With the end of the Spanish Civil War, British labour's internationalism was at last presented with a situation which it could fully control. Here was a defeated foreign labour movement with all the familiar complications of trade union and socialist leaders to be helped to safety, the movements of refugees to be co-ordinated, and intercessions to be made on behalf of those languishing in jail or condemned to death. Franco's obsession with extirpating all vestiges of socialism from Spain ensured that the latter category would be huge. Moreover, there was a continuing humanitarian commitment within Britain where many of the Basque children, for whom secure domestic arrangements could not be made in Spain, were to grow up. The labour movement took on a further responsibility when many crew members of Spanish Republican merchant vessels opted to remain in Britain rather than return to a Francoist Spain. However, the charity of the National Union of Seamen, which acted as the TUC's agent in caring for the sailors, was tempered by trade union considerations – it resisted allowing the Spanish crews to find work on British ships as this would have infringed its long-held principle of ‘British Seamen for British Ships’. Crucially for labour's leaders, however, the end of armed Republican resistance marked the end of the ‘Spanish problem’. All of them, with the possible exception of Attlee, had felt threatened by Spain; by the demands which Spanish workers had placed on their conception of labour organisation and action; by the destabilising passions which the conflict had aroused.