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Registered Office John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of Linda McDowell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. 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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McDowell, Linda, 1949– Working lives: gender, migration and employment in Britain, 1945–2007 / Linda McDowell. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4443-3919-2 (cloth) — ISBN 978-1-4443-3918-5 (pbk.) 1. Women foreign workers—Great Britain—History—20th century. 2. Immigrant women—Employment—Great Britain—History—20th century. 3. Immigrant women— Great Britain—Social conditions—20th century. 4. Great Britain—Emigration and immigration—Social aspects—History—20th century. 5. Great Britain—Emigration and immigration—Economic aspects—History—20th century. 6. Great Britain—Economic conditions—20th century. 7. Great Britain—Social conditions—1945 HD8398.A2M2955 2013 331.4—dc23 2012051591 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover image: Young women from Calcutta in London, 1957. © Popperfoto / Getty Images Cover design by Workhaus Set in 10/12pt Plantin by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India 1 2013 For my mother, Olive Morgan Leigh, born in September 1926, and my grandson, Toby Christopher McDowell, born in July 2009 Contents List of Figures and Tables viii Series Editors’ Preface x Preface: Leaving Home and Looking for Work xi Part One Migration and Mobilities 1 1 Leaving Home: Migration and Working Lives 3 2 Gendering Labour Geographies and Histories 19 3 The Transformation of Britain 51 Part Two Out to Work: Embodied Genealogies 69 4 Post-war Reconstruction, 1945–1951 71 5 Coming Home: The Heart of Empire, 1948–1968 95 6 Years of Struggle, 1968–1979 128 7 Privilege and Inequality, 1979–1997 157 8 B ack to the Future: Diversity and Precarious Labour, 1997–2007 184 9 Full Circle, 1945–2007 213 References 232 Appendix: Post-war Legislation 253 Index 263 List of Figures and Tables Figures 4.1 Young women EVWs from the Baltic, queuing for a medical i nspection at a reception camp in Britain, in September 1947, before being allocated employment 81 5.1 A young woman from the Caribbean arriving in England by ship, May 1961 100 6.1 The leader of the Grunwick strike: Mrs Jayaben Desai, 1976 151 7.1 One woman (at ten to the hour) among the male brokers on the floor of The Atrium, Lloyd’s of London 168 8.1 A migrant worker mopping the floor in a large hotel 198 Tables 3.1 UK population by nationality and birthplace, 2009–10 60 3.2 Foreign-born population in the UK in the second half of the twentieth century 61 3.3 Foreign-born population living in the UK, largest 25 groups, 2001 61 4.1 Total arrivals in the UK under the Baltic Cygnet and Westward Ho! schemes 78 5.1 The Caribbean population in Great Britain, 1951–84 98 6.1 Country of birth, Great Britain, 1971 134 7.1 Change in the earnings distribution in Great Britain, 1979–95, full-time employees 159 7.2 Principal employers of women in the UK, 1997 163 7.3 Non-British-born population of working age, UK, 1979 and 2000, by birthplace, % 166 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES ix 8.1 The numbers of foreign nationals allocated a national insurance number in 2006/7 187 9.1 Ethnic composition of the population in 2001, UK 224 9.2 Economic activity of the working-age population by ethnic group, UK, 2004 226 Series Editors’ Preface The RGS-IBG Book Series only publishes work of the highest international standing. Its emphasis is on distinctive new developments in human and p hysical geography, although it is also open to contributions from cognate disciplines whose interests overlap with those of geographers. The series places strong emphasis on theoretically informed and empirically strong texts. Reflecting the vibrant and diverse theoretical and empirical agendas that c haracterize the contemporary discipline, contributions are expected to inform, challenge and stimulate the reader. Overall, the RGS-IBG Book Series seeks to promote scholarly publications that leave an intellectual mark and change the way readers think about particular issues, methods or theories. For details on how to submit a proposal please visit: www.rgsbookseries.com Neil Coe National University of Singapore Joanna Bullard Loughborough University, UK RGS-IBG Book Series Editors Preface: Leaving Home and Looking for Work This book is about the migration of women in search of work and a better standard of living. It is also a book primarily about the UK. My purpose is to explore the changing character of the British economy and society over the long post-war years between 1945 and the economic crisis in 2008 through the eyes of women born elsewhere. It is a book for students, for my own and my children’s generation, and for the general reader who wants to know more about Britain in the past, and about the lives of their mothers and grandmothers over the sixty years that were perhaps one of the most optimis- tic periods in Britain’s history. It was certainly a time in which women’s lives changed almost immeasurably, as well as when the population became more diverse in its origins. There are many books about Britain in the post-war era, some straddling the entire period, others focusing on particular decades, but very few place women’s lives and voices, especially working-class women born elsewhere, at the centre of the text. This is their place here. I want to illustrate the assumptions that are dominant at different times over more than half a century about who belongs in Britain and who does not, about how employment and motherhood are connected, about who gets what sorts of jobs and why, and the standards of living that these jobs permit. I also want to document the place of migrant women in Britain’s labour history, illustrating their contributions to economic growth and change and to providing for the needs of the population, often through working in caring roles. Some of the women whose lives I explore came to the UK by choice, others did not. Some might have been able to go home and chose not to, others were unable to return to their homeland. All these women made significant contributions to the UK through waged work and for some of them through their involvement in struggles and strikes to improve their own and others’ working conditions. Through their eyes, the huge changes that occurred in post-war Britain – in social attitudes, in p olitics, in sexual mores, in gender relations and in women’s rights, as well