Yvonne Foley introduces a little-known piece of UK-Chinese history, in the hope of hearing from the families who were involved.
At the beginning of the Second World War there were 20,000 Chinese mariners in the port of Liverpool, England. Many were there to replace the British merchant seamen who had gone to join the Royal Navy. A significant proportion of these men were from Hong Kong, Singapore, Ningbo and Shanghai and became trapped in the UK when in late 1941 and early 1942 the Japanese took each of these places.
Paid around a third of British seamen’s pay and not getting the danger money given to the British, the Chinese withdrew their labour. The strike lasted from February 1942 to May of the same year. By the end of it they had almost achieved equality of pay but had established a reputation as troublemakers with the ship owners and the Government – especially the men from Shanghai.
At the end of hostilities the Government and the ship owners determined to get rid of the Chinese. By the middle of 1946 nearly all had gone. This despite the fact that many had married or were in relationships with British women and now had families living in Liverpool.
A mixed marriage in Liverpool in WW2
It was difficult to remove the Hong Kong men, as they were nominally British. But the Shanghai ‘troublemakers’ were different: they had no <Read more ...>
