Civil resettlement: citizenship, mental health and masculinity in repatriated British POWs

Abstract

This article investigates the programme of ‘Civil Resettlement’ created by the British Army’s Department of Army Psychiatry to respond to the challenge of resettling prisoners of war (POWs) returning to the UK in 1945. Former POWs were seen as asocial and potentially subversive and were therefore encouraged to undergo a period of treatment in a Civil Resettlement Unit (CRU) before re-entering civilian life. These units sought to inculcate emotional health, ‘good citizenship’ and healthy masculinity in a supposedly at-risk population. Ex-POWs were seen as lacking in each of these categories due to the psychopathological environment present in Axis POW camps. POWs needed assistance on their return, lest the social stresses of resettlement result in permanent mental harm. Civil Resettlement was originally conceptualized as the solution to the emergent problem of mentally unwell POWs, but those who devised the programme held that it could be expanded to society as a whole. Unfortunately, post-war austerity meant that CRUs left a smaller legacy than their founders had hoped, but the short-lived programme raises questions surrounding the social nature of health and the relationships between citizenship, masculinity, and mental health.

Introduction

During the Second World War, over 200,000 British soldiers were taken captive.¹ The successful resettlement of British prisoners of war (POWs) posed a significant challenge for British military and civilian authorities in the immediate aftermath of the war’s conclusion in 1945. Based on research into POWs who returned to the UK prior to the spring of 1945 and the experience of former First World War POWs after 1918, it was claimed that POWs suffered from a unique form of minor psychological disorder. This malady was described using a variety of official and unofficial terms, including ‘POW syndrome’, ‘POW neurosis’, ‘Barbed Wire Disease’, and ‘unsettlement’. The symptoms associated with this disorder were minor (such as emotional lability, social anxiety, and psychosomatic symptoms like gastritis), but it was claimed that if left untreated, this ‘unsettlement’ could develop into full-blown neurosis.

POWs were perceived as a problem group, not ‘sick’ enough to require formal psychological treatment, but not ‘well’ enough to be allowed to return to civilian life without any assessment or guidance. The wartime Department of Army Psychiatry (DAP) was tasked with creating a programme of resettlement which would ensure that former POWs were able to successfully adapt to ‘Civvy Street’. This organization, staffed by an eclectic group of psychological professionals largely taken from the inter-war Tavistock Clinic, sought to provide an effective and economical solution based on psychological theory. The result was a programme known as ‘Civil Resettlement’ (CR), with a series of twenty ‘Civil Resettlement Units’ (CRUs) established across Great Britain and Northern Ireland in order to process former POWs. The programme represented a highly novel attempt to prevent future mental disorder and social turmoil through the application of psychological expertise in a community setting. In the end, over 50,000 former POWs attended a CRU by the time the programme came to a close, representing a significant expenditure in terms of time, financial resources, and personnel. CRUs were focused purely on ex-prisoners from the Army, those from the RAF and Royal Navy were catered for by their own service branches.²

This work builds upon earlier scholarship that establishes the role of the mind sciences in post-war British society and policy. Mathew Thomson has explored in detail the emergence of psychological expertise in early to mid-twentieth century Britain in response to social problems, as has Teri Chettiar, with a particular focus on intimacy and emotional well-being.³ Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose discussed the role of psychological science as part of a ‘therapeutic machine’ that sought to tackle problems of life conduct, introducing a new species of authority and a new role for expertise.⁴ Michal Shapira’s The War Inside and Shaul Bar-Haim’s more recent The Maternalists both place the rise of psychoanalytic expertise within larger societal shifts (the creation of the democratic self and the emergence of a psychologically informed welfare state, respectively).⁵ Outside of the British Isles, Erik Linstrum has described the role that psychological science played in managing Britain’s post-war empire, including its connection between economic development and mental health.⁶ The fear about returning POWs as a source of social unrest link to historical work on captives held during the Cold War who were supposedly ‘brainwashed’, but is distinct in many ways.⁷ Second World War prisoners were seen as at risk of social degradation but were never felt to have lost their mental autonomy or to have been forcibly converted to the Fascist cause, in the way that those later imprisoned by Communist states were held to have been. This article seeks to establish CRUs as an influential site for the application of the psy-sciences to a population in need of intensive assistance to ensure they were capable of undertaking their social roles as citizens and men.

The effective management of emotions in wartime and post-war Britain has also received attention from historians. Joanna Bourke has written about wartime regimes of emotional control that sought to ensure that emotions such as fear and hatred were controlled and correctly channelled in both military and non-military subjects.⁸ Claire Langhamer’s work on the emotional politics of Britain in the dawn of the nuclear age helps elucidate the importance of emotional regulation in what appeared to be a new ‘Age of Fear’.⁹ Linked to these works, Daniel Ussishkin’s work on morale explores the multifaceted role of ‘morale’ as both a bridge between British citizens and the wartime state and a goal pursued by both military officers and post-war industrial managers seeking to achieve maximum efficiency from the men they commanded.¹⁰ This article explores the ways in which emotional management was intertwined with both ‘good citizenship’ and normative masculinity in a population that straddled the boundary between military and civilian.

The research currently in existence focused on CRUs acknowledges their psychological motivations and the role of the DAP in their creation.¹¹ However, what has yet to be recognized is the role that the units were intended to play in inculcating positive values in repatriated prisoners. This article argues that CR sought to promote a defined set of values in former prisoners, alongside the basic task of preparing them to re-enter civilian life. The ‘POW syndrome’ described above was linked by psychiatric observers to a number of moral deficiencies, namely, a lack of civic-mindedness, difficulties with emotional control, and problems conforming to normative ideas of masculinity. This article begins by exploring the role and purpose of CRUs. It then sets out in detail the three interlinked values that they sought to inculcate: ‘good citizenship’, emotional resilience, and healthy masculinity. It also briefly covers the reasons behind their swift disappearance in the late 1940s. Recent work by Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen has highlighted the role that gender played in CRUs, preparing repatriates for returning to their civilian lives as husbands and fathers.¹² This piece sets out to expand on this, exploring the complex relationship between healthy masculinity and citizenship. Citizenship here is not only defined in terms of civic participation but also includes an element of ‘emotional citizenship’. This work treats the concept of emotional citizenship in a slightly different manner to Claire Langhamer in her work on post-war Britain, instead seeing citizenship as a pseudo-psychological phenomenon that effectively mandated particular emotions in response to certain well-known stimuli.¹³ Being a citizen meant feeling the right things at the right time, in a manner that was distinctly British and in contrast to supposedly robotic and unemotional authoritarian nations.

Under the leadership of Dr Alexander Thomson Macbeth (A.T.M.) Wilson, a social psychiatrist associated with the pre-war Tavistock Institute, CRUs focused on the inculcation of a certain view of social health in former POWs, based on the three interlinked values listed above. POWs were seen as lacking these qualities due to their unique experiences in German or Japanese captivity, which left them with a tendency towards asocial behaviour. ‘Unsettlement’ was contiguous with other social problems, such as juvenile delinquency, and the solution was to instil repatriated prisoners with the correct set of values to allow them to thrive in civilian life. This was to be achieved through the judicious employment of psychiatric expertise, through the medium of CRUs.

In the immediate post-war period, there was hope that psychiatry, fresh from helping to win the war, would be able to help solve difficult social issues and usher in a new age of contentment. In the words of Mark Harrison, ‘Psychiatry had captured the mood of Beveridgian Britain’.¹⁴ G.W.B. James, the Army’s psychiatric specialist in the Mediterranean theatre, went so far as to claim in a speech at St Mary’s Hospital that ‘a peace among men that so far has passed all understanding’ could be achieved through the application of psychological knowledge to social problems. Not only the ‘gross disorders’ of the mind but even the ‘social disgrace of poverty’ could be rectified. What was needed in order to achieve this was greater knowledge ‘of the way great groups live and die, work and play, live and hate’, a new form of ‘social medicine’ that the army had helped to pioneer.¹⁵

The Tavistock and its wartime guise of the DAP had played a key part in the wartime deployment of expertise to solve military problems, and there was hope that this relationship could expand in the post-war era to cover other problems involving group relations. Tavistock director and Chief of Army Psychiatry J.R. Rees wrote in 1945 that psychiatrists must ‘look further than the immediate goal of individual health; something better must be provided for groups as well as for individuals’. The ‘social disorders’ of society could be rectified, through the use of psychiatric expertise to help ameliorate communal and individual maladjustment.¹⁶ Rees’ vision here went beyond individual happiness and health and instead saw social cohesion as the goal. While CRUs did seek to promote contentment in individual repatriates, they also sought to mould them into productive workers and good citizens. In the aftermath of the war, politicians and policymakers recognised the challenges facing British society and the need for economic and social recovery to go alongside physical reconstruction.

Ultimately, this dream failed to come true in the manner envisioned by Rees. CRUs were closed down in 1946 and 1947 with little fanfare as the supply of POWs ran dry. However, this article places the programme’s lack of a public legacy as a sign of its success rather than any failure. It was widely claimed in the years following the units’ closure that the vast majority of POWs had been successfully resettled into civilian life. It was briefly suggested that the units continue on as centres for the treatment of the ‘problem unemployed’, but this did not occur due to a lack of funds.

This article draws from the papers of professionals associated with the creation and running of CRUs (primarily held in the Wellcome Library as part of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations collection) in order to gain a clearer picture of what was meant by the loaded term ‘civil resettlement’. These professionals naturally include psychiatrists and psychologists, but also social workers, civil servants, and career soldiers tasked with the day-to-day running of the units. Newspaper and magazine coverage related to CRUs has also been included, to demonstrate how the units were ‘sold’ to the public and former POWs who had the option to attend. Where possible, narratives from POWs themselves have been included to give a sense of how the programme was experienced by former prisoners, but this is not the primary aim of this article.

British POWs in the aftermath of 1945

In the aftermath of the First World War, no real attempts were made by post-war governments to address the poor mental and physical health of former prisoners. POWs liberated in 1918 were sent to reception camps and given the choice of either waiting several days for a medical board in order to apply for a pension or accepting a £2 gratuity and signing a disclaimer waiving the right to further compensation.¹⁷ Prisoners were then given 2 months of home leave before being either discharged or retained by the army. Many former POWs reported health issues arising from their time in captivity, but their concerns were largely ignored by the Ministry of Pensions. An unknown number of ex-prisoners suffering from psychological problems ended up in asylums.¹⁸

By 1943, it was widely agreed that a repeat of this laissez faire approach was unviable. Large numbers of British POWs were taken prisoner during German advances early in the war, and by end of the war in 1945, the ‘average British prisoner’, if this term can be used, would therefore have spent 3 or more years in captivity.¹⁹ Preliminary research from the DAP began as soon as prisoners began to filter back into the UK after Fascist Italy’s surrender in 1943 and indicated that some form of rehabilitation would be needed.²⁰ It was felt by the military authorities that public opinion was behind some kind of resettlement scheme and that the military itself would be best placed to run this.²¹ In August 1944, an official War Cabinet memorandum recommended that resettlement should be provided for repatriated prisoners, recognizing that a repeat of 1918 would clash with the expectations of a more informed public. The War Cabinet felt that ‘there will be a considerable public demand that the Government should undertake the task of correcting, so far as possible, those special psychological disabilities which inevitably arise from prolonged captivity in enemy hands’.²² For psychological professionals with an eye on public opinion, POWs represented a form of ‘test case’ for the government’s and the military’s attitude to post-war problems. One psychiatrist suggested that the POW ‘was looked upon as a living emergent victim of the war process, representing what was feared or hoped might happen to others’.²³ The situation was complicated by the fact that POWs were aware of their status as objects of public sympathy and were willing to utilize this when needed. When threatened with disciplinary measures for breaking curfew, a group of ex-prisoners at the military hospital at Hatfield House threatened that they would ‘publicise our treatment as returned POWs’ in the media.²⁴ A settlement had to be reached that simultaneously assuaged the public’s concern for returned prisoners, satisfied the POWs themselves, and treated any residual symptoms presented by repatriated prisoners. The task fell to the ‘Tavistock group’ working in the wartime DAP, which by this point had an established reputation in solving thorny problems involving human behaviour.²⁵ Notably, prison psychiatrists were not included in the DAP groups working on returning POWs—despite prison psychiatry’s established expertise in dealing with civilian prisoners, POWs appear to have been seen as a unique group in need of unique treatment.

Resettlement Units were quickly established by A.T.M. Wilson and his staff in the spring of 1945, with No. 1 CRU opening at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire on 31 May.²⁶ A total of twenty units were created, spread across Great Britain and Northern Ireland so that, in theory, every repatriate could attend a relatively local unit. Each unit was in possession of a Commanding Officer, second-in-command, adjutant, medical officer, vocational officer, and four officers, who were each responsible for a ‘syndicate’ of 60 men. Psychiatrists were present as part-time ‘associates’, as resources did not stretch to full-time psychiatric support.²⁷ Officer repatriates were directed to No. 8 CRU, where they were given an introduction to Civil Resettlement and a programme of lectures tailored to their situation before being re-directed to a more local unit. Officers were also given privileged treatment in the mess (with a senior ATS member of staff acting as hostess), but were still a member of a syndicate group and were expected to participate fully in the life of the unit.²⁸ While class does not explicitly feature in CRU training materials and instructions to staff, the preferential treatment of officers appears as an acknowledgement that repatriated prisoners were returning to a hierarchical society. CRU staff seem to have been optimistic about the potential for repatriates to change careers and progress into professional occupations, rather than seeing them as tied to pre-war occupations or class roles. The vocational training films shown to repatriates covered a wide range of industries, and every repatriate was given time with a specialist adviser to plan out potential career changes.²⁹

CRUs provided a degree of continuity while easing men back into the civilian world, a half-way house between the Stalag and Civvy Street. In order to provide ‘a marked and agreeable contrast to prison camps’, it was decided that CRUs were to be located in country houses rather than hutted camps.³⁰ In the same vein, food was served to attendees at tables rather than a ‘cafeteria-style’ arrangement, as it was felt that queuing for food would raise too many uncomfortable memories.³¹ While units were designed to avoid any similarity with the Stalag, potential trauma from captivity was played down when dealing with repatriates. Official guidance stated that the repatriated prisoner was never to be allowed to regard himself as ‘a palpably abnormal person, with a spirit seared, a mind warped or a body weakened by his experiences’.³² This fits with a wartime psychiatry, which sought to minimize the role of trauma, through fear at granting sufferers some form of ‘functional gain’ and thus prolonging symptoms.³³

At a wider level, this rejection of wartime trauma as a permanent, shattering experience links to national myths about resilience and survival. Matthew Grant writes that in the immediate aftermath of war, there was a powerful national narrative claiming that Britain had come through the conflict without losing its sanity.³⁴ Concerns about the stability of repatriated prisoners were framed in terms of desocialization and difficulties adjusting to different surroundings, not in terms of lasting trauma or brutalization. Press reports about CRUs stressed the pains taken by the Army to ensure former prisoners were cared for, with units depicted as a ‘Soldiers’ Utopia’ featuring good food, spring beds, and no reveille.³⁵ According to the press, the purpose of CRUs was to provide repatriated prisoners with a helping hand and welcome them back into society. The Belfast News-Letter went as far as to claim that CRUs were maintained by the Army ‘simply to make dreams come true’. However, observers were keen to stress that repatriates were being eased back into civilian society, not back into the Army. The same article presenting CRUs as a fairy-tale made clear that all the training provided to repatriates was ‘educational… All traces of militarism are removed’.³⁶

In the context of a society attempting to move past 6 years of total war, repatriated prisoners appeared as walking reminders of what had just occurred. It was essential that ‘militarism’ was exorcised, and repatriates ceased to be repatriates and instead became ordinary citizens. According to newspaper reports, this appears to have been achieved, as in Belfast, rather than shouted orders and marching steps, ‘the only sounds in the barracks yesterday were sounds of laughter and of voices calling happily to one another about the affairs of the day’.³⁷ While this account may be optimistic, it demonstrates the manner in which CRUs were portrayed—as demilitarized spaces. CR could be said to be part of a wider national narrative, where post-war Britain began to demilitarize and entered into a period of sustained (if uneasy) peace. At the same time as being non-military, CRUs were also presented as non-medical. Psychiatrists were not conspicuous at CRUs, in line with military psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion’s idea ‘that the psychiatrist’s job was to create conditions which would enable him largely to leave the scene and allow the ordinary resources of the society to do their work’.³⁸

‘Good citizenship’

The first of three interlinked values promoted by CRUs can be summarized as ‘good citizenship’, a multifaceted term that encapsulated a healthy relationship with legitimate authority alongside an awareness of an individual’s rights and responsibilities within a functional democracy. It was theorized that several years under German, Italian, or Japanese control could instil in prisoners a compulsive hatred of authority figures. Psychiatric assessments of repatriates revealed that ‘the idea of benevolent authority has largely disappeared in their minds’, and CR staff were instructed to build up trust slowly.³⁹ To psychiatric observers, this resentment appeared to be acute in prisoners captured earlier in the war during military disasters such as Dunkirk, supposedly caused by high command incompetence—the morale situation at the time of capture was claimed to permanently imprint on the prisoner’s personality.⁴⁰ With this in mind, staff were specially chosen for their amenability, ‘as it is intended that the repatriate should regard his officer as a friend and counsellor rather than the embodiment of authority’.⁴¹ To a degree, CRUs represented a striking abandonment of military authority, in that agency was given back to the repatriate to decide whether or not he wished to attend a CRU.⁴² Repatriates could leave at any point, they enjoyed a higher standard of living than most soldiers, and were largely free to spend their time as they wished. Despite this, those analysing repatriates were often disappointed with how they chose to exercise this freedom. Repatriated prisoners were claimed to display a variety of anti-social behaviours centred around ‘impotent and aggressive rebellion’ against authority (the government, the local council, etc.), but also including heavy drinking, inappropriate sexual behaviour, and emotional incontinence.⁴³

Ultimately, one of the primary aims of CR was to utilize the difficult experience of captivity in order to provoke personal growth in repatriates. Former POWs were seen as at risk of asociality but also capable of tremendous co-operation and team spirit. With the help of skilled advice and guidance, it was claimed by A.T.M. Wilson and his team that ‘the painful impressions of [POW] life can actually be turned to good account if the tensions they produce are fully realized by a period at a CRU.’ Fully settled men interviewed by investigators displayed ‘an increased sense of social responsibility and a greater power for rich and fruitful human relationships’.⁴⁴ At the same time as presenting a potential threat to British society, former POWs were also held to embody some of its best aspects. A lecture given to officers tasked with repatriating POWs claimed that ‘the most hopeful feature of the Prisoner of War is that he has really learnt—and seen—the lesson of democracy’. Through working together in the Stalag, prisoners had learnt that ‘cooperation with others, government by consent and by discussion can outstrip other forms of difficulty’.⁴⁵ CRUs attempted to harmonize and develop the innate ‘herd instinct’ towards gregariousness present in all humans and utilize this to mould repatriates into ideal citizens.⁴⁶ The democratic nature of the unit was shown by attempts at equality between attendees and those treating them. Meals were taken collectively in a dining room shared by repatriates and staff, in a move meant to symbolize CRU ‘democracy’.⁴⁷ Wherever possible, boundaries between staff and repatriates were diminished in order to accentuate this democratic atmosphere. Staff and attendees were shown films together in an attempt to promote ‘further integration of the Permanent Staff and Trainee Communities’, something which was ‘a factor of great importance in CR Centre work’.⁴⁸

The creation of a democratic environment was indelibly linked to the creation of a psychotherapeutic space where former prisoners could adjust to normality. Democracy, which balanced rights and responsibilities while providing individuals with space for personal growth, was seen as a healthier form of political system than any rival structure. Economist and Labour MP Evan Durbin claimed in 1940 that ‘the establishment and maintenance of democracy is a sign of growing psychological health in any people’.⁴⁹ In psychoanalyst and Army psychiatrist John Rickman’s 1938 lecture on ‘Uniformity or Diversity in Groups’, he claimed that Western democracies represented a more mature and integrated form of group organization than either simplistic egalitarianism or dictatorship, in that they allowed for both individual and collective development.⁵⁰ The POW camp resembled a primitive egalitarian society, as described by Rickman—one former prisoner described it, the Stalag was somewhere ‘where personal property counts for very little… food and lodging of a sort are provided, but where nothing you can do will ever make you wealthier than your fellows’.⁵¹ Group discussion (as employed later at CRUs) was the only way to make decisions impacting the collective, as Wilson found that among POWs, ‘the printed word and the formal command have carried little weight’.⁵² Over time, formal military authority was discarded in many POW camps, as British prisoners began to regard officers in a manner similar to ‘members of a committee to an elected chairman’, acting only by collective agreement.⁵³

This attitudinal adjustment made sense within the context of the camps but raised difficult questions regarding the treatment of repatriated prisoners. CRU planners felt that prisoners who had adapted to this collective yet dysfunctional atmosphere needed help to readjust to a modern capitalistic society on their return. The theorists behind Civil Resettlement saw the units as treading a fine balance between egalitarian ‘chaos’, where each man did whatever he pleased, and ‘authoritarianism’, where attendees were robbed of autonomy. An article describing the creation of the programme discusses a group of fifteen men who used their unit as ‘an easy-going hotel’ and antagonized other attendees. The broader community wished for them to be expelled, but the staff psychiatrist recognized that any expulsion would have been ‘fatal’ to the scheme. While the CRU refused on principle to expel these men, they were informed that the civil authorities would punish any transgressions and reminded that the other attendees, as a collective, possessed a good deal of power.⁵⁴ Major Doyle, the psychiatrist in charge, explained to this ‘flagrantly anti-social’ group that they were ‘up against their community’, speaking to them both individually and in group sessions.⁵⁵ Through this strategic use of peer pressure, the men publicly agreed to mend their ways, and the unit took on a protective attitude towards them, thus preserving the ‘democratic atmosphere’ without the use of formal authority.⁵⁶ In training memoranda, CR staff were encouraged to help build ‘the soldier’s self-reliance and self-determination as a private citizen… in a democratic society no other person can undertake the responsibility of telling him what to do’.⁵⁷ Democratic methods required a move away from the hierarchy of the army towards a more consultative form of decision-making. If democracy was the ideal form of group organization, Civil Resettlement sought to construct the ideal democratic subjects through democratic methods.

Civil Resettlement was therefore not simply a process of helping displaced prisoners adjust to communities they had left several years before; it was also intended to create democratic citizens willing to participate in a national community. Summing up Civil Resettlement, a newspaper report claimed that the project had proved its value not only to the men who attended but ‘to the nation’.⁵⁸ An article in another newspaper stated that CRUs existed to ‘bridge the gap between prisoner-of-war and future citizen’.⁵⁹ Refresher training provided to repatriated RAF personnel (influenced by but technically separate from CRUs) included sessions on ‘A sketch and resume of contemporary and current affairs’ and ‘An introduction to the principles and problems of modern citizenship.’⁶⁰ It was assumed that sessions such as these could mould disinterested and subversive repatriates into healthy citizens. There was a precedent for this in Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA) sessions, which pioneered ‘mass education’ through group discussion, where ‘the military unit became a social unit’ and groups of soldiers discussed public affairs.⁶¹

ABCA and CR fit together within a wider programme of thought that saw British soldiers as informed and active citizens rather than simply mindless brawlers. Adjutant-General Ronald Adam, described by newspapers as ‘the Army’s No.1 Democrat’, pioneered ABCA to help turn British soldiers into well-informed, highly-motivated, democratic citizens.⁶² In early 1946, ABCA and CR were directly compared in an article in the popular periodical Pilot Papers, where educator Alan Jarvis declared that ABCA’s purpose was ‘the creation of a system of education for citizenship on a mass-production scale’, a comment that also rings true for CR.⁶³ ABCA’s creation was described as part of the shift towards a ‘planned society’, which would eliminate social problems such as unemployment but would require ‘a far larger social working capital of reliable information, of trained personnel, of efficient institutions, and of educated public opinion’. Modern Britain had reached a level of complexity where democracy must ‘plan or perish’, hence the creation of social projects such as ABCA and CRUs in order to help democracy flourish.

The political context for the creation of CRUs was the sweeping Labour victory in 1945, prior to which the party had promised sweeping changes to Britain’s economy and the way British society was organized. Comparisons were inevitably made between the collective life endured by POWs and the standard of living under socialism. Former POW Richard Viner joked in 1946 that ‘We led such a closely communal life for so long that the way to the present experiment in socialism was paved for us by first hand experience.’⁶⁴ Civil Resettlement was by no means an overtly socialist project, but the programme’s use of psychological expertise to ensure individual and collective development meant that it had much in common with aspects of Labour policy in this period. Fears about social atrophy, mental ill-health, and loss of community came together to produce a new enthusiasm for social health through planning. Under Labour, it appeared that modern psychological science had a vital part to play in the new British state, ensuring social equality through individual mental health. Rhodri Hayward has claimed that the reduction of social neurosis was, in many ways, ‘central to the Labour Party program after 1945’. Senior figures in the Labour Party (including Aneurin Bevan, Stafford Cripps, and Hugh Gaitskell) began to see the new state as fundamentally therapeutic, capable of improvements to physical and mental health through targeted social interventions.⁶⁵ Leftists with a knowledge of psychological theory were able to see CR as a prototypical example of a fully democratic organization. Left-wing psychoanalyst John Bowlby spoke in September 1945 to a conference regarding the ‘psychological and sociological problems of modern socialism’ where he explored the creation of an ‘internally co-operative and externally peaceful’ society through the state’s use of psychological expertise.⁶⁶ The new social–democratic Britain would require ‘a very high degree of co-operative effort’ to achieve its goals, which necessitated the use of ‘the psycho-dynamics of co-operative behaviour’. Bowlby identified a number of wartime precedents for this, including ‘methods of rehabilitating returned prisoners of war’.⁶⁷

The thread linking Civil Resettlement, Bowlby, and ABCA can be summarized in the concept of ‘good citizenship’. Internal reports stated that the ultimate objective of Civil Resettlement was to produce a ‘good citizen ready to take his part in the life of the community and to co-operate to the public advantage’.⁶⁸ As part of this process of creation, repatriated POWs had to be helped to see themselves as citizens capable of striking a balance between submission and defiance, acting as individuals within a community rather than isolated loners.

Emotional resilience

The second value promoted by CRUs is best described as ‘emotional resilience’ or ‘emotional health’, implying what was perceived to be a correct and proportionate emotional response to everyday stimuli. British citizenship in the Second World War was framed not only in terms of legal obligations but also in terms of morality and ethical behaviour. A BBC discussion of citizenship education from September 1942 suggested that all citizens must be ‘taught to feel… and feel the right way’.⁶⁹ Taking Matthew Grant’s view that citizenship is both a status and a practice, repatriated prisoners were encouraged to perform their status as citizens through a number of seemingly straightforward actions.⁷⁰ Emotion was explicitly part of the bargain of citizenship, with citizens expected to respond in a particular manner to emotional stimuli. Sociability and emotional connection were seen as a vital aspect of Britain’s national character, and one which put it above totalitarian states, which functioned by pitting citizens against each other. J.B. Priestley in his wartime broadcasts described British servicemen as ‘likeable human beings, cracking jokes’, versus their German counterparts who represented only ‘death and destruction, nor a glimmer of humour, or fun, or ordinary human relations’.⁷¹ This idea of emotional citizenship extended beyond popular culture into official circles. A DAP pamphlet dealing with morale claimed that ‘the capacity of the British soldier for affection is not only greater than that of the German but it is more sincere and more tolerant’. In a ‘Nazi culture’, personal relationships could never truly take root, whereas in Britain ‘any strength we have as a nation is bound up with a form of human relationship which is deeper and more stable than that of the Nazis’.⁷² Healthy social interaction between equals was therefore a vital aspect of citizenship in Britain and essential for those who wished to fully participate in post-war British democracy.

With this in mind, repatriates had to be taught to maintain the correct form of emotional response to the expected stimuli. A document entitled ‘General Principles of Counselling’, found in the papers of CRU staff member Hugh Murray among other training materials, states that the aim of resettlement is to produce a ‘healthy and productive citizen’ who can secure ‘adjustment and wellbeing within at least the following main areas: a) Home and family relationships; b) Personal health and equipment; c) Economic security and personal status; d) Social participation’.⁷³ Citizenship, as defined by Civil Resettlement, can therefore be taken as a concept beyond paying one’s taxes and voting in elections—good citizenship possessed behavioural and emotional aspects that needed to be inculcated into repatriates. Abigail Wills has described the invasive nature of this process of transformation, speaking about reform schools: ‘Anti-citizens could only be turned into citizens by a process of character reform that involved the policing of every aspect of their emotional, physical and sexual existence.’⁷⁴ The good citizen was a public citizen, who would act in line with what was expected of them in the workplace and at home, as well as in the town meeting and the polling booth. This helps to explain why follow-up surveys intended to evaluate the impact of CRUs took a lively interest into the social and romantic lives of former prisoners. Those carrying out the research looked for ‘small but indicative types of behaviour’ even in men who outwardly appeared to be settled and happy. For example, one man who before the war cooked Sunday lunch every week so that his wife could attend church, now refused to do so.⁷⁵ Relatively minor social interactions could betray a deeper vein of neurotic potential, and repatriates were seen as prone to inappropriate emotional responses indicative of more entrenched problems.

Disciplining the repatriate’s unruly emotions was therefore a part of ensuring he was properly settled. A handwritten note from CRU staff member Hugh Murray listed some of the emotional ‘difficulties’ he encountered in returning prisoners: ‘a) Feeling of self identification with comrades; b) Feeling of self identification with civilians abroad; c) Resentment at attitude + conduct of civilians; d) Suspicion + resentment at lack of interest by the Army in their future; e) Conflict between breadth + content of knowledge of the soldier + the comparative narrowness of his friends + relatives.’⁷⁶ What is notable here is the way in which the repatriate’s emotional connection with his comrades and his experiences from his time in the army is seen as a problem in need of resolution. Emotional ties beyond those experienced by other members of the civilian community were an issue standing in the way of resettlement and assimilation. One of the major issues described among repatriates was their inability to respond correctly to emotional stimuli that others immediately understood. Psychological evaluations appeared to show that, in those recently repatriated, ‘emotional responses [sic] to others is heightened and in some cases altered… a large number find themselves crying in the cinema or on reading of kindly actions done by someone to others’.⁷⁷ Repatriates themselves often reported experiencing this phenomenon: a recently repatriated airman recalled sitting in a cinema watching Arsenic and Old Lace and being unable to find any humour in the film, while the audience around him roared with laughter.⁷⁸

At the same time as being emotionally confused, repatriates were also seen as being capable of deception and emotional camouflage. Margaret Bavin, a psychiatric social worker who acted as a Civil Liaison officer at a CRU, described the ‘dead-pan face’ put on by repatriates, which ‘noted everything and gave away nothing’. Former prisoners would simply wander about the camp with ‘apparently unseeing eyes and expressionless faces’.⁷⁹ This ability to completely conceal any inner turmoil was concern for CRU staff, especially after a suicide at No. 11 CRU involving a seemingly settled and functional individual.⁸⁰ An emotionally healthy repatriate was not an unfeeling automaton but was instead capable of controlling any negative emotions and keeping them within the correct sphere. Out of twelve repatriates who returned home to broken marriages, the four who had attended CRUs were said to be ‘distressed and unhappy’, but, importantly, ‘they have not allowed their domestic upheaval to disrupt the rest of their lives’. The other eight had all ‘permitted the unhappiness of their home lives to extend into practically every other relationship’.⁸¹ Emotional health, as promoted by CRUs, was a matter of restraining one’s feelings to the appropriate range while maintaining function in other areas. An unsettled man would allow his feelings about marital breakdown to intrude on his relationships at work, with his family, and elsewhere; the settled man would successfully process his emotions while remaining functional.

In this vision of emotional citizenship, there was a sense that repatriates were being imbued with a particularly British set of values. Supposed symptoms were interpreted in terms of national character and the expected behaviour of an archetypal British soldier. While repatriates were portrayed as querulous and quick to complain, this was generally seen as an extension of the soldier’s traditional privilege of ‘grousing’. Official memoranda even claimed that ‘the right to grouse is a British privilege and a most important safety valve which our enemies lack’.⁸² Similarly, the archetypal British soldier was seen as possessing a degree of initiative and drive lacking in his robotic Nazi opponent. Guidance from the DAP claimed that British soldiers were particularly upset by ‘the removal of personal initiative’ that captivity entailed and that resettlement was in part about returning this initiative.⁸³ Servicemen appear to have bought into these stereotypes to some extent—a group of ex-POWs interviewed at Northfield Hospital claimed that British soldiers were more emotionally resilient than their American counterparts, who supposedly ‘became hysterical over crooners’ in peacetime and were apt to ‘let go’ of their emotions in wartime.⁸⁴

Linked to the idea of the British soldier as naturally driven and motivated was the view that productivity and ambition were natural qualities in good British citizens. A good work ethic and pride in one’s performance on the job were seen as aspects of citizenship, and ones which CR explicitly sought to encourage. Brigadier Sandiford from the DAP claimed in late 1944 that when prisoners returned, ‘the most important measure was that of finding a suitable job—a job not only within the man’s intellectual ability, but also within his emotional capacity’.⁸⁵ With this in mind, the third and fourth weeks at CRUs were often spent ‘devising detailed personal plans for the future’ in association with Ministry of Labour staff, the Medical Officer, and a social worker.⁸⁶ Unsettled repatriates were described by their employers as prone to: ‘Small acts of indiscipline, lack of participation in works activities, withdrawal from the communal life of the bench, unexpressed hostility to foremen and chargehands, latent restlessness.’ Time at a unit could supposedly help to smooth out these rough edges and help individuals fit into a workplace. CRU staff claimed in a follow-up report that management of at least one firm had actively encouraged ex-POWs in their employ to attend their local unit, with a manager confiding to researchers that CRU men made better workers.⁸⁷

Bringing men back into stable employment would help them fully adjust and reintegrate—‘settlement’, and success at work were interlocked. The principles behind Civil Resettlement were therefore applicable to other groups of individuals who failed to perform on the job. The Scotsman suggested in early 1946 that units no longer utilized for repatriates could be repurposed ‘for permanent use in dealing with industrial workers requiring some kind of rest treatment on account of overstrain’.⁸⁸ CR headquarters discussed the formation of permanent CRUs based on ‘present and future industry and demand for labour, availability of housing and other relevant factors’.⁸⁹ Having spoken to CR staff, officials from the Board of Trade felt that CRUs could provide ‘an important means of providing labour for the points where it was most scarce’.⁹⁰ While permanent CRUs were not created, R.F. Tredgold, a lecturer in Industrial Health at Roffey Park Rehabilitation Centre, claimed in 1948 that CRUs provided great value to industry ‘both directly and indirectly’. Directly, former prisoners gained experience in various trades before joining one; indirectly, CRUs created ‘adjustment which the individual was helped to make towards society, his work and his family’.⁹¹

Healthy masculinity

Related to the family, the third and final value promoted by CRUs is best described as ‘healthy masculinity’, implying an ability to conform to the normative standards of manhood, including appropriate displays of heterosexuality, ambition, and gregariousness. Within CRUs, the most difficult repatriates were held to be the ‘Red-devils’ (paratroopers captured at Arnhem), who were prone to needless aggression, suspicious of outsiders, and reluctant to co-operate with others.⁹² These hyper-masculine elite troops found themselves ill-fitted to the communal and peaceable atmosphere of the CRU. Rejection of authority was inherently linked to rejection of the community and its values held in common. However, rejection of the normative values of obedience and citizenship also implied a rebellion against normative masculinity.

Fundamentally linked to the production of a certain vision of citizenship was the production of a certain kind of masculinity. During the Second World War, masculinity and ‘good citizenship’ were two sides of the same coin. Sonya Rose goes as far as to state that masculinity was ‘normative personhood’.⁹³ In the aftermath of the war, British mass media moved from presenting an image of wartime ‘collective citizenship’ (focused on making necessary sacrifices for the nation) to a post-war idea of ‘domestic citizenship’ (more concerned with creating an ideal home and family).⁹⁴ Repatriates needed to be educated on how this new form of citizenship functioned and weaned away from the collective, militarized citizenship of the camp. Desexualized men could not resume their roles as husbands and fathers and were therefore defective citizens. In order to rectify this, the male bodies of repatriates were subject to a great deal of surveillance and accountability.⁹⁵ Some psychiatric observers viewed repatriates as representing an older form of masculinity that British men in 1945 were expected to have moved past. Changes to established gender roles in wartime Britain were speculated to have had a definite psychological impact on repatriates, with CR staff suggesting that the ‘independence’ shown by wives and daughters produced a shock to repatriates’ psyches.⁹⁶ Unsettled men experienced difficulty in their relations with women, ‘either avoiding them completely, or attempting purely sexual connections’.⁹⁷ A female psychiatric social worker claimed that when repatriates encountered an independent woman (often earning more than their pre-war wage) it ‘aroused a fear that their place in the family was no longer necessary’.⁹⁸

With this anxiety in mind, the female CRU staff were seen as providing a vital part of the therapeutic milieu, helping repatriates adjust to the presence of women. All CRUs had on staff a female Civil Liaison Officer (later termed a Social Service Officer) to help deal with ‘domestic difficulties’, as well as a number of female ATS personnel who helped with running the unit.⁹⁹ With female staff, CRUs attempted to create a pseudo-family for repatriates so they could ease their way back into healthy masculinity and their roles as husbands and fathers. A journalist who visited No. 5 CRU described the atmosphere of the unit as ‘that of a super-family’ with female staff, ‘all specially chosen for their dependability, sympathy and good sense’. Furthermore, the female staff could help the men return to a less aggressive frame of mind, as their presence helped to ‘erase the militaristic impressions which years of German domination may have imprinted on the men’s minds’.¹⁰⁰ British popular media during the war presented Nazi Germany as masculine to an unhealthy degree, whereas British men were seen as being capable of a more restrained, caring masculinity.¹⁰¹ DAP research into the workings of the ‘German mind’ seemed to confirm this. DAP member Henry Dicks, based on the study of German POWs in British captivity, felt that the ardent Nazi ‘over-values group solidarity and masculinity, with a correlated depreciation of women’.¹⁰² The feminine presence of ATS staff at units was therefore seen as a social antidote to the hyper-masculine ‘militarism’ inculcated by the Stalag, allowing repatriates to revert to a more normal, peacetime form of masculine expression. A.T.M. Wilson himself contrasted the ‘paternal and authoritarian’ military that repatriates were leaving with the ‘maternal and democratically conceived community’ offered by CRUs.¹⁰³ In this framing, CRUs were proving a mother’s love to the childlike and isolated repatriates who attended, while also helping them regain their male status.

The vocational training provided by CRUs was implicitly gendered, enabling participants to retake their roles as men as well as citizens. Wilson claimed in an article in Pilot Papers that D.I.Y. could provide ‘the possibility of supplying a minor but effective role for the returning husband during this period of apprenticeship as a “new” member of the family’.¹⁰⁴ With this in mind, CRUs provided workshops focusing on woodwork, building, and draughtsmanship in order to allow repatriates ‘to regain status as an effective “man about the house” despite wartime conditions’, in addition to regaining their confidence and potentially exploring a new vocation.¹⁰⁵ CRUs thus acknowledged men’s need to perform their masculinity and provided them with a safe space in which to practice doing so before the repatriate returned to his own home.

Conclusion

While CRUs ceased to operate in 1946 after they ran out of repatriated prisoners, plans were drawn up in conjunction with the Ministry of Labour for the units to remain in place as treatment centres for the ‘problem unemployed’.¹⁰⁶ These plans did not come to fruition, but one aspect of CR did survive. Maxwell Jones, formerly responsible for a unit at Southern Hospital in Dartford dealing with the ‘most neurotic’ former POWs, was tasked with running a newly formed Industrial Neurosis Unit at Belmont Hospital. The attendees were ‘misfits whose personality prevents them from being absorbed into, or settling down in, industry… the most difficult and asocial members of the community’.¹⁰⁷ It is in this unit that the principles of CR continued, as Jones attempted to mould his charges into productive citizens.

CRUs focused on a triad of values in which POWs were thought to be deficient: good citizenship, healthy masculinity, and emotional resilience. Progress in these areas was seen as preparing repatriated prisoners for a successful journey into civilian life, and indeed, it was claimed that those who had attended a CRU were actually more functional than the average citizen. A.T.M. Wilson and his colleagues felt that ‘Normality is not optimum adjustment’ and that while ‘the atomistic tendences of modern life have greatly reduced the size of the functional family’, planned communities such as CRUs could counteract this.¹⁰⁸ In a nation being slowly rebuilt after years of conflict, CRUs were intended to play a part in ensuring that the newly emergent Britain was healthier than the old.

CRUs were attempting to inculcate a new form of social health in their attendees, one that saw emotional restraint, good work ethic, and gregariousness as essential building blocks of mental health. Asociality, hyper-masculinity, and poor emotional regulation were all seen as potential indicators of ‘unsettlement’, a term originally utilized for POWs but one that took on wider connotations over time. ‘Unsettlement’ was not an official diagnosis—those POWs seen as worthy of a formal diagnosis of neurotic illness were sent to specialist units at psychiatric hospitals with a more intense regime—but it was seen as a potential precursor to mental illness, as well as a risk factor for other social ills, including criminal behaviour and unemployment. In the context of a nation rebuilding itself after years of conflict, former POWs were seen as both a risk and a potential resource—with the right help from a CRU, the embittered and unwell repatriate could become a healthy and productive citizen.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Tracey Loughran, Janet Weston, and Rhodri Hayward for their comments, and to the anonymous reviewers at Modern British History. An earlier version of this article was presented to the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at King’s College London, which also provided useful feedback.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research behind this work was completed as part of a PhD, supported by a Principal’s Scholarship at Queen Mary, University of London.