BLACK BRITAIN remembered and honoured the heroes and heroines from the Caribbean and Africa who made enormous effort and sacrifice during World War Two.

Four million non-white soldiers from around the world joined the allied effort to defeat Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany, including 10,000 troops from the Caribbean and 600,000 from the continent of Africa.

Over 15,000 Caribbeans had also been posted to the frontline during World War One but received a third of the pay of white soldiers.

During World War One, heroes like former footballer Walter Tull served with distinction but their sacrifice was overlooked for many decades.

And after World War Two, many of the Windrush generation like the late Sam King faced hostility in post-war Britain despite risking their lives for the liberty of the ‘mother country.’

Alford Garner, 96, a former RAF mechanic who served during the war, told The Voice that he and his colleagues had to endure racism from American troops, and this often resulted in fist fights with soldiers they were supposed to be fighting alongside.

He said: “You had a bit of trouble with the Yarks. There was a lot of Americans, a lot of different foreign troops [and] a lot of them didn’t fancy black men doing the things that we were doing; because we went where we wanted to go, and a lot of people didn’t like it.

“So sometimes, you had a little a fist here and a fist [there]! We sorted out a lot of things!”, he added with a laugh.

Black soldiers have been a part of British military history since before the formation of a standing Army in the 17^th century, and their involvement increased dramatically in the 19^th century, including through the Napoleonic Wars and the Boer War.

British history books are largely silent about the contributions of Black servicemen in the First World War, and it is often thought that it was a European war, fought exclusively by (white) Europeans. The mainstream media rarely acknowledges the contributions of non-Europeans during the war, and yet there were lots of Black and Asian soldiers. Many men from Britain’s Black communities also joined the war effort, and Black recruits could be found in all branches of the armed forces.

After centuries of slavery, people in the British Caribbean were relishing their freedom, although many were said to take pride in their loyalty to the ‘Mother Country’. For others, playing an active role in the fighting was seen as an opportunity to advance claims for representative government within the islands. When World War One began, West Indians donated large sums of money to aid the war effort, and many men made their way across the Atlantic at their own expense to enlist.

Soon after the war started, soldiers from Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, the Gambia, and other African colonies were recruited. They helped to defend the borders of their countries which adjoined German territories, and later played an important role in the campaigns to remove the Germans from Africa. Throughout the war, 60,000 Black South African and 120,000 other Africans also served in uniformed Labour Units. By the end of the First World War, most of the British Army in Africa was made up of African soldiers.

Despite their courage and commitment, Black soldiers often suffered racial prejudice, and the War Office rejected several Caribbean volunteers in the early months of the war due to concerns about the number of Black men enlisting – they also threatened to repatriate any West Indians arriving in Britain.

There was a reluctance to deploy West Indian soldiers in frontline positions, especially on the Western Front, based on a racial stereotype that Caribbean men lacked ‘martial spirit’. Instead, they were usually given support roles, performing labour-intensive duties away from the fighting.

In 1915, following intervention from King George V, a proposal for a separate West Indian contingent to aid the war effort was approved, and the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR) was formed as a separate Black unit within the British Army. The first recruits sailed from Jamaica to Britain and arrived in October 1915 to train at a camp near Seaford on the Sussex coast. The 3rd battalion arrived in early 1916 in Plymouth while other battalions sailed direct to Egypt, arriving in Alexandria in March 1916. In addition to the BWIR, the West Indies contributed men through the West India Regiment (WIR), which had served Britain since 1795.

By the war’s end in November 1918, the BWIR had raised twelve battalions, and around 16,000 Black volunteers enlisted (conscription was never introduced in the West Indies), representing British Guiana and all the Caribbean colonies, with the majority from Jamaica. The Black soldiers of the BWIR received lower pay and allowances than their white compatriots and they were mostly led by white officers and used as non-combatant soldiers in Egypt, Mesopotamia and parts of Europe. The BWIR spent much of their time at labouring work, such as loading ammunition, laying telephone wires and digging trenches, but they were not permitted to fight as a battalion.

Despite the efforts to keep them from combat, the British West Indies Regiment played a significant role in the First World War especially in Palestine and Jordan where they were employed in military operations against the Turkish Army.

In Seaford Cemetery there are more than 300 Commonwealth War Graves and nineteen of the headstones display the crest of the BWIR. The BWIR was awarded 81 medals for bravery and 49 men were mentioned in dispatches.

In spite of racism, Black people from across the British Empire, including Trinidad, Jamaica, Guyana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, came forward to help fight the Axis powers during World War Two. Many volunteered to be civilian defence workers, such as firewatchers, air-raid wardens, firemen, stretcher-bearers, first aid workers, and mobile canteen personnel. Additional factory workers, foresters, and nurses were also recruited from across the Empire, including from Africa and the Caribbean, and the efforts of these people were crucial to the home front.

Colour bars (the segregation of people of a different colour or race, especially any barrier to Black people participating in activities with White people and being denied access to the same rights, opportunities, and facilities) had existed in the British Armed Forces before the war, though this was lifted in 1939 as the need to win the war and avoid Nazi victory and occupation outweighed concerns about race and integration.

Many Black volunteers from West Africa and the Caribbean were still being rejected by the RAF; however, this changed after the Battle of Britain in 1940. In 1941, 250 Trinidadians were accepted into the RAF and made the journey to Britain, and Black servicemen also went on to help bolster the numbers in the Army and Royal Navy. By the end of the war, in the RAF there were over 17,500 male and female volunteers from the West Indies alone.

Throughout the course of the war, Africa contributed almost one million men to the conflict, across British, French, Italian, and Belgian colonies, as well as those from South Africa. Of that number, some 15,000 British African soldiers were killed over the course of the Second World War. Many Africans who did not fight worked within the African continent to aid the war effort as labourers, porters, carriers, cooks, and mechanics. Thousands of Africans laboured during the war to provide vital food, ammunition, and mineral supplies, without which Britain and the deployed armies would have faltered.

The Second World War led to a substantial increase in the number of Black people living and working in Britain, and existing Black British communities were bolstered by the arrival of war volunteer workers from the Empire, as well as the arrival of 130,000 Black GIs in the US Army’s invasion force. As I’m focusing on UK history, I won’t write about the confrontation and violence that erupted within the US troops based in Lancashire in 1943 as a result of racism and racial segregation, but you can read about the Battle of Bamber Bridge here and here. Interestingly, despite the racial tensions we know of in the UK, the Black US soldiers stationed here saw a great contrast between the non-segregated British society where they were welcomed as fellow fighters against fascism, and the poor treatment they received from the US Army.

Britain’s self-image as a racially tolerant nation had long been shaped by liberalism, and Nazi racial policy made this a particularly salient aspect of national identity during the war – along with a sense of superiority as a result of British society being perceived as more tolerant than that of the US. However, the fight against the evils of racism was at odds with the racial prejudice that clearly still existed, including the colour bar at the start of the war.

Although it seems that slow progress was being made in Britain, when the fighting was over, Britain sent many Black soldiers home with an end-of-war bonus that was roughly a third of the reward given to their White counterparts.

Additional information from The Barnet Group