When the Chinese in Liverpool stood up against inequality: the Liverpool Chinese Seamen’s Union in WW2.

The 20,000+ strong Chinese merchant seamen’s pool in Liverpool during WW2 served an invaluable role during the entire Battle of the Atlantic at great risk to life. Once the war ended, many were secretly deported, and their families left behind in Liverpool have long campaigned for the release of details on what happened to their fathers and to demand an apology from the government.

The repatriation episode after the war cannot be detached from the seamen’s unequal treatment throughout the war. To organise against the discrimination in pay and conditions, sometime around October 1941 a branch of the Chinese Seamen’s Union, and from February to April the following year there were a series of strikes with some violent confrontations with police which saw Chinese sailors jailed. The seafarers eventually won an equal war risk bonus but not equal pay.

This event marks the donation of papers about the Liverpool Chinese Seamen’s Union collected at the time by Arthur Clegg of the China Campaign Committee to the Maritime Museum Archives in Liverpool.

These documents, including information about the union, its constitution and elected committee, as well as correspondence and details pertaining to the seamen’s claims, are of considerable significance. In the first place they show that the Chinese did not take discrimination lying down but stood up for their equal rights against colonial-style practices; they also show there were people in Britain who supported them - through the China Campaign Committee, which had been set up in 1937 in solidarity with China’s resistance against Japanese aggression, they received assistance also from the National Union of Seamen and the National Council of Civil Liberties.

Speakers:

Jenny Clegg - China author and campaigner

Eddie Dempsey - RMT General Secretary

Kim Johnson MP - Liverpool Riverside

Judy Kinnin - Long term family campaigner for justice

Description supplied by the event organiser.