Film Unit and Victor Saville Productions, 1937).
108 Save Spanish Children (1937) Marlborough, Wiltshire: Adam Matthew Digital, https://www.worldcat.org/title/aid-spanish-children-c-1936-1939-1936-1939/oclc/994773352.
109 Myers, “Englishness, Identity and Refugee Children,” 121–22.
110 Myers, 125.
111 Tragedy of Civil War: Basque Civil War Refugee Children Arrive at Southampton, [director?] (British Pathé, 1937).
112 See The Tablet (London), 22 May 1937, 728, and New Statesman and Review, 24 May 1937, 1.
113 The Duke of Wellington was chairman of the Basque Children's Repatriation Committee. Franco also demanded the children be returned to Spain. See Bell, Only for Three Months, 15. This was part of growing right-wing politics in Britain. See Worley, Matthew, Oswald Mosley and the New Party (Basingstoke, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
114 Quoted in Anderson, “Symbols and Souls,” 311.
115 “First War Refugee to Return: Basque Committee to Ensure Child's Safety,” The Nottingham Journal, 9 July 1937, 16. The refugee was an unnamed girl who went to Ligo, Portugal, not Spain.
116 Report of Repatriation Committee; Report on Joint Meeting of the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief and Basque Children's Committee on 28 October 1937, Trades Union Congress, MRC, 292/946/39/53, 2–3.
117 Michael Alpert, “Humanitarianism and Politics in the British Response to the Spanish Civil War, 1936–9,” European History Quarterly 14, no. 4 (1984): 423–40.
118 “The Basque Children,” letter to the editor, Times (London), 29 January 1938.
119 Many Basque children returned after the fall of Bilbao to Franco's forces in July 1937. See Legarreta, Guernica Generation, 211–21; 470 Basque children remained in Britain until the end of the Second World War. Bell, Only for Three Months, 9.
120 See Williamson, Stanley Baldwin.
121 “Poland's Troops Take Possession of Teschen Territory—Hitler's Triumphal Entry into Sudetenland Today,” Nottingham Journal, 3 October 1938, 1.
122 Nicholas Winton was a member of this committee. See Laura E. Brade and Rose Holmes, “Troublesome Sainthood: Nicholas Winton and the Contested History of Child Rescue in Prague, 1938–1940,” History and Memory 29, no. 1 (2017): 3–40.
123 Aliens Order 1920 (Statutory Rules), MRC, MSS 292/910.41/31. The Alien Acts of 1905, 1919, and 1920 removed unconditional asylum in Britain. All immigrants without a Ministry of Labour permit or visible means of support were given temporary status.
124 Other leading organizations included the British Committee for the Jews of Germany and the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany.
125 “Fashion World to Aid Refugees,” Daily Record and Mail (Glasgow), 11 May 1939, 13.
126 “The Refugees: Appeal by Lord Baldwin,” Times (London), 9 December 1938.
127 “Looting Mobs Defy Goebbels,” Daily Express (London), 11 November 1938, 1; “Germany's Day of Wrecking and Looting: Gangs Unhampered by the Police,” Manchester Guardian, 12 November 1938.
128 “The Problem of Jewish Refugees: A Case for British Lead,” letter to the editor, Times (London), 12 November 1938.
129 “Germany and the Jews: Strain upon British Friendship,” Archbishop's Appeal, letter to the editor, Times (London), 11 November 1938.
130 Williams, “Jews and Other Foreigners”: Manchester, 15.
131 “Fashion World to Aid Refugees,” 13.
132 In October 1938, children at St. Anne's School raised money for the mayor of Grantham's Czech Refugee Fund. See “School's Donation to Mayor's Fund for Relief of Czech refugees,” Grantham Journal, 29 October 1938, 11.
133 TNA, FO 371/22538, Letter from the British Foreign Office to the Netherlands Legation, 29 November 1938.
134 “Sad Jewish Refugees Arrive in England,” Gloucester Citizen, 2 December 1938, 6.
135 “Weymouth and Czech Refugees,” Berkshire News and General Advertiser, 8 November 1938, 3.
136 “Children Help Czechs,” Daily Herald (London?), 31 October 1938, 13; “Czech and Sudeten Refugees,” Scotsman, 29 October 1938, 15; “Round Czech the World Today—Refugee Children Flying to London,” Leicester Daily Mercury, 12 January 1939, 13.
137 “Lord Mayor's Czech Refugee Fund,” Birmingham Daily Gazette, 25 October 1938, 2.
138 TNA, FO 371/24085, British Foreign Office circular, dated 23 November 1938.
139 Dawson, Holiday Camps, 93–94. A second camp at Pakefield, near Lowestoft, was opened to accommodate the hundreds of children that arrived from Europe. See Presland, Great Adventure, 6.
140 Hannah Booth, “I Was Three, Making the Journey Alone’: Ursula Kantorowicz Travels on the Kindertransport, 1939,” Guardian, 29 July 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/29/ursula-kantorowicz-arrives-at-southampton-kindertransport-germany .
141 Williams, “Jews and Other Foreigners”: Manchester, 148.
142 “Hospitality to Refugees: Finding Homes for Children,” Times (London), 6 January 1939.
143 Quoted in Myers, “Englishness, Identity and Refugee Children,” 213.
144 The vicar of Gillingham held a town meeting to discuss housing refugee children. See “Refugee Children at Gillingham?” Chatham, Rochester and Gillingham News, 20 January 1939, 5. Selsey, a small village in West Sussex, accommodated forty children: thirty-two girls and eight younger brothers. See “Selsey Gossip,” Chichester Observer, 14 January 1939, 8.
145 “Czech Refugee Children,” personal ad, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 13 May 1939, 1.
146 More than seventy thousand Jewish refugees eventually came to Britain. Approximately fifty thousand stayed. Williams, “Jews and Other Foreigners”: Manchester,” 142. The last Kindertransport left Prague on 2 August 1939.
147 For more on Butlin, see Dawson, Holiday Camps.
148 TNA, MH 55/689, Report by Women's Voluntary Services, 12 January 1939. The observers also believed that the Butlin company was profiting unduly from the catering arrangements but that allowing the company to cater was the easiest solution in the immediate crisis.
149 German Jewish Aid Committee, While You Are in England: Helpful Information and Guidance for Every Refugee (London, 1939), 10–12Google Scholar.
150 Presland, Great Adventure, 7. By the end of 1939, Barham House was transformed into a permanent hostel, but Westgate was closed, as all the orthodox young men were placed in either training schemes or homes.
151 Advertisement, Lord Baldwin Fund for Refugees, February 1939, Holocaust Educational Trust, https://www.het.org.uk/images/downloads/Exploring%20the%20Holocaust/C1_Britain_refugees_and_the_Kindertransport/British%20reactions%20to%20refugees.pdf. Emphasis in original. By May 1939, Lord Hailey, chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Refugees, told the International Rotary Association at a conference in Brighton that he feared that the “ring was closing” against refugees leaving Europe. See “Ring Closing against Refugees,” Shepton Mallet Journal, 12 May 1939, 2.
152 “Refugee Training near Ripon,” Leeds Mercury, 28 March 1939.
153 Dundee Evening Telegraph, 26 July 1939.
154 “The Refugee as Domestic Help,” Yorkshire Post, 11 March 1939, 6.
155 “Help the Refugees—Scottish Christian Council Appeal,” Edinburgh Evening News, 3 February 1939, 7.
156 “‘Mother's Day’ for Refugees’ Fund,” Eastbourne Gazette, 24 May 1939, 22.
157 “Refugees Learn English ways,” Manchester Evening News, 1 July 1939, 8.
158 “Czech Students Celebrate Day of Independence—Moving Reading of Refugee's Poetry,” Express and Echo (Exeter), 20 November 1939.
159 “Foreign Scouts: Another Busy Day in North Staffs,” Evening Sentinel (Stoke-on-Trent), 1 August 1939, 1.
160 “Boy Refugee Sees Father after 3 Years,” Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 30 August 1939. The young boy was also reunited with his mother after seven months of separation.
161 “Boy Refugee Drama,” Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 25 February 1939, 4.
162 “Refugee Hanging in Wardrobe Mystery,” Leicester Mercury, 22 May 1939, 8.
163 “The Refugees,” Edinburgh Evening News, 12 January 1939, 6.
164 “Doctors Angry over Competition of Foreigners—‘Let Down’ by Ministry, Union Calls for Action,” Star (London), 7 July 1938, MRC, 292C/840/3/7.
165 TNA MH 55/709, Letter to the Chief Medical Officer, Ministry of Health from Medical Officer of Health, Borough of Hampstead, 16 February 1939.
166 Voluntary organizations attempted to place refugees in jobs or training schemes. See Williams, “Jews and Other Foreigners”: Manchester, 10.
167 Defries, Conservative Party Attitudes, 140.