Bevin trainees were Indian men in technical training brought to the UK during the Second World War via a scheme created by Ernest Bevin, to work in factories.[1][2] They were better recognised in India, and sometimes informally referred to as 'Bevin boys', causing confusion with the adolescent Bevin Boys sent to work in coal mines in the UK.[3] Broadcaster Princess Indira Devi of Kapurthala introduced some of them on BBC Radio, so they could send messages back to India.[1] Foreign office entrants after 1945 have also been referred to as Bevin boys.[3]
Bevin trainees featured in a popular BBC Radio series, in which Salamu and Chandu, two fictional mice, travelled from India to England in the suitcase of a trainee, and witnessed life in Britain.[4][5][6]
References
edit- ^ a b Webster, Wendy (2018). "3. The Empire comes to Britain". Mixing it: Diversity in World War Two Britain. Oxford University Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-19-873576-2.
- ^ Sinha, Jagdish N. (1988). "Technical Education in India During The Second World War". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 49: 498–504. ISSN 2249-1937. JSTOR 44148437.
- ^ a b Hickman, Tom (2008). "Notes". Called Up, Sent Down: The Bevin Boys' War. The History Press. p. 230. ISBN 978-0-7509-4547-9. OCLC 254076105.
- ^ "Divided loyalties: the historical presence of South Asian men and women in Britain has been ignored for too long, says Shompa Lahiri, who has investigated their experiences during the Second World War. - Free Online Library". www.thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
- ^ Fisher, Michael Herbert; Lahiri, Shompa; Thandi, Shinder S. (2007). A South-Asian History of Britain: Four Centuries of Peoples from the Indian Sub-continent. Greenwood World Pub. p. 156. ISBN 978-1-84645-008-2.
- ^ Potter, Simon J. (2022). "3. Propaganda and war 1939-1945". This is the BBC: Entertaining the Nation, Speaking for Britain, 1922-2022. Oxford University Press. p. 99. ISBN 978-0-19-289852-4.
Further reading
edit- O'Brien, John (23 September 2017). "Essays by 'Bevan Boys': How Britain convinced Indians to join engineering training during WWII". Scroll.in. Retrieved 23 July 2022.