Duncan Bowie on past welcomes for refugees
The Czech Refugee Trust Fund in Britain by Charmian Brinson and Jana Barbora Buresova published by Valentine MitchellÂ
This may seem a rather specialist book for a review in Chartist. However, in the current context of British policy on the treatment of seekers of asylum, it is informative to have a very detailed study of a British government’s more progressive policy (and specifically the role of the Labour Party) in a previous era. There has been much coverage of the role of the late Nicholas Winton in helping to get Czech children to Britain in 1938, the focus being on Winton because of his longevity – living to 100 and appearing on the Esther Rantzen show. We now have both a book and a film. Less attention has been given to the role of British left-wing activists, both Communists and Labour in the evacuation.
The Czech Refugee Trust Fund was actually established by the British government and supported by the Home Office, rather than by the Czech government in exile in London. The programme was not just about getting Jews out of the country, but also Czech politicians, mainly socialists and communists who were at risk, and German politicians (mainly socialists and communists) who had fled to Prague earlier.
The British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia was originally established in October 1938 in response to the Munich Agreement, which handed over the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to Hitler. There were other initiatives: the Quakers set up a German Emergency Committee; the Church of England, the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church also set up support projects. The Lord Mayor of London set up a fund, while the National Council of Labour (the Labour Party, the TUC and the Co-ops) set up an international solidarity fund, and the Manchester Guardian and the New Chronicle established separate Czechoslovak relief funds, with the latter’s editorial director, Sir Walter Layton, visiting Prague to assess the situation himself. The British government gave a loan of £6 million to the Czech government, supplemented with a grant of £4 million in March 1939, when Germany invaded Bohemia and Moravia. Labour activists such as the former suffragist Catherine Marshall and Irene Noel-Baker (wife of the Labour MP, Philip Noel-Baker) joined the British Committee, which was chaired by Ewart Culpin, the Labour chairman of London County Council, who had supported Belgian refugees in the First World War. The trust rented properties and managed hostels in London and elsewhere to house refugees.
Doreen Warriner, a university lecturer and communist party member who was already in Prague for Save the Children, was employed to coordinate the evacuation programme. William Gillies, the Labour Party International Secretary, was also in Prague as was a representative of the Workers’ Travel Association, which at the time was managed by the future Labour colonial secretary, Arthur Creech Jones. The Welsh Labour MP, David Grenfell, who was vice-chairman of the parliamentary committee on refugees, which was chaired by Eleanor Rathbone, was also active.
In January 1939, the British government was issuing only 30 or 40 visas a week for refugees from Czechoslovakia. Warriner flew back to London with a list of 600 Sudeten Germans. The trust took responsibility for all 600 together with 500 Germans and Austrians and 100 Jews from the Sudetenland. Warriner’s focus, in contrast with that of Winton and his colleague Trevor Chadwick, was to get out political refugees. The committee’s total liabilities were assessed as 7100 persons in 3400 families at a cost of £2.5 million. This was beyond the committee’s means and the British government then established the Czech Refugee Trust to take on the voluntary committee’s liabilities and appointed Sir Henry Bunbury, who had been financial controller of the Post Office, as director.
Brinson and Buresova’s book then sets out the activities of the trust during the war and beyond, including political tensions given the controversial role of communists and socialists, including refugees, in managing the trust. An advisory committee was established, comprising representatives of each refugee group, divided both by politics and nationality, with a separate Jewish group. The book covers the history of internment of refugees (including anti-Nazis) as aliens and the programme of resettlement in the dominions, primarily Canada and Australia. The trust helped with repatriation after the war but also with a further generation of refugees fleeing from the Communist takeover in 1948, including Czech socialists who had to leave their country a second time. The trust, however, had no role in the resettlement of Czechs after the Russian invasion of 1968, as it had limited resources, and was still responsible for supporting the two previous cohorts, many of whom had stayed in Britain. The trust was finally wound up in 1975.
This is a fascinating story of refugee policy in practice and the relationship between volunteers and government and between the refugees themselves and British philanthropic organisations. It is highly recommended.