<論説>兵士から外国人労働者へ : アトリー労働党政権のポーランド人再定住政策 一九四六〜四九

Abstract

一九四六年五月、アトリー政権は旧亡命政府系ポーランド軍の解体と、そのメンバーの受け入れを決定した。従来、このポーランド兵は、労働力不足と人口減少への懸念を背景に同政権が積極的に受け入れた「白人」外国人労働力集団の一つとして位置づけられ、彼らになされた再定住支援は「白人」移民に対する同政権の歓迎姿勢を象徴するものとして捉えられてきた。しかし、本稿で明らかにするように、同政権が行った外国人労働力募集政策は期間も対象も限定された政策であって、「白人」であっても無条件に歓迎するものではなかった。また、ポーランド人に対する同政権の再定住支援は特殊な歴史的事情を背景としており、労働力不足という要因のみでは説明できない。むしろ、新たな外国人労働力の投入に際し、労働党を基盤とするアトリー政権は、国内世論との関係で慎重な対応を余儀なくされていたのである。

On 22 May 1946, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Ernest Bevin, finally announced the Government's policy on the Polish troops in exile. These troops had fought under the British command during World War II, but, after the British recognition of the Polish Government of National Unity in Warsaw and the rise of the Cold War, they had become politically embarrassing for the British government because of their continuing allegiance to the unauthorized Polish Government in Exile (in London). Bevin's statement announced that the British government would disband the Polish Army in Exile and allow those members, who preferred not to return to the communist dominated Poland, to resettle in the United Kingdom (UK). To this end, they formed a special resettlement organization, named the Polish Resettlement Corps (PRC), as unarmed corps of the British Army into which Poles were enlisted for the period of their demobilization in Britain. The members of the PRC who found employment within two years would be relegated to the status of reserve and, under the control of the Ministry of Labour and National Service, be gradually reintegrated into civilian life. This point signaled the beginning of the officially-controlled resettlement of a body of foreigners. No such a policy had ever been carried out in the British history. By September 1949 when the PRC was disbanded, about 114, 000 Poles had enlisted into the PRC and more than 90.000 ex-members had resettled in Britain. So far, this resettlement policy has not attracted a great deal of interest from historians, because it implemented as a part of foreign labour policy during the Attlee years (1945-1951), when Britain suffered from serious labour shortage. Many scholars have described the Attlee government's immigration policy as 'open door'. However, some historians who studied the Attlee's administration's policy toward so-called post-war 'coloured immigrants' point out that the Attlee government tried to restrict immigration of 'coloured' British subjects by indirect measures. For example, they argue, the Attlee government unsuccessfully tried to put pressure on the colonial governments to prevent their people from migrating to the UK. Some of these historians argue that the immigration policy of the Attlee government was considerably 'racialized' and even assert that immigration of 'coloured' people from the empire had nothing to do with the 'open door' policy which was induced by the manpower shortage. In this connection, Kathleen Paul argues, by comparing the Attlee government's migration policy towards four kinds of migrant groups, -British emigrants to the Commonwealth, European foreign labour including Poles, Irish immigrants and 'coloured immigrants'-, that its immigration policy was carried out in order to keep Britain 'white' and, also, to maintain the British Empire, by continuing the pre-existing notion of racial hierarchy. In her argument, Poles, along with other European foreign workers, are defined as 'potential Britons' who were welcomed, in the short term, as supplementary labour and, in the long term, as future 'British stock' to make up for the British population decrease. Her argument is widely accepted. However, as this article will show, her argument is based on an imperfect understanding of the Attlee government's foreign labour policy. First, she mixes up different kinds of policy under which each group of European foreign workers was recruited and immigrated to Britain. In order to stress the active support the Attlee government made for these 'white' foreigners, she exaggerates the extent of public funding and various kinds of official assistance for their resettlement, which, in fact, was not extended to all 'white' foreigners but mainly limited to Polish ex-servicemen and their families under the particular historical circumstances. Second, the foreign labour and immigration policy in the Attlee years was more restrictive and temporal than Paul, along with other historians, supposes. Taking into consideration the domestic reaction, the Attlee government treated quite selectively not only 'coloured' but also 'white' immigrants. The aim of this article is, by revealing the precise feature of foreign labour policy and its link with the resettlement policy of Poles in the Attlee years, to review the conventional understanding of the British immigration policy in the late 1940s. While this article does not intend to negate the 'racial' character of the British immigration policy and its relation to debates on 'Britishness', it will highlight the different aspects of the Attlee administration's immigration policy in terms of its economic and domestic policy, and show the inadequacy of evaluating its immigration policy only from the perspective of 'race'.