Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race(5)

On 1 November 2008, at an event marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Institute of Race Relations, the institute’s director Ambalavaner Sivanandan told his audience: ‘we are here because you were there’. That phrase has since been absorbed into black British vocabulary. Wanting to know more about what it meant, I reached back, searching for evidence. The first answer I found was war.

Britain’s involvement in the First World War wasn’t just limited to British citizens. Thanks to its rabid empire building, people from countries that weren’t European (apart from colonisation), were caught up in the expectation of dying for King and Country. When, in 2013, the British Council asked people about their perceptions of the First World War, they found that most Brits didn’t have an understanding of the international impact it had, despite the moniker ‘world war’. ‘Because of the reach of empires,’ the council’s report reads, ‘soldiers and labourers were enlisted from all over the globe.’5 Of the seven countries6 the British Council surveyed on the First World War, the vast majority of respondents thought that both western and eastern Europe were involved. In comparison, an average of just 17 per cent thought that Asia was involved, and just 11 per cent of respondents identified Africa’s involvement.

It could be that this misconception about exactly who fought for Britain during the First World War has led to a near erasure of the contributions of black and brown people. This is an erasure that couldn’t be further from the truth. Over a million Indian soldiers – or sepoys (Indian soldiers serving for Britain) – fought for Britain during the First World War.7 Britain had promised these soldiers that their country would be free from colonial rule if they did so. Sepoys travelled to Britain in the belief that they would not only be fighting for Britain, but by doing so they would be contributing to their country’s eventual freedom.

Their journey to Europe was unforgiving. They travelled by ship, without the appropriate clothing for the shift in climate. Many sepoys suffered from a bitter cold that they’d never before experienced, with some dying from exposure. And even during the war, sepoys didn’t receive the treatment they were expecting. The highest-ranking sepoy was still lower in the army hierarchy than the lowest-ranking white British soldier. If injured, a sepoy would be treated in the segregated Brighton Pavilion and Dome Hospital for Indian Troops. The hospital was surrounded with barbed wire to discourage wounded sepoys from mixing with the locals. Around 74,000 sepoys died fighting in the war, but Britain refused to deliver its promise of releasing India from colonial rule.

A much smaller number of soldiers travelled from the West Indies to fight for Britain.8 The Memorial Gates Trust, a charity set up to commemorate Indian, African and Caribbean soldiers who died for Britain in both world wars, puts the number at 15,600. These soldiers were known as the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR). In the Caribbean, the British Army recruited from poor areas, and, similarly to India, there was a feeling among some would-be recruits that taking part in the war would lead to political reform at home. But this opinion wasn’t widespread, and there were a significant number of Caribbean people who were set against the West Indies fighting, calling it a ‘white man’s war’. Despite the resistance of some, thousands of West Indians quit their jobs to travel to Europe.

Again, the long boat journey was unforgiving. Britain needed the extra labour, yet the government failed to provide West Indians with adequate clothing to survive the journey, just as they had with the sepoys. In 1916, the SS Verdala, travelling from the West Indies to West Sussex, had to make a diversion to Halifax in eastern Canada. Hundreds of West Indian recruits suffered from frostbite, with some dying from exposure to the harsh, cold climate.

When they arrived, the majority of the British West Indies Regiment did not initially fight alongside white British soldiers on the battlefield. Instead, they were relegated to supporting positions, doing drudgework for the benefit of white soldiers. Their duties included strenuous labour, such as digging trenches, building roads, and carrying injured soldiers on stretchers. As white British ranks were depleted in battle, West Indian soldiers were given permission to fight. Almost two hundred men had died in action by the end of the war.

By 1918, resentment among West Indian soldiers was widespread. While the BWIR was stationed in Taranto, Italy, some men got hold of news that white British soldiers had received a pay rise that the West Indian soldiers had been excluded from. Outraged at their treatment, the soldiers went on strike, gathering signatures for a petition to be sent to the Secretary of State. This quickly evolved into an open rebellion. During the Taranto mutiny, a striker was shot dead by a black non-commissioned officer, and a bomb was set off. The rebellion was quickly crushed and sixty suspected rebellious members of the British West Indies Regiment were tried for their involvement in mutiny. Some were jailed, and one man was sentenced to death by firing squad.

Mistreated West Indian soldiers returned home, and the crackdown on the Taranto mutiny contributed to a push for a black self-determination movement in the Caribbean. But there were also black soldiers who chose to stay on in Britain after the war. As the fighting came to an end and soldiers were demobilised, black ex-soldiers living in Britain began to be targeted.

Riots always seem to kick off in the summer. On 6 June 1919, seven months after the First World War had ended, rumours were doing the rounds in Newport, south Wales. It was alleged that a white woman had been slighted by a black man. As increasing numbers of angry and agitated white people shared the news among themselves, a braying mob assembled and then descended on homes of black men in the area. Some of the black men shot back with guns. Fights and scuffles over the next few days led to a Caribbean man stabbing a white man.