The Labourer’s Revolt
Julian Putkowski
The inception and development of the Labour Corps arose from the need to secure additional recruits from industrial classes hitherto exempted by military tribunals from military service on occupational grounds (e.g. munitions workers).
It was envisaged that these would be replaced by soldiers on active service who were either to old or physically unfit for combat duties and who might otherwise have been employed at ports, military bases or on the lines of communication. It would also enable the army to comb out a significant number of combat-worthy troops engaged in non- combatant duties.
To meet the resultant demand for additional military labour it was proposed to employ non-European labour. The issue was particularly acute as a result of the slaughter during the Somme campaign of 1916 and although senior commanders voiced reservations about accommodation, discipline and pay, they acquiesced to the proposal that was initiated by the War Office.
In January 1917 the army sanctioned the creation of a Labour Directorate to supervise a Labour Corps. The latter was composed of skilled and unskilled men of infantry labour battalions and others assigned to permanent base duties, including non-European labourers.
In terms of military status, the latter were almost universally regarded as the lowest of the low yet they were vital in ensuring that ammunition and supplies reached the front.
They were recruited in the face of resistance to the prospect of importing black soldiers to fight in a white man's war. However, the British and French armies had already established a precedent, involving Indian and African troops during 1914. Also, the grave shortage of recruits, matched by increasing demands on the supply and transport system forced a compromise in the face of opposition from politicians, civil servants and trade unionists.
Thus, during 1916 the British recruited labourers from Malta, South Africa and the Seychelles and the French pioneered the use of Chinese and other contract labourers. The decision to employ black and other non-European labourers in Northern France was no capitulation to liberalism but it did mean that racial prejudice was modified if not wholly subordinated to the pressing demand for labour.
By mid-1917, the ports, timber procurement, transport, salvage, repair and supply networks serviced by the Labour Directorate would have been disabled without the contribution of an ethnically diverse array of labourers which included Fijians, Seychellois, Mauritians, the South African Native Labour Contingent and the Cape Coloured, Egyptian, Indian, Chinese Labour Corps.
Predominantly engaged in carrying out unskilled labouring work in companies commanded by white officers or NCO's, they also included literate, articulate men well capable of organising and representing others with little or no previous experience of collective bargaining. Nor was it long before the rank and file of the Labour Corps gave vent to their dissatisfaction by going on strike.
Though authoritative accounts maintain that mutinies involving non-European labourers began in September 1917, it is evident that the men had engaged in direct action many months previously.
For example, in mid-March, South African Native Labour Contingent (SANLC) men were court-martialled for having gone on strike at Dieppe. There was also bloodshed at Dannes, near Camiers, when an incident at a SANLC camp resulted in one man being accidentally shot. As for Egyptian labourers, collective protests had been reported in Northern France since at least the end of May.
All who had any dealings with the labourers, including Field Marshal Haig, were well aware that rigid segregation and these men's confinement in prison-like camps provoked aggravation. In the case of all except those involving men of the South African Native Labour Contingent, the British army was primarily responsible for the labourers' incarceration.
Insofar as the SANLC were concerned, the South African Government wished to prevent black workers from becoming familiar or intimate with European civilians, especially white women. However, it was a perspective readily shared by the British and extended to embrace Chinese, Indian and Egyptian labourers.
Labourers' camps were concealed from public view behind corrugated iron palisades and their interior environment was almost identical with that which existed at Blargies North prison. Guards and military police enforced segregation from the outside world.
The army ensured that fellow labourers, who acted as gangers and police, also controlled the labourers. Because efforts had been made to create companies of men from the same village, tribe or ethnic minority, the latter were frequently of a higher social status than their fellows, including, for example, tribal chiefs, members of influential families or clerics.
While the level of co-operation of rank-and-file labourers may have depended on the circumstances that attended their recruitment, the gangers functioned organisationally, and perhaps politically, as an extension of the collaborating elites that supported imperial rule in overseas territories. Although evidence remains scanty, the gangers, police and probably many interpreters exercised informal authority, which complemented the formal recognition and support, they derived from the white NCOs and officers who commanded non-European labour companies.
Because of strict censorship and rigid prohibition of access to the compounds and even hospitals, it was very difficult for labourers to develop contacts with others outside their camp. In any case, non-European Labour companies were differentiated on the basis of skin colour, language, village of origin, lengths of contract and the army's generally racist estimates of their particular skills and aptitudes.
Even had they been able to overcome censorship or evade surveillance and contact other labour companies, there was little guarantee that labourers from different ethnic groups would have shared a common language. In some cases internecine or ethnic hostility would also have impeded collective action.
For example, the Indian Labour Corps was made up of at least ten separate tribal groups from all over India; the Chinese and SANLC were cool towards one another; Basutos and Zulus of SANLC were mutually hostile.
Labourers were also zoned according to the type of work for which they had been recruited, for example Indians carried out salvage work on the lines of communication whereas Egyptians were used as stevedores in seaports.
With a few exceptions, including the Cape Coloured Corps and some SANLC men attached to the Army Service Corps, the non-Europeans of the Labour Corps were accommodated in compounds which resembled those employed by mining companies in South Africa, somewhat resembling the environment of Blargies North military prison.
However, most labourers were not criminals and none were POWs. These men were not soldiers but they were all subject to the disciplinary provisions of the Army Act and were punished in the same manner as British troops, though with the addition of flogging.
Though conditions for labourers in the camps were hard, loss of earnings and a hostile civilian population also prevented labourers from breaking out of the camps for very long.
Nevertheless, prior to September 1917 the compound system generated protests by labourers, as did insufficient or unsuitable rations. Thereafter, their engagement in direct action tended to be mainly concerned with the terms and especially the duration of contracts of employment.
This pattern emerges in a number of incidents that occurred during 1917. For example, on 23 July, one of the five hundred or so men serving with No. 24 Company, SANLC at No.7 Labour Camp, Dieppe was arrested for having defied an officer by doing his washing in a stream outside the compound.
The man's comrades demanded an explanation for the action from the arresting officer, who refused to discuss his motives. Others may have been detained as a consequence of the intervention as argument escalated into action when fellow labourers, bent on liberating the arrested, pick-axed open the lock securing the compound gate.
Their initiative collapsed when a party of twenty-five white troops who had been ordered to quell the disturbance fired the on crowd. Four SANLC men were killed, eleven were wounded and sixteen of those who survived the shooting were later summarily sentenced to 84 days' Field Punishment No.1 for breaking out of camp.
At some point three white personnel had also been wounded, though by whom is unclear. Though details are sketchy, it is apparent that the foray out of the compound was provoked by the labourer's anger over the arrest and the officer' refusal to develop a dialogue.
Nor was it the case that the labourers' complaints always went unheeded, however the extent to which they could press a grievance by striking work was very limited. This may be demonstrated by the experiences of labourers working at Dunkirk.
On 22 May 1917, when 1,925 men of Nos. 75 and 76 companies, Egyptian Labour Corps (ELC), employed as stevedores in the docks, secured an increase in their bread rations after threatening to strike.
Six days later, after over two dozen were killed or wounded by an enemy air raid, they also protested about the hazards of being billetted in an area which was an enemy target and demanded to be moved elsewhere. Again, their collective efforts enjoyed a measure of success, as sandbag walls were erected to protect their dormitory tents.
However, instead of being re-located, armed guards were mounted over their camp to prevent "panics" during a air raids, such as occurred on 30 May after an air raid siren warned about the approach of enemy bombers.
Finally, after suffering two successive nights' bombing, the Egyptians refused to spend the night in camp. They armed themselves with sticks and stones, frightened away their officers and tried to seek sanctuary in Dunkirk, only to be driven off at bayonet point after a volley had been fired over their heads by a mixed force of British and French guards.
Though none of the labourers were injured, their direct action over what was essentially a health and safety issue finally persuaded the Base Commandant to permit the labourers to spend the night outside the camp, huddled in sand dunes. In early June, the Egyptians were evacuated from Boulogne and sent to the relatively less dangerous ports of Le Havre and Rouen.
Their work at Dunkirk was taken over by labourers from Nos. 17, 20 and 22 Chinese Labour Corps (CLC). Unlike the largely illiterate fellahin who had been drafted into the ELC, the Chinese included skilled artisans, factory workers, medical auxiliaries (dressers) and interpreters, all well able to negotiate improvements in their rations.
Their commanding officer was informed that there was no guarantee the Chinese would work unless a recent cut in their supply of rice was revoked. The men gained a partial restoration of the ration but the immediate sequel revealed that their unanimity was fragile. A large scale brawl, the cause of which remains unknown, broke out between the men of No.11 and No. 20 companies, ending with a newly erected camp being demolished and armed guards being employed to halt the fighting.
However, at the beginning of September their former solidarity was restored following two consecutive nights of enemy bombing which caused 23 Chinese casualties. The Deputy Assistant Director of Labour attempted to mollify the frightened and angry men by suggesting to the Base Commandant that dugouts be provided for their use as air raid shelters but it was too late. At least half the 4300 Chinese labourers left their camps and settled in dykes and ditches in the countryside west of St. Pol.
Initially, they carried on working on the wharves and simply slept outside their camps at night, but on 3 September, after heavy bombing killed or injured four Chinese and damaged the docks and part of the town, they escalated their action and refused either to work or return to camp.
On 4 September, Major R.I. Purdon, the second-in-command of the CLC arrived to confer with all the CLC company gangers. For a number of reasons, Purdon's negotiating position was weak, even though he could use force to compel the men to resume work. The legal status of the labourers was complicated because they had been hired by the British Emigration Bureau rather than HM Government and were not soldiers, even though China had declared support for the Allies and entered the war on 14 August.
Customarily subjected to disciplinary provisions of the British Army Act, the labourers, who were initially reported to be, "Well behaved, except for refusing to work", were mutineers but their contracts stipulated that they were not to be employed in dangerous zone such as Dunkirk had become.
Yet their labour was urgently needed to discharge cargoes from ships at the dockside and others whose arrival was imminent. Nor was it likely, after the shooting episode on 30 May, that Dunkirk's townsfolk would tolerate their replacement by black labourers, whether they originated from Egypt or South Africa.
By promising that the men's safety would be enhanced by the provision of secure air raid dugouts and that their camps would be moved to a safer location, Purdon managed to persuade 400 labourers to resume work.
A move away from Dunkirk on the grounds that it was in a dangerous zone was ruled out, for enemy air raids had similarly affected other docks and bases.
Purdon appears to have been optimistic about the prospects of the remainder following their example, but the latter were reported to be causing a public nuisance by damaging civilian property and housebreaking (presumably in search of food and shelter) in the Fourth Army area.
Nevertheless, by dispersing the CLC into smaller groups in different locations and erecting air raid shelters in camps and docks, the avoidance of further CLC casualties arising from continued heavy bombing encouraged all except six labourers to return to work by 22 September.
The air raids, which provoked the withdrawal of labour at Dunkirk, also affected Nos. 73 and 78 companies, ELC employed Boulogne. Following heavy bombing on 4 and 5 September, 1300 Egyptians went on strike, asserting that they had served out the duration of their six-month contracts. Demanding to be sent back to Egypt, they also declared that had been upset by the air raid and were disenchanted by the cold, wet weather.
Following earlier practice, the Assistant Director of Labour summoned the Egyptian Adviser, Lt.Col. Malcolm Coutts to negotiate with the strikers. Coutts, formerly the Director of Stores, Prisons and Police in the Sudan, reported that the men adamantly refused to modify their sole demand. They had included in their calculation the time taken to travel and return to their home villages.
Coutts disagreed, asserting that their six-month contracts included only to the time they spent in France.
Colonel E.C. Wace, the Deputy Director of Labour dealt brusquely with Coutts, insisting that the dispute was not a matter for negotiation but a disciplinary issue to be settled by force if the strike continued.
Coutts relayed the ultimatum to the men on 6 September and the camp was surrounded on three sides by a detachment of the Garrison battalion. When the defiant strikers broke out of their camp, they were gunned down. The final casualty toll was twenty-three dead and twenty-four wounded. Thereafter, the Egyptians resumed work.
The use of force at Boulogne and the accompanying death toll produced the bloodiest outcome of any mutiny that occurred in the BEF during the war. The order to employ force was issued by Wace but it was prompted by matters as much to do with munitions and movement as racism. Unlike Dunkirk, where construction materials and engineers' stores were imported, the tonnage discharged at Boulogne included fuel and roughly half the ordnance stores and a quarter of the ammunition required by the BEF.
With the unprecedented artillery barrages then being discharged in around Ypres, the army would have tolerated no interruption to the supply of shells by stevedores. More seriously from the authorities point of view, had news of the strike at Boulogne spread then there was a possibility that other labourers who were being bombed or whose contracts were ending could copy the Egyptians' action.
Viewed thus, the Directorate of Labour would have had no alternative workforce immediately available that could be used to substitute for the strikers. All this might explain why the soldiers opened fire but does not readily account for the high number of casualties. A clue about the latter may be gleaned from the personnel customarily included in a garrison battalion. They were composed of troops who were physically unsuitable for duty in combat units.
Some were veteran combat troops but others were ill versed in fire control, as may be deduced from a hospital report stating that the casualties of the Boulogne massacre included one soldier killed and three others who had been wounded by their own comrades' fire.
Nevertheless, from the manner in which the Directorate of Labour subsequently treated labourers, the use of force to break the strikes became an established routine.
On 10 September, Egyptian Labourers at Rouen and Calais also went on strike, claiming that their contracts had ended. The Base Commandant suppressed the outbreak at Rouen without recourse to gunfire but Coutts was more sanguine in dealing with the men of No. 74 ELC at Calais.
On 11 September, using a guard from the nearby reinforcement camp, he repeated the exercise he had supervised at Boulogne, ending the strike at Calais with a fusillade which killed four and wounded fifteen Egyptians.
The manner in which these confrontations developed may be best appreciated from events that took place at Camp Fournier in mid- September. In reconstructing what occurred, elements emerge which have much in common with other examples of labourers' collective bargaining.
That said, the ELC action at Marseilles appears to be unusual in one key respect - the subsequent court martial and execution of No. 385 Mahmoud Mahomet Ahmed.
How 28-year old Ahmed came to join the Egyptian Labour Corps remains unknown. However the general means by which he and other Egyptian Labour Corps personnel were recruited, "compulsory volunteering" was acknowledged to be "shameful and corrupt" and akin to the hated corvee.
On 31 March 1917, Ahmed's unit, No. 71 Egyptian Labour Corps was posted to Camp Fournier, Marseilles, where they were engaged in coaling ships. The closed camp system and use of the lash contained challenges from the labourers but it was small wonder that the date at which their contract ended was of great importance to the labourers.
At 6 a.m. on Sunday, 16 September 1917, the 500 men stockaded in Camp Fournier were seated on parade, awaiting orders from a handful of junior officers and NCOs. Before they were marched off to carry out their allotted tasks outside the camp, the men were given the Commandant's answer to representations which had been made on their behalf the previous day.
Having heard a report on Wednesday 12 September that they were to be retained for the duration of the war, all the Egyptian labourers had persuaded their gangers to make representations to the commandant. The commandant had granted and interview with the gangers on the following Saturday.
The commandant's response to the labourers' claim that they had fulfilled their contracts, and should therefore be transported back to Egypt was brusquely communicated at 9 p.m. on Saturday evening. According to Ahmed, Sergeant Selek had told the labourers, "You sons of dogs are to remain here as long as you are wanted."
The next morning, Lt. H.V. Diacono, the officer commanding No. 71 Company, ordered No.5 gang to move off the work, when:
"Mahmoud Mahomed Ahmed started off a riot by shouting out in Arabic 'Get up boys, make for the officers first' on which Lt. Turley tried to arrest him, but he and all the men on parade, except No.4 gang, rushed to their tents & armed themselves with sticks."
Diacono, Second Lieutenants S.B. Chapman and A.G. Turley, accompanied by Acting Sergeant Foreman Joseph A. Selek pursued the exodus from the parade ground and managed to persuade six men to parade once more in front of their tents. However, Ahmed, Selek recalled:
"Ran to his tent took off his jacket, threw it at the door of the tent and then rushed in & got a stick & coming out struck me across the head. Lt. Diacono was with me then & the accused tried to strike him too, but I caught the blow on my arm. Lt. Chapman who was near pulled me away from the crowd."
Turley, Chapman and Selek then went away to get firearms as Ahmed and between 100 and 150 labourers armed with sticks began to move out of their compound, going in the direction of Camp Fournier's officers' lines and a nearby French canteen.
Acting Corporal Obeid Richard, witnessed the men leave their compound within the camp but the labourers’ sticks and threatening demeanour intimidated him. He watched helplessly as Ahmed caught up with Turley:
"I saw 2nd Lieutenant Turley going towards his tent when Mahmoud Mahomed Ahmed came up from behind & struck him over the head a heavy two-handed blow with his stick which knocked him down saying at the same time 'You dog of a Christian take that'."
While Richard helped carry the unconscious Turley to hospital, Sergeant Selek was returning with a rifle and bayonet borrowed from the British rest camp. Selek later remembered:
"About half way to the depot office I met the accused who threatened me with his stick. I opened and shut the bolt of the rifle & seeing this he ran away. I then rushed through the crowd in order to get Lt. Diacono out of it but I couldn't find him. Then two men caught hold of my arms from behind & the accused managed to get the rifle from me. He then with others hit me several times with a stick."
Diacono had been hemmed in by the crowd and witnessed the attack on Turley. The crowd then turned on Diacono and threatened to kill him but he was able to escape when the commandant, Captain Cairns first arrived on the scene.
Thereafter, Ahmed, armed with Selek's weapon, was witnessed, "Exciting the men with violent language against officers and men & NCO's", "Challenging the officers to come out and fight" and inciting the men to destroy the surrounding fences and cut through the barbed wire.
Around 6.30 a.m. British and Indian troops arrived, the labourers peacefully abandoned their protest and Ahmed handed over Selek's bayonet, rifle and a solitary round of ammunition to Captain Cairns.
The labourers resumed work at Marseilles docks, supervised by five replacement NCOs and guarded by Indian troops. On 24 September, 121 of the labourers were shipped off to Taranto, and the remainder were eventually shipped back to Egypt with the rebellious Nos. 76 and 78 companies on 17 November.
The Officers and NCO's identified Ahmed as the ringleader, though their evidence was partisan and the man was actually charged with striking a superior officer and conduct to the prejudice of military discipline rather than mutiny.
Defending himself at his Field General Court Martial on 28 September, Ahmed insisted the men would not have rebelled had they not heard from Selek and Yosri that they were to be retained beyond the time stipulated in their contracts.
Found guilty, Haig's confirmed Ahmed's execution on 5 October and the labourer was shot five days later at No.8 Rest Camp, Marseilles. While Ahmed had previously been lashed a couple of times for defying his superiors, it was well-recognised that he was not wholly to blame for the situation which developed.
The contracts of employment, it was candidly admitted by Lt. Col. Coutts, had provoked unrest amongst the majority of ELC companies in France. He complained that the men's contracts had been badly worded and never properly explained to the labourers and that:
"Not a single officer of the Egyptian Labour Corps who came to France was aware of the nature of the contract signed by their men. They had merely hazy notions about it."
Nor, in Coutts' opinion, did he have enough experienced officers, Arabic speaking or otherwise, to control the labourers. As for the NCOs:
"The majority... are utterly incapable of performing the duties expected of them. They have no military experience and are, for the most part, drawn from a class incapable of inspiring in, or commanding any respect from natives and others. They are mostly low class Europeans and refugee Jews with a sprinkling of Egyptians. Egyptians will not work for, or obey, this class of European; and Jews they utterly despise."
Unfortunately for Ahmed, the decision whether to confirm the sentence of death passed by the court-martial coincided with further acts of protest by labourers in Northern France.
The latter involved separate actions by South African and Chinese labourers during October 1917. Discontent developed simultaneously in a number of separate SANLC companies. As with the Egyptian labourers, the immediate cause of unrest was to do with the expiry of the men's contracts.
The first contingent of SANLC men had left South Africa on 28 October and arrived in France on 20 November 1916, having agreed to serve for a year from the date they left South Africa.
Therefore by October 1917 many of the men considered their one-year contracts were close to expiry.
Thus, on 12 October, men of Nos. 5, 6, 7, and 9 SANLC companies at Abancourt went on strike, insisting that it was time they were shipped home. Reference to the Foreign Office revealed that the protestors were correct and the commandant conceded to No.7 Company that the SANLC men would not be expected to work after 18 October, the day their contracts ended. Simultaneously, brief strikes were reported by No.8 Company at Rouen and Basutos of No. 13 Company at No. 19 Labour Group, Saigneville (Abbeville).
Given the endorsement by the Foreign Office of the men's claim, the fact that they were not soldiers and the likely increase in disruption if their prompt repatriation were not implemented, the army capitulated.
Pending shipment home, contract-expired SANLC men were moved to a rest camp at Le Havre. GHQ also ordered that contract-expired SANLC men refusing to carry out work should not be forced to do so. However, the latter concession did not apply to more recent arrivals that still had time to serve.
For those SANLC who remained in France, discipline remained harsh, particularly in relation to disputes over the labourers' length of service.
For example, when SANLC men of No.8 Company went on strike at Rouen in November 1917 and sixteen were sentenced to two years' hard labour, the Staff Officer, SANLC requested:
"The authority of the Adjutant General be sought for their retention in France to complete a fair portion of their sentences after their company had been repatriated. Considers this action necessary to put a stop to the increasing tendency to refuse to work evidenced by some coys. whose period of contract is nearing completion."
The incidence of unrest by Chinese Labour Corps in Northern France during the latter part of 1917 also arose from contractual issues. They had been recruited in Weihaiwei on three-year contracts that stated they would not have to serve in the combat zone. As soon as it became apparent that they were to be subjected to enemy fire, some skilled labourers, arguing that they should be paid danger money, made representations.
Though not the only grievance expressed by the CLC, it contributed to the outbreak of a sustained strike at Dunkirk at the beginning of September 1917.
On 1 September enemy bombing had caused many casualties and two days later, fearing a repetition, Chinese labourers employed by the French went on strike.
Attempts by armed French guards to force them to go to work failed and a fight ensued. The affair ended with both sides sustaining casualties, two Chinese being killed.
A further heavy air raid on Dunkirk on 4 and 5 September killed fifteen and wounded twenty-one Chinese Labour Corps men. The survivors promptly abandoned their camp and sought refuge in nearby sand dunes and there they remained for four days. British officers tried to get the men to return to their work, unloading ships in Dunkirk Docks but only 400 could be persuaded to return to their camp.
Colonel Wroughton acknowledged the validity of the strikers' grievance. However, everywhere in Northern-Eastern France was within bombing range of German aircraft. Accordingly, four infantry companies were drafted in from adjacent army areas to round up the strikers.
They were forced back to work but because Dunkirk was being shelled repeatedly by long-range enemy artillery, their accommodation was moved away from dunes adjacent to the town and into the countryside.
A month later, the Director of Labour was informed of a serious shooting incident which killed five and wounded fourteen Chinese labourers in the 4th Army area. Details are unclear but an enquiry concluded the disturbance, which had occurred on 10 October, was:
"Due to a lack of appreciation on the part of the Officer Commanding the Company of the standard of discipline to be maintained among his officers and British NCOs as regards the treatment of the Chinese labourers.”
Again, on 16 December a "serious disturbance", arising from bullying by British NCO's, was reported amongst No. 21 Chinese Labour Company at Fontinettes.
The incident concluded with the armed guard opening fire, wounding nine and killing four Chinese and mortally wounding a Canadian soldier. After a day's protest, a British infantry platoon forced the Chinese back to work but it was not until 23 December, after key protestors were jailed, that all further protest ceased.
The affair coincided with a complaint from the Directorate of Labour to the Quartermaster General, about the desperate need for officers, "Who have good experience and knowledge of the Chinese and their language" and problems arising from, "Undue familiarity between British NCOs and the Chinese."
However, officers' facility with spoken Chinese did not mean the camp regime was thereby liberalised. Corporal Sayer, attached to No. 84 company CLC, recalled:
"We had three officers (Missionaries) who had no idea of the workings of the British Army or discipline. They were really tough, and had flogging as their one deterrent.”
As for "undue familiarity", Sayer added:
"The whole of the Chinese were treated as prisoners behind barbed wire and even when out on working parties were not allowed to visit shops or canteens. Some supplies were resold to 'Tommies' working with them and this could spell trouble."
It was this form of "undue familiarity" which caused labourers from No. 151 company to conspire to kill their Sergeant Major on Christmas Day, 1917:
"He squeezed them too much, took 5 francs from each man on the voyage, and flogged them too readily; he was a bad man, the son of a half-caste woman and better dead. They had beaten him until nearly dead, then shot him. They had not handled the two English officers more roughly than was needed to prevent them protecting the sergeant major."
Two hundred men from the Royal Welch Fusiliers turned out to round up some of the labourers, whom they found, "As quietly satisfied as men coming from a Band of Hope Meeting" near Reninghelst. Others had fled and were in the vicinity of 5 Corps HQ, Locre. Signaller David Doe, Royal Engineers, recalled their fate:
"After dinner we went over to the football ground to see a match at 3 p.m., but the chinese coolies encamped just opposite put a stop to it. They murdered their NCOs and fled the camp armed with sticks, iron and the tops of picks. They came across our ground & then the artillery camp turned out & commenced firing rifles at them. Several shots missed me by not much! The police sent us back to camp to get our rifles and we all had to turn out & shoot chinese to stop the mutiny. About 8 were shot on our footer ground. Some had got very far away & we had to help round them up. In all we captured 93 prisoners."
Even allowing for the murder of the NCO and the more general exigencies of war, the officially sanctioned policy of annihilating protest by summary shootings had limits. These were pointed out to the Director of Labour by the CLC organiser, Lt. Col. Fairfax when the Locre shootings were taking place. Much of what he had to say reflected issues to which the Director of Labour's attention had already been drawn in previous months.
For example, Brigadier General Evan Gibb, Director of Labour, needed little reminder from Fairfax that shooting labourers did not put an end to subsequent protests. Gibb already knew that news of the sufferings of Chinese labourers had percolated across the Channel and had featured in the British press and attracted he attention of Chinese government representatives in London. The Foreign Office had also demanded reports be forwarded about the shooting of Egyptian and other coloured Labour units.
Fairfax used his identification of the main causes of the unrest as an opportunity to bid for more suitable personnel and resources to control the Chinese. Some of what Fairfax had to say about NCOs and officers was contradictory but other issues, aside from discontent provoked by malcontents and petty criminals, were dominated by references to the labourers' disaffection over living conditions, poor facilities and the more general exigencies of war.
The officially sanctioned policy of annihilating protest by summary shootings had limits. These were pointed out to the Director of Labour by the CLC organiser, Lt. Col. Fairfax when the Locre shootings were taking place.
