The Limits to Solidarity: Trade Union Responses to European Workers in Britain, 1945–1948

During the first years of the post-war Labour government (1945–8), three groups of foreign workers were incorporated into the labour force: prisoners of war (POWs), Polish soldiers who had fought with the British, and European volunteer workers (EVWs). This article examines the responses of the trade union movement to these three groups of workers through salient examples that are indicative of wider attitudes within the trade union movement. The discussion focuses on the responses of the TUC, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Union of Agricultural Workers and Allied Workers (NUAW). The distinctive contribution of this piece is that it argues that the employment of foreign labour needs to be situated within four overlapping attitudinal frameworks that shaped the debate within trade unions in this period. It builds on the existing historiography of the topic through an examination of the discourse on European workers which is revealing of the generalized xenophobia and sense of cumulative grievance at the presence of foreign workers that existed during this period. This wave of prejudice eventually centred on the Poles, who became the focus of this hostility towards foreign workers in general.