Belgian Refugees in First World War Britain

Jacqueline Jenkinson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138296183
• eBook ISBN: 9781351585248
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Weltgeschichte

Around 250, 000 Belgian refugees who fled the German invasion spent the First World War in Britain – the largest refugee presence Britain has ever witnessed. Welcomed in a wave of humanitarian sympathy for 'Poor Little Belgium', within a few months Belgian exiles were pushed off the front pages of newspapers by the news of direct British involvement in the war. Following rapid repatriation at British government expense in late 1918 and 1919 Belgian refugees were soon lost from public memory with few memorials or markers of their mass presence.

Reactions to Belgian refugees discussed in this book include the mixed responses of local populations to the refugee presence, which ranged from extensive charitable efforts to public and trade union protests aimed at protecting local jobs and housing. This book also explores the roles of central and local government agencies which supported and employed Belgian refugees en masse yet also used them as a propaganda tool to publicise German outrages against civilians to encourage support for the Allied war effort. This book covers responses to Belgian refugees in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales in a Home Front wartime episode which generated intense public interest and charitable and government action. This book was originally published as a special issue of Immigrants and Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora.

Belgian exiles, the British and the Great War: the Birtley Belgians of Elisabethville

Daniel Laqua

ABSTRACT

Located in Birtley, County Durham, the gated community of Elisabethville housed several thousand Belgians from 1916 until the aftermath of the Great War. Most residents were conscripted Belgian soldiers who constituted the workforce at the nearby National Projectile Factory. This article focuses on the complex relationship between the ‘Birtley Belgians’ and their host population. It thus covers issues such as wartime charity, Anglo-Belgian leisure-time interactions as well as debates about the exiles’ moral and socio-economic impact. Moreover, the case of Elisabethville sheds light on several wider issues, from war-related displacement to the intersections between home front and battle front.

An estimated 10 million Europeans experienced displacement during the Great War, followed by further refugee waves in its aftermath.¹ Belgium became a major source of refugees after the German attack of August 1914: around 1.5 million Belgians left their country, with the Netherlands, France and Britain as the main destinations.² While some returned relatively soon, around 600,000 remained in exile for most of the war years. An estimated 250,000 Belgians came to Britain, leading Tony Kushner to speak of ‘the largest refugee movement in British history’.³ The sympathy and hospitality encountered by these exiles explains why Panikos Panayi has described them as ‘[t]he group which has experienced the most universal approval from both British state and society over the last two hundred years’.⁴

This article focuses on a striking manifestation of the Belgian presence in Britain: the Belgian colony of Elisabethville, which was located in the parish of Birtley, County Durham, about five miles from Newcastle upon Tyne. Elisabethville was hence situated in a major area for trade and industry, and Birtley indeed typified key features of the regional economy. Several collieries and pits were located on its territory while the ironworks and brick factory were large local employers. Nonetheless, Birtley was still a small town: the 1911 census recorded a population of 8409.⁵ In this respect, the creation of a Belgian colony – which ultimately housed over 6000 people – had a significant impact.

The case of Elisabethville is significant for three reasons, the first one being the distinct nature of this settlement. While Belgian communities existed elsewhere in Britain, Elisabethville differed from them as it was a purpose-built and self-contained gated village. Like Belgians in areas such as Richmond and Twickenham, the residents of Elisabethville had their own shops, school and church – yet, in addition, their colony also featured a hospital, a post office and a police station staffed by Belgian gendarmes. The latter were charged with maintaining public order in Elisabethville, cooperating with the English police to this end. Gates to the settlement were guarded; access to and exit from the settlement were tightly regulated.⁶

The second reason for Elisabethville’s significance derives from its raison d’être. The village was built to house Belgians who worked in Birtley’s National Projectile Factory. The latter was the product of an agreement between the Ministry of Munitions, the company Armstrong Whitworth and Belgian officials. Having been planned from the summer of 1915, the factory began operations in 1916 with an exclusively Belgian labour force. As Peter Gatrell and Philippe Nivet have noted, around 500 Belgian companies existed in wartime Britain, with the Pelabon Works in Twickenham being a prominent example.⁷ Seen from this angle, the case of Elisabethville exemplifies the Belgian contribution to the British economy and the Allied war effort.

The third significant dimension is the composition of Elisabethville’s population. Overwhelmingly, its residents were conscripted soldiers, many of whom were unfit for frontline service. For instance, in the winter of 1916–7, Elisabethville housed 3521 soldiers and 476 civilians.⁸ The munitions plant at Birtley thus incorporated soldiers from a wartime ally into the British home front. In this respect, its history illustrates that the boundaries between civilians and combatants were far from clear-cut. The case seems to confirm Tammy Proctor’s observation that ‘war blurs the lines between civilian and military identities, putting ill-prepared citizens into uniforms and calling them soldiers while simultaneously uniforming other personnel and naming them noncombatants’.⁹ Furthermore, the demographic structure of Elisabethville indicates that not every Belgian in wartime Britain had come there as a refugee. A policy of actively seeking Belgian labour in British industry started in late 1914. As a result, exiles from France and the Netherlands and even some covertly recruited workers from occupied Belgium crossed the Channel.¹⁰

Local studies have traced the creation and general features of Elisabethville, as well as the official Anglo-Belgian interactions that shaped it.¹¹ This article opts for a different focus as it investigates the Belgians’ relationship with the people of Birtley. It has been noted that after ‘evident and widespread compassion for their plight’, refugees began to face ‘a certain hostility from the local populations’ in wartime Europe.¹² The case of Birtley seems to corroborate such views, yet support and rejection often coincided, as evidenced by the intensity of debates on the Belgian presence. The article considers three elements of social relations during the war years: firstly, the Belgians’ role in the struggle against the Central Powers as viewed from Birtley; secondly, encounters that occurred in leisure-time settings; and, thirdly, socio-economic concerns raised by the creation of Elisabethville. The article concludes with a section on the memory and commemoration of the Belgian presence in the North East of England. As a whole, the case reinforces the view that ‘ambivalence marked both state responses and everyday relations to this massive refugee movement’.¹³

War-time alliances

Michaël Amara has argued that few cases in the twentieth century provoked ‘such an outpouring of generosity, such an astonishing movement of solidarity’ as the wartime plight of Belgium.¹⁴ Charitable action in Britain was closely entwined with perceptions of Belgium’s role in the Great War. It was not only Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality that triggered this response, but also the brutality of German conduct in Belgium.¹⁵ In this respect, humanitarian assistance sustained a wider narrative. Pierre Purseigle has suggested that the refugees ‘supported a vision of the conflagration as a war for civilisation against barbarism’.¹⁶ Similarly, Tony Kushner has viewed ‘[t]he positive reception given to the Belgians as part of a wider, rather guilt-ridden moral battle against the Germans’.¹⁷ Such mobilisation extended to the North East of England and occurred even before the construction of Elisabethville. For instance, in November 1914, the Birtley Wesleyan Women’s Bright Hour raised £10 for the Belgian Refugees Fund through a tea-and-cake event, while the Wesleyan Sunday School collected £4.¹⁸ These examples highlight the extent to which sympathy for ‘poor little Belgium’ even extended to small local communities.

Belgians in Britain were far from passive recipients of aid. Shortly after their arrival, Belgian workers at Birtley set up a committee whose members donated six pence per week, aiming to support the population in occupied Belgium and Belgian front soldiers, as well as assisting Belgian prisoners of war.¹⁹ Indeed, aid for POWs was a prominent feature of wartime charity in Western Europe. As Heather Jones has noted, a ‘complex food parcel scheme’ was in operation in several countries, ensuring that ‘prisoners of war received food aid by post’.²⁰ Such mechanisms allowed the Belgians at Birtley to connect with compatriots in several locations – the homeland, the diaspora and sites of captivity. A report from June 1916 is a case in point: it records that Belgian workers at Birtley collected £40 for the widow of a resident who had died in an industrial accident, £60 for the Belgian Relief Fund and £14 for Belgian POWs in Germany.²¹ Such activities could take the Birtley Belgians beyond Elisabethville. For instance, when they staged a fundraiser in June 1916, they did so at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle.²² The sheer scope of charitable activity underlines the bond that Belgian exiles sought to maintain with their mother country; it thus illustrates Peter Gatrell’s observations about the role of refugees in national mobilisation during the Great War.²³ Coverage by the exile press amplified the significance of these efforts. For example, the leading liberal newspaper of pre-war Belgium, L’Indépendance Belge, was published from London during the war. Its pages regularly featured accounts of fundraising by Belgian exiles in Britain, thus fostering the image of a ‘Belgium abroad’.²⁴

While seeking to support the national cause, the residents of Elisabethville also engaged in activities that con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – Soon gone, long forgotten: uncovering British responses to Belgian refugees during the First World War
• 1 Belgian exiles, the British and the Great War: the Birtley Belgians of Elisabethville
• 2 ‘Brave little Belgium’ arrives in Huddersfield … voluntary action, local politics and the history of international relief work
• 3 The Pelabon Munitions works and the Belgian village on the Thames: community and forgetfulness in outer-metropolitan suburbs
• 4 Administering relief: Glasgow Corporation’s support for Scotland’s c. 20,000 Belgian refugees
• 5 ‘Come and find sanctuary in Eire’: The experiences of Ireland’s Belgian refugees during the First World War
• 6 Finding Belgian refugees in Cymru1914.org: using digital resources for uncovering the hidden histories of the First World War in Wales
• Index