Isle of the Displaced

Suddenly, at the beginning of May 1940, all the euphoria vanished. Germany invaded Denmark and Norway and the so-called ‘phoney war’ became only too real. The impregnable Maginot Line crumbled under the sudden impact of Blitzkreig: the German Panzer tank divisions had a speed and power never seen before in war and the Allied armies disintegrated under the combined attacks of tanks and Stuka bombers. After ten days of this devastating warfare the French army had been destroyed and Lord Gort, leader of the British expeditionary forces, began to plan the evacuation of the remnants of his army from Dunkirk.

By June 4 the evacuation from France had been successfully completed, the Germans were in control of most of France, and on June 10, Hitler’s ally Benito Mussolini, in haste to be in at the kill, declared war on Britain and France. At that point some 19,000 Italian residents in Britain became enemy aliens. These people posed a considerable problem to the British Government. Although the majority were of no conceivable danger to the British war effort, a good percentage were of military age and could possibly have constituted a dangerous ‘fifth column’ in the event of an Axis invasion of Britain. The words had a pertinent and sinister meaning having originated in the Spanish Civil War. When Franco began his advance on Madrid in July 1936 with four columns of rebel soldiers, the garrison of the Alcazar in Toledo came under siege by government troops. Franco was advised by his generals not to divert to Toledo to relieve the rebels, since the delay would enable Madrid to organise its defences. This advice was rejected by him with the remark that he had a fifth column of hidden rebels in the capital which would rise at the appropriate time and help subdue the city. Non-existent though this column proved to be, the words were taken up and frequently used in Britain to assume the existence of Fascist and Nazi sympathisers who would rise and give support to invading forces.

Moreover, Britain faced the problem of a huge influx of refugees at the time of the fall of France and the Low Countries. Thousands of refugees, both Jews and Gentiles, had fled to England in the frantic days before Dunkirk, and who was to deny the possibility that in this mass of human jetsam there may have been many deliberately planted to carry out acts of sabotage during an invasion of Britain? On the day of Italy’s declaration of war, the question of the internment of Italians came up during a meeting of the British War Cabinet, and the problem of separating the obviously harmless from the potentially dangerous was discussed. At the end of the meeting Churchill is reported to have issued the following short sharp order: ‘Collar the lot!’ An order went out to all police stations in Great Britain that all male Italians between the age of 16 and 70 should be arrested immediately and interned.

June 10 dawned warm and sunny. I went about my affairs listlessly. For many days business had been bad, all the soldiers had vanished from the streets and after business hours people rushed home to their wireless sets to keep abreast of the constantly unfolding news from the war fronts. The BBC announcer’s voice broke through my reveries ‘. . .and so a state of war now exists between Britain and Italy’.

I stood blankly trying to digest this information. A tall figure in policeman’s uniform appeared at the door.

‘Hello Joe, you’ll have heard the news?’ It was Alex McCrae, my father’s old friend. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, and I’m sorry about it, but you’re up for arrest during the night’, he continued. I looked at him in amazement.

‘What for?’

‘For internment, that’s what for. There’s a big list of you people up in the police Station. I think you’d better close up, you never know what’s going to happen.’

The bottom seemed to have dropped out of my world. All my self-deception and confidence had evaporated at Alex’s words.

‘Don’t you be telling anyone now. . . we’re not supposed to let anyone know. Don’t worry, you’ll be all right’, he assured me.

And with a slap on my back, the big policeman left, but a cold and heavy hand seemed to have settled on my stomach. I quickly shut up shop and proceeded to dismiss the staff, telling them to come back next morning; I was quite touched at the emotional and tearful reaction of some of the waitresses. I climbed slowly and pensively up the tenement steps to our home directly above the shop, not wanting to believe the events of the last few moments, then sat wondering what to do next. My parents were on holiday in Rothesay, a seaside resort on the isle of Bute in the Clyde estuary, but very few houses had phones in those days, so there was no way I could get in touch with them. I’ll go and see Ralph now, I thought, and discuss matters with him, but first I decided to pack some belongings in a suitcase in readiness for the arrest I had been told was imminent.

A muted roar made itself heard from the street below, rising to a crescendo of shouting voices directly under my window. I went over and peered out. A crowd of about a hundred shouting and gesticulating people, pushing in front of them a handcart loaded with stones and bricks, were gathering in front of the shop. ‘There’s a Tally place. . . do it in!’, came the shout; then to an accompaniment of yells and cheers, a barrage of missiles came flying through the air, smashing into the glass frontage of the shop. A dozen or so of the mob, armed with sticks and batons, cleared away the jagged edges of the broken windows and jumped through into the shop beyond. Through a curiously detached and dreamlike mental haze I could hear the sound of smashing and curses from below and peering fearfully through the lace curtains, I watched as the contents of the looted shop were distributed to the milling crowd. That night there were few, if any, Italian shops left untouched by the gangs of hooligans, and although no physical harm was done to anyone, years of hard work was destroyed by unrestrained bands of louts who roamed the streets of Glasgow wrecking and looting in the name of patriotism. As far as I know, not a finger was lifted by the police in an attempt to stop the looting of Italian shops in Glasgow that night.

However, one Italian shop was neither smashed nor looted. In Maitland Street in the heart of the Cowcaddens district, Big Emma ran a small fish and chip shop. A massive 6ft in height and as strong as an ox, Emma, who hailed from the Lucca district in Tuscany, had recently been widowed, but continued to run her little shop in order to maintain herself and infant son. Her massive presence brooked no nonsense from her rough and often drunken customers, and Big Emma and her wee shop had become something of an institution in the area. As a crowd of drunken hooligans, bent on destruction, swirled round her shop, she snatched up a heavy metal chip basket in a meaty hand and rushed out to confront the noisy crowd at her door.

‘You bastards’, she roared in a thickly-accented Glasgow-Italian cry, ‘Don’t you touch anything. You would eat shite if I fried it!’

This magnificent non sequitur stopped the crowd dead in its tracks. A hush descended, then a laugh rippled through the crowd and a voice rang out,

‘Come on away. You’se canny touch hur, she’s a wumman’. The crowd simmered slowly for a while and then moved on. Big Emma and her shop were left in peace for the duration of the war and did a roaring trade selling items of a more traditional nature to her hungry customers.

The evening dragged on into night. I had been afraid to venture out after witnessing the looting of our shop and had abandoned any idea of going to see my brother. I was dozing fitfully on a chair until jerked alert by the sound of a sharp knock at the door. I opened it cautiously and somewhat fearfully. Two uniformed policemen stood there.

On the night of June 10 there was hardly a family of Italian origin in Britain, irrespective of social status or political leanings, which did not suffer the summary arrest of their men in the age bracket intended and indeed in some cases outside it, as will be seen later. The draconian roundup of civilians without charge and without the slightest attempt at justification left scars on the great majority of Italian families throughout Britain and led to tragedy from which some never recovered.

Under the system of police registration of aliens introduced in 1920, every alien in each district was registered and known to the local police. A certificate of registration with photograph and relevant particulars had to be produced on demand, and onto this certificate every movement of the alien, change of address, change of employment, had to be entered. Under this system there should have been no difficulty in identifying potentially dangerous individuals. There were not that many families with Italian names in Scotland, a few hundred at most, and many of these were second and third generation immigrants. Nine months of war had already been waged with Germany before Mussolini saw fit to enter, surely enough for a thorough check to be made on any prospective internee? A selective internment of dangerous elements, yes, but the indiscriminate round up of Italians on June 10, 1940 is difficult to understand. Unjust and unfair in retrospect perhaps, but then of course, the mortal danger which faced Britain in 1940 was presumably justification enough for the swiftness and expediency of the action.

The Northern police station was to be found in the run-down heart of the Cowcaddens, a dark grey stone building with well-worn steps leading up to a heavy wooden door through which passed daily a steady stream of humanity fallen foul of the law. Pimps and prostitutes, housebreakers, wife beaters, thieves and violent drunks were its usual visitors, but on the day after Italy’s declaration of war a new kind of prisoner occupied the well-used basement cells. About 35 Italians of all ages sat miserably in the cramped rooms. The arrests had been swift and efficient, and apart from myself probably no one had expected a knock at the door during the small hours of the night which startled into wakefulness confused and apprehensive men and women, the men to be taken away and the women to be left weeping. Waiting outside each door would be a Black Maria, dull black-painted vans used for the transportation of prisoners, which disgorged their cargo of Italians at various police stations throughout the city.

The cells of the police station in Maitland Street were typical of the sort of accommodation given to prisoners. Small rooms of about ten foot by ten, they had iron doors with small inspection hatches in the centre, walls of white glazed brick and floors of polished stone slats. At each side of the cell were two raised concrete shelves on which were placed thin mattresses issued at the time of arrest, to serve as beds during the night. There was a lavatory pan and since this could be flushed only from the outside passage, excreta would often lie for hours until attended to by a passing guard. There was no heating, and even with the warm weather outside, the walls were cold and dank. An all-pervading stink of stale sweat and urine hung permanently in the air and seemed to have permeated the very fabric of the cells. Into one of these rooms, I and three others were ushered unceremoniously. One of my cellmates was particularly agitated. Aldo Girasole, a young Glaswegian-Italian in his late twenties, was to be married the next day, but was instead stuck in a prison cell with no inkling of what the future might hold and with no means of informing his bride to be of his predicament.

For three days the four of us were kept there without contact with the outside world. No information of any kind was given and the guards who brought plain but ample food twice a day gave only monosyllabic and non-committal answers to the flow of questions put to them. Why don’t you let us know something? Why doesn’t someone tell us what’s going to happen? The bloody criminals at least know what they’re supposed to have done! Don’t we have the same rights as they have? Our relatives were kept as much in the dark as we were. The police stations were besieged by frantic relatives seeking news of their loved ones, but no information was given as to the whereabouts of the arrested men. The only comment was to the effect that the men were being well cared for and that soon the relatives would be informed as to future events. In vain lawyers were hurriedly consulted: this was war time, and the normal process of the law no longer applied. With that the anxious families had to be content.

On the morning of the fourth day the cell door was thrown open and the weary four of us, frustrated and angry after our days of confinement, were brusquely ordered out. Our belongings were returned to us, and then we were escorted on to a waiting Black Maria. Once in motion, our route took us past the Savoy, our family shop, and through the barred windows of the police van I could see that the smashed frontage had been boarded up. Strangely enough the sight of the wreckage of years of hard family work aroused no emotion in me whatsoever.

For four days Maryhill Barracks was put to use as a makeshift internment camp. From all of the police stations in the Glasgow area, Black Marias shuttled back and forth with cargoes of prisoners to be handed over to the military authorities. Blankets and palliasses were issued, sergeants and soldiers barked orders and the docile mass of prisoners formed into groups, friends staying close to friends and relations to relations.

A more motley crew would have been hard to imagine. The ages seemed to range from the very young to bent old men, with the only common denominator being the possession of an Italian name. All social groups seemed to be represented, with some dressed in rough working clothes and others well-clad in expensive tailored suits. Some were second generation Italians who could speak only English; some complained loudly about their arrest; some shouted to the soldiers that they had served in the British army during the 1914-18 War; some proclaimed to anyone who would listen that they had relatives now serving in the army, and one elderly weeping, greybeard — Antonio Santangeli — declared to all and sundry that his son was a sergeant serving with the British forces in France.

For all of them, however, the three days they were to spend at the barracks were a welcome change from the atmosphere of the police cells. The air was clean, the food plain but adequate and a limited amount of exercise was possible. Speculation ran riot as to our possible destination. Some of the older men with memories of the 1914-18 war spoke of the Isle of Man where the German civilians had been interned, but it all was guesswork and our questions to the soldiers went unanswered.

On the morning of the fourth day at the barracks, after the usual breakfast of strong tea, bread, margarine and jam, we were told to get all our belongings together, and after a short wait in the compound, we marched out under heavy guard into the street.

Word of the imminent appearance of the prisoners had spread and the pavements were lined with hundreds of curiosity seekers straining to get a view of the marching men. I tried to keep in some sort of step with my companions and keep my head held high. I’m not going to show any fear or despondency to these people, I thought, with the events of that first night still vivid in my mind. But the crowds lining the streets were strangely muted, in sharp contrast to the mobs which had taken to the streets on the night of the arrests, and although a few jeers were shouted at the prisoners, very few voices could be heard above the sound of scuffling feet.

The untidy marching men must have presented a curious sight to the onlookers. Ranging from 16-year-old youths to bent gentlemen in their seventies, wearing clothes which had been slept in for more than a week, we did not seem to constitute much of a threat to anyone. The smartly uniformed soldiers who marched in unison on the outside of the column were in sharp contrast to the listlessly shuffling prisoners. Our destination was a railway siding some 500 yards from the barracks gates in Garrioch Road, and with the short walk soon completed, we were made to assemble on the station platform to await the next leg of our journey.

The day was hot and sunny as we sat and waited, and it seemed to engender a mood of euphoria in us. We chattered and joked and the guards relaxed with us, offering cigarettes and chocolates. On the station platform was a ticket office manned by a solitary, elderly railway employee who stood watching the proceedings. He paused for a while, then came out to the platform, offering a few cigarettes to the waiting prisoners with the words,

‘Good luck to you wherever you’re going. We’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns’.

I cannot say whether the thanks directed to him was for the cigarettes or the words of comfort, but the prisoners were profuse in their acknowledgement.