‘Brave little Belgium’ arrives in Huddersfield ... voluntary action, local politics and the history of international relief work

Abstract

This article recounts the arrival of Belgian refugees in the textile districts of Huddersfield during the early months of the First World War, examining their reception by local Belgian refugee committees and the controversial question of their employment in the mills. The intention is to place these responses into a wider context of voluntary action, local Labour politics and international relief work, specifically the ‘networks of concern’ that re-emerged after the war as part of a renewed liberal internationalism (for example, in the early work of the Save the Children Fund) and in alternative attempts to tie class politics more firmly to international relations, evident, for instance, in the offer to accommodate Basque refugees in Huddersfield over 20 years later.