THE ROLE played by Caribbean soldiers in helping to defend Britain during two World Wars is to be highlighted by a new calendar.
The calendar, called ‘Lest We Forget: The Caribbean Contribution to Wartime Britain will commemorate the efforts of the men and women from the region who fought for ‘The Mother Country’ through a blend of poignant photography and personal stories.
Author Barbara Ellis, who came up with the idea for Lest We Forget, says she wanted to produce a calendar that would enlighten readers to an important part of history each month of the year.
She told The Voice: “It can be used daily as well as recording another chapter in our (Black) History for 365 days in 2022. It is visually stimulating and enlightening for young people and brings back many memories and stories from the older generation about their and their relatives wartime experiences. It informs and supplements the National Curriculum’s World War I and II syllabuses at key Stages 2, 3 and 4 and it demonstrates vividly the important role Caribbean veterans played in both wars.”
The project was also inspired by personal experience in Jamaica and the UK.
“In 2018, I saw a friend’s glossy Singer calendar in Jamaica (the sewing machine company), it featured black families naturally and positively” she said. “The idea was born. I thought instead of families we could record all parts of our history through calendars that are integral to our Caribbean community. Calendars are part and parcel of every home in the Caribbean and here in England.”
Ellis continued: “I was also inspired to create the calendar after attending the West Indian Association Service Personal parade through Brixton to Black Cultural Archives in November 2018 to mark 100 years after the end of World War I. The youth arm of the military and other service personnel was impressive and inspiring and I imagined this was what Marcus Garvey had done at the beginning of the 20th Century.
“I contacted and communicated with some of the family members featured in the calendar and had a lot of positive feedback and interest.”
I thought we could record all parts of our history through calendars that are integral to our Caribbean community. Calendars are part and parcel of every home in the Caribbean and here in England.
Barbara Ellis, author
After Britain joined the First World War in August 1914, volunteers from the West Indian colonies travelled to Britain at their own expense to fight for the Mother Country.
In 1915, following a suggestion from King George V, involvement, a separate British West Indies Regiment (BWIR) was established.
The BWIR consisted of twelve battalions. Before the end of the war in November 1918, over 16,000 Caribbean volunteers had been recruited. They represented all the region’s colonies, with the majority hailing from Jamaica.
Despite prejudice and the existence of colour bars in the armed forces, men and women from the Caribbean again came up to assist Britain during World War II.
For more information about Lest We Forget: The Caribbean Contribution to Wartime Britain click here
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I would request all Voice readers to purchase The Caribbean Contribution to Wartime Britain calendar; and share and inform their children of the huge contribution of African and African-Caribbean people in both of England’s European Trade Wars for two important reasons.
Firstly, Her Majesty’s African-heritage Subjects need to be the ones pioneering the celebration of the 100,000 Africans who volunteered their lives to England in the First European War.
It is little known that Caribbean soldiers were present at the awful battle of the Somme in 1916; or that Mr Walter Tull a man of Caribbean-heritage was promoted and led English soldiers into battle in 1917?
England’s African-heritage Subjects ought to be the ones pioneering the remembrance of our ancestors; rather than Left-wing Caucasian teachers.
Secondly, it is a living shame and a curse that Her Majesty’s African-heritage Subjects have not set aside a single annual day whereby we can have a dinner; lecture and a dance in honour of the millions of Africans who were thrown to the sharks from English slave-ships in the Atlantic during the perilous “middle-crossing.”
We do not set aside a single annual day for a dinner; lecture and dance to honour the millions whose lives as African slaves in the Caribbean was nasty; brutish and short whilst being African slaves of the Anglican Church (which held the largest number of Africans as slaves in the English Caribbean), or the City of London or the merchants of England.
Her Majesty’s African-Caribbean Subjects do not set aside a day to honour Caribbean-heritage people’s unique contribution to English life in fashion; sports, music, poetry and the massive influence of Caribbean words and phrases on the BBC and English generally.
I understand that African-Caribbean people’s 500-year association with the English has been incredibly nasty; brutish and painful; and many African and African-Caribbean-heritage subjects prefer to avoid looking at our 500-year of intimate association with English men and women.
However, Voice reader, how long can a tree live without its roots?
If Her Majesty’s African and African-Caribbean heritage subjects continue to refuse to honour our incredible English Empire history, in fifty years from now official and academic music writers will record that Ska; Blue Beat, Calypso and Reggae was pioneered and developed in the 1980s by Caucasian English musicians from Birmingham in England called UB40.
Caucasian and Arabic academics and Egyptologists reject firmly that African people were responsible for the African Pharaonic contribution to the wonders of Egypt: ancient Ethiopia and the Sudan.
Ancient Egypt and North East Africa was developed by the African-skin; African-hair; African-facial structure of the indigenous African people of the Old and Middle Kingdom of Ancient North East Africa- a fact that is strenuously rejected by Caucasian and Arabic Egyptologists and academics today, who insist the wonders of Africa was the contribution of “Asiatic, Semitic” or even “Caucasian-heritage” people. In short, any people except Africans.