\u00a0<\/p>\n
Black Britons and the British Military<\/h3>\n
Despite the change in regulations, the Royal Navy<\/em> continued to exclude Blacks and racial discrimination was rife. A few \u201cserved as locally engaged personnel\u201d, according to the Ministry of Defence, but the Daily Herald<\/em> reported on 17 May 1944 that on a British warship an officer had told recruits: \u201cI want your standards to conform as near as possible to those of our American allies. In the States Negroes are separated from the white men. The American regards the Negro as a child and not equal to the white race. Please conform to that idea.\u201d<\/p>\n Some Black Britons still attempted to enlist. Newspaper accounts show that some were rejected. The Daily Herald\u00a0<\/em>reported on 11 January 1940 that GE Price, \u201cthe Edinburgh-born son of a West Indian\u201d was turned down by the Navy, then the RAF, then the army. On 6 February the same paper noted that another Edinburgh-born man, R Spiers, the son of a Sierra Leonean, was turned down by the RAF.<\/p>\n Other services maintained policies of racial discrimination: the Voluntary Aid Detachment did not remove its colour bar until the end of 1941, while the Women\u2019s Land Army retained its bar. The WAAF (Women\u2019s Auxiliary Air Force) accepted one Black woman: Lilian Bader, who became a leading aircraftwoman and earned the rank of Corporal.<\/p>\n There was a shortage of medical staff in the military. Two West Indian doctors were almost immediately accepted by the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) and Christine Moody \u2013 daughter of Dr Harold Moody, the president of the League of Coloured Peoples \u2013\u00a0 is among the long list of women accepted by the RAMC in the\u00a0London Gazette Supplement<\/em>\u00a0of 24 March 1942. \u00a0However, racial discrimination existed even in the medical profession. The League of Coloured Peoples complained to the War Office about a colour bar in the Military Nursing Service in 1943, and News Chronicle <\/em>reported on 16 May 1945 about a Birmingham hospital, which \u201cwhen it discovered that a newly appointed medical officer was a Black man, did not permit him to commence work\u201d; he was \u201cgiven notice and one month\u2019s salary\u201d.<\/p>\n The RAF accepted 400 men from the West Indies to be trained as pilots, navigators, flight engineers, bomb aimers, wireless operators or air gunners. \u00a0They earned 103 decorations. It was subsequently decided that West Indians could also fill ground crew shortages, so about 4,000 arrived in 1944 and another 1,500 in 1945.<\/p>\n We do not know how many \u2018Black Brits\u2019 served during the war. According to the historian Stephen Bourne: \u201c\u2019Ethnicity\u2019 was not recorded in the UK in the armed services in WW1 or WW2, so there is no way of ever knowing. Photographic evidence exists of integrated battalions, regiments, ships, RAF etc, but no accurate numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s war efforts owed a huge amount to contributions from her colonies in the Caribbean and in Africa, and from India.<\/p>\n Some men paid their own way to the \u2018mother country\u2019 to join up and were accepted by the RAF. Emanuel Peter John Adeniyi Thomas, who came from Lagos in 1942, became the first Black African to qualify as a pilot and the first to be commissioned as an officer; by 1944 he had risen to the rank of Flight Lieutenant. He died in an accidental air crash in 1945 and is buried in Bath Cemetery.<\/p>\n Trinidadian Ulric Cross became the most decorated West Indian pilot. He rose to the rank of Squadron Leader and was awarded the DSO (Distinguished Service Order) and the DFM (Distinguished Flying Medal). Cy Grant from British Guiana, who was trained as a navigator, recounted his experiences in A Member of the RAF of Indeterminate Race: WW2 experiences of a former RAF Navigator and POW<\/em> (2006). He argued that \u201cthe reversal of RAF racial policies in the recruitment of non-Europeans obviously owed more to expediency than to any genuine change in attitudes that had prevailed for centuries and are still with us today\u201d.<\/p>\n Initially, Britain refused to recruit in her Caribbean colonies. Yet by the end of 1942 all local forces were placed under Imperial Command with its headquarters in Jamaica. Recruitment could now begin. Some 1,200 men were recruited for service overseas, as the First Caribbean Regiment, and sent for training to the USA. It was not till June 1944 that they were shipped to Europe. Though trained to fight, they were put on garrison duty in conquered Italy, and then in Egypt.<\/p>\n There was also much discussion between the Colonial Office and the War Office about raising women for Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) \u2013 could\/should Black women be accepted? Eventually about 300 served in the Caribbean, 2-300 White women in the United States, and about 100 were sent to the UK in late 1943. In the photograph of 23 of these women\u00a0in\u00a0Ben Bousquet & Colin Douglas\u2019 book\u00a0West Indian Women at War<\/em>\u00a0(1991), I can only see three dark-faced\u00a0women.<\/p>\n The Caribbean colonies played other important roles too<\/span>. German Prisoners of War were shipped out to Jamaica to be interned at the Up Park Camp, guarded by Pioneer Corps. Meanwhile, the UK granted the USA permission to establish bases on six Caribbean islands, to help guard the Panama Canal and thousands were employed building and maintaining US military\/naval bases.<\/p>\n The African contribution was also highly significant. Unfortunately, accurate data has not been kept for either the fighting troops or the \u2018pioneers\u2019, ie labour corps. Historian David Killingray gives the total number as just over a million. About 120,000 served \u2013 and fought \u2013 in Ceylon, India and Burma. Peter Clarke found that around 240,000 soldiers were raised in Britain\u2019s west African colonies and that many more thousands were used as \u2018carriers\u2019 for the regiments. Ashley Jackson wrote that \u201cby the end of the war 323,483 men had served in East Africa\u2019s armed forces\u201d.\u00a0 The officers were all \u2018white\u2019 British until Ghanaian Seth Anthony was sent to be trained as an officer at Sandhurst in 1941; he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 1942. Only two other Africans were sent for officer training during the war.<\/p>\n According to Clarke, \u201cWest Africa played an important strategic role in World War II by providing staging bases for British, American and other Allied soldiers and their supplies and equipment en route to the Middle and Far East\u201d. Ashley Jackson writes that around 25,000 men were employed by the Royal Navy for construction work and to support Freetown as a \u201cconvoy assembly port and major operational naval base\u201d. And thousands more laboured to construct and maintain the US military\/naval bases along the coast.<\/p>\n According to Jackson, \u201c40 airfields and flying boat bases and landing grounds were developed in British West Africa\u2026 The RAF recruited 10,000 West Africans for ground duties \u2026 and in East Africa a section of the all-white Kenya Regiment was converted into the Kenya Auxiliary Air Unit \u2026 employed on communications, reconnaissance and training tasks, and for anti-submarine patrols.\u201d He also noted that \u201cSouthern Rhodesia prepared over 8000 men for service in the RAF\u201d.<\/p>\n Other services maintained policies of racial discrimination <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Contributions from the colonies<\/h3>\n
Britain\u2019s war efforts owed a huge amount to contributions from her colonies <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
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