Welcome guests?
When the first Belgian refugees reached Britain’s shores in 1914, fleeing the German invasion of their homeland, they were met with open arms. But as the First World War ground on, relations became increasingly strained. Alison S Fell explores their complex experiences
As the first huddle of Belgian refugees prepared to leave their native shores for the British city of Leeds in October 1914, excitement, relief and trepidation laced the air. Sister Marie Antoine, who had been forced to flee when her convent in Willebroeck, a village between Antwerp and Brussels, was attacked by German shells, described the exodus at the dockside in Antwerp: “We took our places on the deck of this little boat… There were seats for about half of the number of passengers, but we crowded together as best we could, with a feeling of security, for we all knew that within a few hours we would be safely out of reach of those terrible bombs and shrapnel.” A mere four hours later, after a freezing journey across the sea, “the hills and rugged banks of England made their appearance” – safety was finally in sight.
The British, for their part, were eager to catch a glimpse of these beleaguered victims of war. After all, for most of the population, the arrival of Belgian refugees was their first encounter with the human costs of the First World War. Belgium had announced in July 1914 that it would uphold its neutrality, as guaranteed by Britain, Prussia, France, Austria, Russia and the Netherlands in the 1839 Treaty of London. But by August 1914, the Germans were advancing through the country to reach France. Refugees began to flee in their thousands. On 9 October 1914, the Belgian garrison commander surrendered Antwerp, and by November most of Belgium was under German occupation.
In total, 1.5 million Belgians were displaced, fleeing to France, neutral Netherlands and Britain. By October 1914, after the collapse of Belgian military resistance, a thousand Belgians a day were arriving in Britain. In November the Netherlands asked Britain for food for its Belgian refugee camps. Instead, the government proposed that 5,000 refugees a week be brought to Britain. In a few short months, more than 200,000 Belgians arrived in the country – the largest influx of people in British refugee history.
One of the reasons why the British government was so willing to accept Belgian refugees was decidedly self-serving: the invasion of Belgium was central to Britain’s publicly declared reasons for going to war. Britain had guaranteed its military support when the Belgian government refused the demands of the Germans to allow them passage through their country.
Britain also used the invasion to bolster the anti-German sentiment that was brewing among the population. British recruitment
posters depicted Belgium as the oppressed victim of a German aggressor who had ridden roughshod over international laws.
Newspaper articles, interviews and photographs all contributed to this image, presenting Belgian refugees as the innocent victims of German brutality. For instance, in Leeds, a front-line reporter called Bertha Bennet Burleigh gave a talk about the situation in Belgium in which she attacked the Germans as barbaric and uncivilised, and condemned the targeting of civilians and the looting of churches and libraries. While there were indeed atrocities committed against Belgian civilians during the invasion, including rape, hostage-taking and murder, these stories were sometimes invented or exaggerated, and the press were instructed not to print negative stories about Belgian refugees.
So it is no surprise, then, that the refugees from ‘Gallant Little Belgium’ who arrived in Britain were met with open arms. There was an immediate and impressive response by the well-established British charitable sector, led by the War Refugees Committee who agreed to the government’s request to coordinate relief work, but who were mainly funded, supported and directed by the Local Government Board. The management of care for the refugees themselves was devolved to local committees, whose ranks were made up of local worthies, including clergymen and wealthy middle to upper-class women.
Contributing to the cause
The Lord Mayor’s Belgian Relief Committee in Leeds, for instance, which was responsible for an average of 1,500 refugees throughout the war, was convened by Dorothy Una Ratcliffe – the lord mayor’s wealthy 27-yearold niece-in-law. To escape her unhappy marriage, Ratcliffe threw herself into war relief work. And there was much to do in Leeds as dispossessed Belgians poured in to the city. Two hundred and twenty-eight houses were given over to needy refugees, and there was also a hostel for unmarried Belgians and Belgian soldiers who were on leave.
In 1914 and 1915, the British public were greatly supportive of the refugees’ plight, and huge sums to cover the cost of caring for the Belgians were donated. The money raised in this period by the Leeds committee alone came to £10,714 (more than £500,000 today), which was supplemented by a further £11,258 in government grants.
Of those Belgians who fled to Britain and required monetary support, around two-thirds were women and children; men of military age continued to be conscripted into the Belgian army throughout the war. Belgian soldiers were subject to military discipline, but refugees were also subject to
state control. The 1914 Aliens Restriction Act, initially passed to control German and Austrian residents in Britain, required Belgians to register with the police and inform their local registration office if they were moving address, thus restricting their right to move around Britain freely.
As the first few months of the war turned into years, the relationship between Belgian refugees and their British hosts fundamentally changed. Belgians gradually shifted in status from ‘guests’ to ‘resident aliens’, whose cultural mores were often distinctly different from that of their hosts.
Initially, individual families had taken refugees into their own homes. However, this proved to be only a short-term solution. British families soon found their budgets and generosity exhausted, while Belgian refugees preferred to live independently once they were able to do so.
But for those who did not rapidly become self-sufficient, there was another option for regaining some semblance of independence. Many rambling English houses were converted into hostels, allowing groups of refugees to escape the confines of British families’ homes and live together. The records of one such hostel, Heaton Hall near Bradford, reveal how relations between Belgian residents and their British hosts became increasingly strained.
The Heaton Hall Committee was
Belgians gradually shifted in status from ‘guests’ to ‘resident aliens’, whose cultural mores were distinctly different
dominated by older, socially conservative middle-class women and chaired by Alice Priestman: the 62-year-old Quaker wife of a middle-manager in the textile industry, and an experienced visitor at a women’s prison. But the realities of work with Belgian refugees was not always as rewarding as the committee members had first hoped. They regularly heard the Belgians’ “small petty jealousies” and were regaled with complaints of “one person having had his boots repaired more often than another”, for instance, or a lack of tobacco money. In December 1915, the secretary noted the situation had become so fractious that the refugees were “strongly reproved by our [the committee’s] chairman”. A Flemish speaker called Madame Brule also chastised them, “pointing out that it was very ungracious of them to have petty bickerings when so much has been done for them”.
Relations between the Heaton Hall Committee and the refugees continued to deteriorate. In subsequent committee minutes, increasing tensions emerged between the wealthy Yorkshire women of the committee – with their Protestant values and assumed class and moral superiority – and the refugees they were responsible for. The Belgians came from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds and they did not always take kindly to having their behaviour policed and reprimanded by their British hosts.
A culture clash was particularly evident in attitudes towards the consumption of