German POW Sent to a Herefordshire Farm Was Worth Six Pounds a Week. Nobody Told Him

On the twenty-fourth of March 1947 Richard Stokes, the Member for Ipswich, stood up in the House of Commons and said that Britain was "virtually using some 250,000 fellows as slaves." All our films in one place:    • Every Film — His Majesty's Guests   He was not a pacifist and he was not being rhetorical. He was an employer of prisoner labour himself, and he had the invoice. In 1946, he told the House, the government took thirty-six million pounds from employers for the services of prisoners of war, and paid out six million in wages. For the year he was speaking in, the Estimates showed twenty-one million coming in and three and a quarter million going out. "Seventeen and three quarter million," he said, "will go into the kitty." Then he described his own farm. He paid four pounds ten to six pounds a week for each man. The man received sixpence a day, six days a week, plus keep the government valued at twenty-three shillings. "The Chancellor," Stokes said, "swallowed the difference." Frederick Bellenger, Secretary of State for War, answered that night. He did not accept that it was really slave labour. On the money he said this: "I am told, and I can go no further than that, that on balance the Revenue does not make anything out of these prisoners of war." I am told, and I can go no further than that. The department was his. Four weeks later a farming MP put it in the units a working man uses. On the twenty-second of April 1947, Baldwin, the Member for Leominster, called it disgraceful that these men were paid twopence halfpenny an hour while farmers paid one shilling and fourpence for their work. Six and a half times, for the same hour, in the same field, by the same man. And in that same debate the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour set out what happened when a prisoner transferred to civilian status and stayed on the farm he was already working. "He will be treated as a civilian. It will be the agricultural wage as fixed by the Agricultural Wages Board." Nothing about the work changed. The word changed. Reg Amiss, the Herefordshire farmer this film follows, is invented, and the film says so on air. He is not a real man with the gaps filled in — he is the ordinary farmer the record makes plausible: middle forties, a hundred and sixty acres of heavy ground, six German prisoners off the lorry at seven, and a cheque he wrote without thinking about it until somebody made him think. There were thousands of him and not one is named in the parliamentary papers. Anton Reiss is invented on the same terms. Everything around them is real and is listed below. #ww2 #germanpows #postwarbritain #prisonersofwar #powcamps #militaryhistory #wwii #1940s #ww2history #britishhistory SOURCES SPOKEN ON AIR — HC Deb 24 March 1947, vol 435, cc1018-43 — Richard Stokes on 250,000 men, on the thirty-six million against six million, on sixpence a day against four pounds ten to six pounds a week; Frederick Bellenger on slave labour and on the Revenue. — HC Deb 22 April 1947, vol 436, cc993-999 — Baldwin, Member for Leominster, on twopence halfpenny against one and fourpence; Ness Edwards on transfer to civilian status at the Agricultural Wages Board rate; the figure of 163,500 German prisoners allocated to agriculture. WHAT I COULD NOT SETTLE Stokes said seventeen and three quarter million would go into the kitty. Bellenger said the Revenue made nothing on balance. Both statements are in the same volume of Hansard and they cannot both be right. I have not found the document that settles it. If it exists it is in the War Office Estimates for that year. PHOTOGRAPHS Most of the photographs in this film are real: Ministry of Information and War Office official collections, public domain, and the Montgomeryshire War Agricultural Executive Committee series from the National Library of Wales, CC BY-SA 4.0. Where the archive had nothing — no photograph of the Commons that night, no Treasury, no wage packet in a prisoner's hand — the frame is AI reconstruction and is not archival photography. CHAPTERS 0:00 Ten past five, a sum on the back of a feed bill 1:12 The wartime farm committee that sent him six men 3:56 He had not wanted them. He wanted his own men back 5:15 German POWs were one in five men on the land 6:56 Anton Reiss, a joiner from near Kassel 8:14 Until December 1946 he could not speak to him 9:06 What the farmer paid 9:49 Sixpence a day 10:44 Where it went: prisoners of war and the Treasury 11:45 Stokes reads out the accounts 13:53 Post-war Britain, and the worst winter anyone knew 15:36 "I am told, and I can go no further than that" 17:17 Twopence halfpenny against sixteen pence 18:26 Prisoner becomes civilian, and the rate changes 20:18 The version where the farmer is the villain 21:28 The wire had gone: German prisoners in hostels 23:40 Repatriation, and the German prisoners of war who stayed 25:07 What I could not find out 26:09 Reg Amiss is not a real man