This time last year the campaign was little more than a simple concept – a memorial to the 96,000 volunteers of the Chinese Labour Corps. That hasn’t changed, but how we envisage that concept has. It has changed a great deal.

Back in August of 2013 Steve Lau, Chair of the Chinese in Britain Forum (CiBF), was invited by the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to attend Round Table discussions with the then government minister, Baroness Warsee. The purpose of the discussions was to examine how the Commonwealth contribution to the First World War might be commemorated. Although China was not a colony nor part of the commonwealth, there was a commitment by senior civil servants at DCLG (with whom CiBF had shared the forgotten story of the Chinese Labour Corps) that the Chinese contribution, like those made by the Commonwealth, be commemorated.

It was several months, however, before the idea of national memorial emerged. Indeed, without this positive focus, the trustees of CiBF struggled with how to commemorate the CLC’s contribution given that the experiences of the CLC were invariable quite horrible. With a remit to promote active citizenship among Britain’s Chinese community, the tale of the CLC, of racism and abuse from a very different time and society threatened to do more harm than good. The Chinese were not singularly maltreated. Everyone was. But a shared injustice does not make it anymore an injustice. What does set the CLC apart is the fact that they were instantly forgotten. As our main video states, ‘relegated to a footnote in history’.

There isn’t one simple reason why the CLC were so quickly forgotten. The simple truth is that it was convenient for both the British and the Chinese governments of the time to forget them. Within the tiny Chinese community of the UK, may well have carried the memory of the CLC, had the know it in the first place, but of course, with CLC members so strictly segregated, their Chinese compatriots in the UK would not have known their story in any detail.

Yet in Chinese culture, to forget the dead is to condemn them to be ghosts. It is a dishonourable thing to do. Perhaps this is one reason why the cause of the CLC has held such a resonance with Chinese people in Britain. Perhaps others were to blame for the CLC’s poor treatment and the national amnesia that left them buried in history for so long, but members of Britain’s Chinese community today instinctively recognise that it is they who have a responsibility to remember, for they are very direct beneficiaries of the sacrifices made by the CLC.

One legacy of the CLC, and certainly one which nobody, either in Britain or China at the time could had foreseen, has been to draw the Chinese community together with a singularity of purpose. To most casual readers, the fact that the Campaign is being directed by a coalition of eight Chinese organisations may be a detail of little importance. However, it is hugely significant. It represent the first time that the community has come together proactively to address an issue. For the first time a body exists which reflects the huge diversity within the Chinese community. For the fist time a body exists which can respond holistically rather than parochially to issues of common interest to all Chinese people. This is what happened when the British Chinese Project took the lead in responding to Dave Whelan’s racist remarks. Using the structures of the Campaign, the British Chinese Project released a statement, endorsed campaign coalition members within 24 hours . If this seems unremarkable, it should be understood that this is the first time this has ever happened. The first time that the Chinese community has been sufficiently organised to have major organisations agree to a statement being issued which is timely to the events in question. In short the Chinese community has found a mechanism to speak. This would never have happened without the men of the Chinese Labour Corps