“The Promise of a New Earth to Till”: The ILO’S Colonial Work in Exile, 1940–43

Abstract

Both the International Labour Office’s first cautious attempts to move beyond the tight framework of the NLC towards a broader approach to social problems in the colonies and the first attempts at colonial reform within the colonial bureaucracies were rudely interrupted by the Second World War. When in 1940 the ILO headquarters was forced to leave Geneva for exile in Canada, its main priority initially was just to be able to continue its colonial work at all. The Office’s colonial expert, Wilfrid Benson, was sent to London, but, apart from liaising with a small circle of British reformers, he could not do much more at first than review what had already been achieved. When the ILO began planning for the period after the war at the Conference of 1941, colonial issues were still way down its list of priorities. In the end, it was only the course of events taken by the war itself that reinstated colonial reform as a matter of urgency — indeed, one of even greater urgency than previously. The universalistic message of the Atlantic Charter, an attempt by the liberal democracies to make up lost credit by promising their people a better and more socially just future, could not easily be kept from the colonies. The loss of South-East Asian possessions to the Japanese and America’s entry into the war also raised new arguments for a change in policy. In fact, this phase of the Second World War caused a literal “sea change of Empire”.¹ The colonial powers now increasingly recognized that a new approach was needed — first, to recover their dominion over the colonies and to safeguard it for the period after the war, and, second, to accommodate the anti-colonial criticism and demands of their American allies. The Office saw these developments as a challenge to come up with an outline for a new social policy for the colonies.