Steve Lau, Chair of the Ensuring We Remember Campaign was invited to address a full meeting of Liverpool City Council on Wednesday 22nd July, 2015. His address is given below. Our thanks to the Members of Liverpool City Council for their support of the campaign.

I am delighted to address the Council today as Chair of the Chinese Labour Corps Memorial Campaign. Sadly the vast majority of people are unaware of the vital contribution of 96,000 Chinese volunteers who came to Britain’s assistance during the First World War. Despite their contribution on the Western front, not one of Britain’s 43,000 First World War memorials even mentions them.

The work undertaken by the Chinese Labour Corps was extremely diverse. From digging trenches to repairing tanks. They unloaded ships and trains, built roads, laid railway tracks. They were kept on after the war to do some of the most gruesome work, of which I will speak more about in a moment. British Prime Minister Lloyd George commented in his memories of the particular harsh conditions under which the Chinese Labour Corps worked, and of the imperturbability of the Chinese workers under such conditions

It was the Chinese Labour Corp who were in large part responsible for clearing the battlefields of the Western Front after the Armistice, backfilling the trenches, leveling the ground, and perhaps most significantly, exhuming those buried on the battlefields and reburying them in what we now know as the Commonwealth War Graves to be found across northern France and Belgium.

It is a sad irony that those who were so vital to the construction of those iconic places of remembrance were themselves forgotten.

The contribution of these men has routinely been overlooked or relegated to a footnote in history. These men deserve better, and our nation’s promise never to forget should apply to them as to any other, and so I whole heartedly commend the Campaign and, if I may, ask that the Council supports the establishment of The Merseyside Friends of the Chinese Labour Corps to tell their story.

You can read an update on this here.