Rebuilding Post War Britain by Emily Gilbert

Rebuilding Post War Britain by Emily Gilbert

'Germany wasnt really a place for settling in, because after the war it was pretty devastated, and there wasnt really a chance to start again, so I thought Id come to England. It was a case of people between 18 and 50 and you had to be fit because it was mainly physical work. For men, it was mines and agricultural work and brick factories and women, mainly textiles.' 'We were thinking it was temporary. We were thinking the war would restart with the west and the east, and that the west would win, and we would be going home. But, it wasn't like that.' After the Second World War, thousands of Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian refugees, uprooted by war and conflict in their homelands, were recruited from Displaced Persons Camps in Germany to fill labour shortages in Britain. This unknown episode in Britain's immigration history is brought to life in this book, through interview extracts and documentary sources. Women were the first recruits to the so-called European Volunteer Worker Schemes, in which 25,000 Baltic men and women came to Britain between 1946 and 1951, to work in hospitals, textiles, agriculture, coal mining and other undermanned areas of industry.Initially regarding their stay in Britain as temporary, a majority of these Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian men and women remained in Britain their whole lives. Recently joined by more migrants from the Baltic States, this book tells the story of Britain's Baltic communities, from the earliest accounts of their arrival in Britain to the present day.

Dr Emily Gilbert gained a PhD from the University of Sheffield for her research about the Baltic communities in Britain, later published as Changing Identities: Latvian, Lithuanians and Estonians in Great Britain. She also holds a Masters Degree in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Birmingham, and a Degree in History from the University of Newcastle. She has held research positions at the Universities of London and Newcastle, as well as research and policy roles in charities and local government. For further information about her work on the Baltic communities in Great Britain, see her website: www.changingidentities.wordpress.com

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781473860575
ISBN 10	1473860571
Title	Rebuilding Post War Britain
Author	Emily Gilbert
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Year published	2017-09-01
Number of pages	242
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.