The Cuxhaven to Hull route

Origins and purpose of the route

A Control Commission progress report of 6 April 1948 set out the British requirement: about 20,000 men for agriculture to replace German prisoners of war, some 30,000 for the mines, 20,000 women for textiles, and domestic workers for hospitals and institutions. Recruitment reached across the British, French and American zones and into Austria, Denmark and Italy, but the pipeline ran through the British zone, because the shipping and transit accommodation were British.6

The assembly point was Muenster. In April 1947 a camp reopened in the army barracks at Hoher Heckenweg, renamed Portsmouth Barracks, as the regional processing centre for Operation Westward Ho, and in August 1947 the barracks became the zonal transit camp for the whole operation. About 60,000 displaced persons of all nationalities passed through it on their way to Great Britain. By mid-March 1948 the American zone alone had entrained 5,662 men and 1,837 women for Muenster.56

Selection, contracts and medical screening

Selection took place before the train left. Ministry of Labour teams interviewed applicants in the camps and inspected them medically, and those accepted signed an undertaking to work only as directed by the Ministry and not to change their place of work without official approval. Preference went to people willing to take unskilled manual work and, because of the housing shortage in Britain, to those with no dependants in the camps or willing to leave them behind.76

The medical standard was a general examination plus an X-ray for tuberculosis, with tuberculosis, venereal disease and pregnancy the chief official worries. Age limits were nominally 50 for men and 40 for women, and 35 for textiles, though not always applied strictly. Screening in Germany was thin: facilities were inadequate and little time could be given to each candidate. A further check waited at the far end, where doctors examined arrivals at the port and tested women for pregnancy.81

The crossing

From Muenster, after a stay of several days, recruits went by train to Cuxhaven on the Elbe estuary or to the Hook of Holland and boarded ship there. The sailing was normally overnight. Baggage was minimal and warm coats were issued for the crossing. Those landing at Harwich or Tilbury and bound for the north went on to London for a night before continuing.1

Landing was a formal admission. An endorsement stamped by the immigration officer at Harwich on a Certificate of Identity issued in lieu of a passport, dated 17 January 1948, permitted the holder to land on condition that he registered at once with the police, entered such employment as the Ministry of Labour might specify, and did not leave it without the Ministry's consent.9

Reception: Hull, Priory Road and the Yorkshire holding camps

At Hull the ships came up the Humber and docked in the morning. Women of the Women's Voluntary Service met the boats with tea and food and explained the next stage, a role they performed at the southern ports too, escorting and interpreting as far as the reception centre. Arrivals were taken by bus to Priory Road Camp, a former army barracks of wooden buildings that had previously held prisoners of war, where the National Service Hostels Corporation registered them and issued an identity card, a towel and soap, a small sum of money and clothing where needed. Most stayed one or two nights before moving to a camp in Yorkshire or further afield, though some who took local agricultural work remained longer.21

George Isaacs, Minister of Labour and National Service, inspected Priory Road on 23 September 1947 and called it a first class job, singling out its cubicles rather than the dormitories used elsewhere. The Hull Daily Mail reported him addressing Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish workers in the canteen through German, the camp's common language.2

Beyond the port transit camps stood nine holding camps with room for about 10,000 people, from which the Ministry of Labour placed people into work and then into hostels or lodgings near their jobs. Full Sutton, near York, was the Yorkshire link in that chain: accommodation for approximately 1,000 European volunteer workers had been provided there by June 1947, and workers could be moved from it to employment anywhere in Yorkshire.83

Ukrainians on the route

Ukrainians were among the first nationalities recruited when selection began in spring 1947, and most Ukrainian EVWs arrived in the second half of 1947 and the first half of 1948, with the last in 1949. Official statistics give 20,912 Ukrainians admitted as EVWs, 16,194 men and 4,718 women, plus 411 adult dependants and 451 children; about 700, mainly men, returned or were deported soon after arriving. About 8,128 former soldiers of the Galicia Division, brought to Britain from Italy in 1947 as prisoners of war, were released from that status in the autumn of 1948 and taken onto the scheme. They did not travel this sea route, and their numbers should not be added to the recruits shipped from Germany.7

Ukrainians made up roughly a quarter of the whole intake: of the approximately 85,000 east European refugees who arrived under the scheme between October 1946 and December 1949, about 21,000 identified as Ukrainian. The arrivals are not broken down by port in the sources used here, so the Ukrainian share of the Hull landings is unknown, although Ukrainians are recorded among those who came ashore there.92

What happened afterwards

Operation Westward Ho ended in June 1949, after which the Muenster camp was turned over to IRO resettlement to Australia, Chile and France. In Britain the reception apparatus persisted: 118 workers' hostels were still open in 1951, housing EVWs alongside the Polish Resettlement Corps, and Priory Road took many Polish arrivals in 1949 and 1950.582

Full Sutton outlasted its original function and changed character. By 29 November 1949 it held 776 European volunteer workers of all nationalities and was described in the Commons as a holding camp for those who had failed to make the grade. Between August and October that year 244 refused offers of agricultural employment, and in 175 of those cases the reasons were judged unacceptable and unemployment insurance benefit was disallowed. The Parliamentary Secretary declined a suggestion that the camp be closed, noting that its residents were a small fraction of some 180,000 foreign workers then in Britain.4

The direction of labour written into the landing condition lasted into the next decade. In July 1950 the Ministry decided that from 1 January 1951 EVWs resident in the United Kingdom for at least three years could apply for release from the restriction on choice of employment,.7