Civil Service
Phelan was contacted by the Board of Trade to participate in an enquiry into housing conditions in South Wales. Although he was very much enjoying his new job and the opportunities it afforded him to travel, he returned to London to resume duties at the Civil Service. The outbreak of the First World War ensured the suspension of the enquiry and he was instead assigned to the newly established Ministry of Labour at Montagu House, Whitehall. Phelan accompanied Bruce Lockhart as the first British delegation to meet the Bolsheviks in Moscow in January 1918,just as the Finnish civil war commenced and coincidental with the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. At the beginning of March Phelan returned to England and his work at the Ministry of Labour where he headed a think-tank dealing with 'foreign questions'. In the Autumn of 1918 he suggested that the Ministry should formulate a policy position for the anticipated peace treaties. Phelan referred to this decision as the conception of the ILO. Lloyd George approved the initiative and Phelan became secretary to George Barnes of the British peace delegation.
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“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
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