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Steelworks recruitment after the First World War


Stunmon

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My father who worked at Firth Browns as a metallurgist in the late 1918s / 1920s once told a tale about a recruitment drive in Bahrain to encourage some of their young men to work in the Sheffield steelworks. He actually said he'd been over there. That I fear may be a bit of fiction as in those days travel was so limiting. However, I can't entirely dismiss it out of hand. Anyone had any similar tales from their fathers or grandfathers?

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Post War Britain was interested in finding jobs for the large demobilised Army and as a result women, who had been doing war work, were quickly encouraged to return to "domesticity". I have never read of any recruitment drive and would have thought it unnecessary especially with the hundreds of thousands of Indian  and other Empire troops who had served on the Western Front.

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I lived in Bahrain during the 70s. It is a tiny place, same size as the Isle of Wight, and the local population were mainly fishermen or traders, certainly no steel workers.

Britain had a long relationship with Bahrain during the 20th century because of its strategic location, - we had both naval and air-force bases there. So British servicemen would have visited regularly.

Some nationals may have found their way over here and ended up in the steelworks, but can't imagine that it was part of an active recruitment process.

 

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Bahrein was a British Protectorate with a population in 1918 of far less than 1 million...hardly fertile ground for recruitment. However, post WW2 Sheffield did have a number of steelworkers from Aden and the Yemen.

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Agreed, I’d guess, Yemen/Aden, by far the biggest ME ‘providers’ of steelworkers for The City from 60s (maybe 50s) although, interestingly, by late 70s/80s it seemed to die out - maybe with the decline of the  industry..

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My late father-in-law worked as an inspector in the forge department at ESC/BSC. Latterly, he had a labourer named Abdul, helping him and I believe they became friends. I understand he "vanished" from Sheffield. This would be during the unrest in Aden before it became independent.

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Yep, I nearly added something about the long-standing, political turbulence if that corner of ME and it’s probable impact on migration over here in the context of this era early migrant, steelworkers.( I’m actually a full time military historian with BrItish  campaigns in the Arabian Peninsula a speciality, so don’t wish to hijack this local site with those much wider issues but suffice to say,  it’s  been a very unstable area for a couple of hundred years and as we see from the media, even with formal, de-colonialisation, remains so. Largely because of major powers/ ideologies wanting a grip in /on that part of the World, in its crudest form, the interface between Capitalism and Communism. Similar happened in many Countries of Africa. 

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6 hours ago, ManoutotCity said:

Agreed, I’d guess, Yemen/Aden, by far the biggest ME ‘providers’ of steelworkers for The City from 60s (maybe 50s) although, interestingly, by late 70s/80s it seemed to die out - maybe with the decline of the  industry..

My father was one of them. He came to the UK in 50s. Interesting stories he's told me of life in the steel works back then. 

Interesting video regarding Yemenis is Sheffield. 

Apologies if it's off the topic. 

 

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