- By the end of World War II, 400 West Indians served as airmen and over 5,500 travelled to Britain to serve as aircrew. Many also joined the Merchant Navy.
- Despite this, Commonwealth citizens were subject to a British colour bar that worked alongside the racist doctrines of the American forces.
In August 1944, Mr G Hemmerde KC, a Liverpool recorder, denounced the colour bar when, on the appeal of George Alexander McGuire Roberts, a West Indian man, ‘he reduced to one farthing a fine of £5 imposed for failing to attend Home Guard duties without reasonable excuse’ (‘Denouncing the colour bar in England’, Wed 2 Aug 1944, The Guardian archive).
Roberts, an electrician in a war factory, who without hesitation had joined the Home Guard as a volunteer, failed to do picket duty after being refused admission to a dance hall on account of his colour. He had later returned wearing his Home Guard uniform, but again, entry was refused.
Giving judgment, Mr Hemmerde said: ‘I think it is impertinence for any country to accept the aid of coloured people from any part of the world and then to say: “Our laws don’t enable us to deal with you in terms of complete equality”.’
West Indians & the war effort
On the 75th anniversary of HMT Empire Windrush arriving in Britain in 1948, the rich history of George Arthur Roberts (1890-1970) a Trinidadian soldier, firefighter, and community leader in Britain deserves consideration.
Known as the ‘coconut bomber’ during World War I, Roberts distinguished himself by his ‘extraordinary’ ability to throw bombs back over enemy lines, as he did with coconuts as a child. When the war began, he signed himself up to the European Service and worked his way from Trinidad to England. He fought in the battles of Loos, the Somme, and in the Dardanelles. After the war he settled in London, where he was one of the founding members of The League of Coloured Peoples, an influential civil rights organisation. During World War II, Roberts, now too old to fight, enlisted for the Home Front and became a firefighter during the Blitz. In the king’s 1944 birthday honours, he was awarded the British Empire Medal. A blue plaque has been erected in his honour in Camberwell as the first black man to serve in the army and the fire brigade.
When reading about Roberts and his accolades, it’s important to remember that the West Indian contribution to Britain had been established prior to that fateful day when HMT Windrush docked in the Port of Tilbury on 21 June 1948.
By the end of World War II, 400 West Indians had served as airmen and over 5,500 travelled to Britain to serve as aircrew. Many also joined the Merchant Navy. Although there was still some prejudice against recruiting black West Indians into the Army, the joint efforts of the Colonial Office and the West India Committee were able to secure their inclusion, especially as many of them possessed useful skills that were in short supply, such as mechanical engineering. By May 1942, West Indians could be found serving in over 40 different regiments, with a sizeable contingent in the Royal Engineers. Many of these engineers served in the Middle East and North Africa, providing vital support for the efforts of General Montgomery and his army. 1,000 volunteers for army service were formed into the Caribbean Regiment, which went overseas in 1944 and saw service in the Middle East and Italy.
The colour bar
The Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) was the women’s branch of the British Army. There was a wide range of jobs available to female soldiers in the ATS as cooks, telephonists, drivers, postal workers, searchlight operators, and ammunition inspectors. 600 West Indian women volunteered to join the ATS, of whom half stayed in the Caribbean while 200 served in the USA and 100 in the UK. However, it was the base in Washington that was to highlight the policies of a British colour bar and how that worked alongside the racist doctrines of the American forces. There had been a presence of the ATS in Washington since 1941 when America had joined the war, and with only 30 ATS staff serving in Washington by the end of that year, there was pressure for numbers to be increased. With that in mind, Britain turned to considering the viability of recruiting for Washington from the Caribbean colonies. However, there was a condition attached, requiring that any recruits from the Caribbean must be white.
Aware the recruitment mission could lead to social conflicts, the region’s governors began to express their concerns about the military colour bar. Only after the colour bar was raised at the highest ministerial level did the War Office eventually agree to allow black women to serve in the British and Caribbean ATS. To keep black West Indians away from Washington, the War Office was prepared to allow them to serve in Britain.
In October 1943, a group of 30 West Indian women arrived in Britain. They were the first of 100 recruits who would serve in the British ATS, who would carry out a wide range of duties. These inspirational women joined in the battle against Hitler and the Nazis.
Lilian Bader (1918-2015), born in Liverpool to a British mother and Barbadian father, orphaned at a young age and raised in a convent, was dismissed from the Navy, Army, and Air Force institutes after her father’s heritage was discovered, but eventually became one of the first black women in the RAF after joining the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) in 1941. She was trained in instrument repair, working on Airspeed Oxford light bombers, and was promoted to the rank of corporal.
Windrush & its legacy
Those Caribbeans who arrived in Britain at the behest of the British government, which included those who had fought in the war, came to Britain with the same resolve: to help to rebuild a war-torn Britain, the country they believed was also their home. But as HMT Windrush, with its 492 Jamaican passengers (mostly young men), made its way across the Atlantic towards the motherland on its pioneering voyage, arriving on 22 June 1948, anger was building within the corridors of power, with their arrival being denied by those from the highest echelons. Labour Minister George Isaacs opined to members of Parliament on those arriving on the Windrush: ‘I don’t know who sent these men... it is bound to result in difficulties... we can give no assurances that they can be found suitable work. I hope no encouragement will be given to others to follow them.’
It is hard to fathom how the Minister of Labour would not have been aware of the acute labour shortages that existed at the time. The total working population had fallen by 1.38 million between mid-1945 and the end of 1946, as many married women and older people who had delayed retirement left the jobs they had filled in the war. People were also leaving the country. In the late 1940s and into the 1950s, many families emigrated to parts of what was then known as the ‘Old’ Commonwealth (including Australia, New Zealand, and Canada), countries that were themselves short of labour and anxious to encourage white settlers from the United Kingdom in an effort to maintain their old colonial links and European notions of citizenship and identity. Therefore, as these territories were recruiters rather than sources of white British workers, attention turned to citizens of ‘New’ Commonwealth countries as a potential source of new employees: hence the call-out to Caribbeans in the early post-war years.
But the government made it clear that Commonwealth citizens could not be turned away, and their right to remain would be rubber stamped by the Labour government’s passing of the Nationality Act 1948, which granted UK citizenship to all people from the colonies and ex-colonies. This resulted in British passports being issued and the right to come and live in Britain. A right my parents took up when they arrived from Jamaica 13 years later in 1961.
The celebration of the Windrush generation goes beyond that of 1948, because black people’s contribution to British history is rich, powerful and—despite the ‘colour bar’ and inequitable treatment that they faced—did not prevent them from becoming embedded into British history.
As I reflect on that rich history, it is important to refer back to the poignant judgment of Mr Hemmerde, recorded in The Guardian archive, denouncing the colour bar in England in 1944:
‘I do not understand how in the British Empire… anything in the way of a colour bar can exist or ever be allowed to exist by any Government… when people come here to risk their lives, they are entitled to think they are coming to conditions of decency and order.’
Mr Hemmerde went on to add: ‘If you accept aid from coloured people, you accept them, as your friends and as people whose aid you are proud to receive.’
Pauline Campbell, senior litigation lawyer at the London Borough of Waltham Forest. The original wording has been used throughout at the request of the author.
