When the UK welcomed 250,000 refugees from Belgium fleeing the German army’s advance in the First World War
From Hercule Poirot to a Tyneside factory town, the biggest wave of refugees in British history has left its faint trace
They were mostly women and children, fleeing a cataclysmic conflict that laid waste to their homes. In just a few weeks, some 250,000 refugees had arrived in Britain, clutching their bare necessities.
They hailed from a peaceful, neutral country attacked from the east by an invading force seemingly bent on enslaving their homeland.
This might seem to be referring to the fate of Ukrainians heading to Britain as Russian armies drive them across their borders to a safer place. But it is the tale of Belgians during the First World War, fleeing as the German army rolled across their country in its bid to invade France.
And the Belgian experience in Britain offers pointers to what Ukrainian refugees may find when they arrive.
Some three million people have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began in February, with almost two million currently in Poland.
Few have yet made it to the UK, in part thanks to the complex visa system, but about 150,000 families in Britain offered homes to refugees in the first hours of the launch of the Homes for Ukraine scheme. If this number is met, it would mark the biggest refugee influx since the Belgians in 1914.
How did it work out then? Much of the fighting on the Western Front during the First World War took place on Belgian territory – in Flanders Fields – with most of the country occupied by the Imperial German Army.
Between August and October 1914, there was an exodus of more than 1.5 million people from Belgium, about one fifth of the population, with a quarter of a million heading for Britain. They arrived at various ports including Dover, Hull, Tilbury, Margate, Harwich and Grimsby. On a single day in October 1914, the Kent port of Folkestone had to cope with 16,000 Belgians.
The refugees elicited huge sympathy when they arrived, with donations of clothes, shoes and toys, while the War Refugee Committee received 100,000 offers for accommodation after a public appeal.
Newspapers at the time hailed King Albert I for refusing to surrender, comparing Belgium’s “Soldier King” to Leonidas of Sparta. The press also presented them as the innocent victims of German brutality, and their country was dubbed poor, gallant, or plucky little Belgium. That mood is echoed in current sentiments about the plight of Ukraine, and its President, Volodymyr Zelensky.
About one in three of the Belgian refugees stayed in London or its environs, with some 38,000 passing through Alexandra Palace: the “People’s Palace” became a sorting centre, with beds filling the Great Hall and Exhibition Hall.
Other refugees were billeted in local communities around Britain, often housed with families who offered rooms or homes. A report in London-based journal The Hospital, published on September 26, 1914, referred to “the homeless Flemish peasants and Walloons” congregated at Alexandra Palace.
“They are simply penniless men, women, and children seeking refuge from a devastated country in a land of whose language and people they are totally ignorant, and are consequently utterly dependent for their food, shelter, and even clothing on the generous hospitality of the strangers to whom they have come in such numbers,” it said.
Elisabethville, in Birtley, Tyneside, was purpose-built for 6,000 new arrivals. Munitions minister David Lloyd George set it up next to two factories making artillery shells, staffed entirely by Belgians working to support the war effort.
Named after Elisabeth, the Belgian Queen, and known by the Belgians as “the Colony”, it was a sovereign Belgian village run on Belgian law. It had its own gendarmes, the Belgian Franc as currency, and Flemish and French were the main languages. Elisabethville also had its own shops, school, a Catholic church, bars, a cinema, prisons, police and even a cemetery.
A similar community of around 6,000 was based in Richmond and East Twickenham, in south-west London, and was also associated with a munitions factory, based in what is now Cleveland Park alongside Richmond Bridge. By 1918, some 30,000 Belgians were working in munition factories, including more than 7,000 women.
Most Belgians integrated well in Britain. There was a long-time affinity between the two countries – Britain had helped secure Belgian independence in 1831 – and some Belgians already spoke English. There were romances between the guests and their hosts, with some ending in marriage.
Over time, as the war dragged on, public opinion gradually turned into mistrust. Locals grumbled about their sons fighting Belgium’s battles. And there were complaints about Belgians working for lower salaries, undercutting native labour, working longer days and working on Sundays and public holidays.
“The initial hero status was slowly undermined by irritation as the refugees were seen as foreigners,” says Tony Kushner, professor of modern history at the University of Southampton. “At first, the Belgians were the exceptions in wartime atmosphere of strong anti-alienism. But by the end of the war, they were not. All but a few are quickly removed after 1918.”
Although some 140,000 Belgians were still in Britain in 1918, within a year of the armistice, more than 90 per cent had returned home. And while they left few lasting marks on their host country, some remembered them fondly: crime writer Agatha Christie is thought to have based her detective Hercule Poirot on a retired Belgian policeman refugee she nursed in her home town of Torquay.
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