Cousins John Ashton and John Ashton on the Chinese seamen deported after serving Britain during the second world war, and their exploitative employer. Plus letters from Gary Craig, Jacqueline Simpson and Mike Owen
We congratulate Dan Hancox, and the family campaigners who helped him, for bringing into the open at last the story of the Chinese seamen secretly rounded up and forcibly deported from Liverpool as soon as their services were no longer required for the war effort (The secret deportations: how Britain betrayed the Chinese men who served the country in the war, 25 May). Nothing can compensate for the suffering inflicted on them, and on the wives and children from whom they were so cruelly separated with neither explanation nor farewell.
Truth and contrition are the least that can be expected. It is sad but revealing that even now ministers cannot bring themselves to apologise to the victims’ descendants for this shameful episode in our history. The institutional racism with which we continue to struggle in our country has deep roots.
