Pilots of the Caribbean

Six weeks after the start of the Second World War, the British government lifted the colour bar on military recruitment. But the announcement, on 19 October 1939, made clear that the change in policy would last only for the duration of the war. The air force recruited six thousand West Indians. The army and navy, however, claimed that Black people could not meet their high standards for entry. The War Office and its generals insisted that the shortcomings of Black West Indian soldiers during the First World War was proof they made ‘poor fighting material’. Given Britain’s desperate need to recruit and train an effective fighting force, they argued, the army could do without the distraction of having to carry an ineffective regiment of West Indians.

It didn’t matter that tales of the weakness of West Indian troops in previous wars were simply untrue. The lies were accepted across Whitehall – even at the Colonial Office, which had been lobbying for West Indian recruitment but only for political reasons, to pacify a Caribbean population keen to play its part in the war.

In truth, West Indian soldiers had a distinguished history in the British armed forces. The West India Regiment, disbanded in 1927 after 132 years, had gained a reputation as an effective fighting force – at times, brutally effective. Yet West Indians were kept away from combat roles in Europe during the First World War because of a taboo on Black soldiers killing white ones. Their white officers often treated them with patronising disdain and, at times, racist hostility. But when they did face combat, in Africa and the Middle East, they were not found wanting.

It wasn’t until the final year of the Second World War that the Colonial Office uncovered historical accounts that told the truth about the contribution of West Indians in the First World War. In 1944 the army finally agreed to create a Caribbean Regiment, but it proved too late to recruit, train and deploy them before the war was won. A false narrative about their role in 1914-18 thus helped to shape the role of West Indian soldiers in 1939-45. This is a common trait in history, particularly in Black history. The lies of yesterday shape the realities of today, which in turn contribute to the outcomes of tomorrow.

With the Caribbean Regiment having played no significant role in the war, the War Office saw no case for the continued lifting of the colour bar. In 1947, it pushed for the return of the racist policy to keep Black West Indians and people of colour from across the empire out of the army. When it was pointed out that the National Service Bill, then going through Parliament, meant all young British men living in the UK would be conscripted, the War Office argued that Black Britons should be excluded. They did not get their way, and in June 1947 the government agreed to make the lifting of the military colour bar permanent, as both the Colonial Office and the Air Ministry had argued it should.

The RAF had a very different perspective from the War Office. Desperate to recruit highly skilled young pilots, it had experimented with a small selection scheme in the West Indies within the first eighteen months of the war. The first two waves of recruits to arrive in Britain, after initial training in the Caribbean, so impressed the RAF instructors that with the third wave they asked to look again at those who had failed their training in the West Indies. Sure enough, even the failures were found to have met RAF standards and were recruited.

At the end of the war the RAF reviewed the performance of its West Indian air crew. It found that they, and other people of colour recruited from across the empire, had performed just as well as their white British comrades. Julian Marryshow, a fighter pilot from Grenada, for example, was involved in many air battles, and credited with destroying several enemy trains and rocket launcher sites. He was shot down over enemy territory but managed to evade capture before being rescued by Allied forces, and was among the RAF pilots who provided air cover during the D-Day landings. (He died in Barbados in 2012 at the age of 94.)

So when in 1947 the secretary of state for air looked at the postwar policy on the colour bar, he concluded: ‘To erect a colour bar against an officer who had earned a [Distinguished Flying Cross] would be indefensible and barbaric.’ Although the RAF was much more broad-minded than the army, and despite the success of its West Indian recruits, prejudice prevented their promotion to leadership roles.

The theme of Black History Month this year is ‘reclaiming narratives’. The falsehood of ‘Britain standing alone’ took hold in the postwar period, as a nation that was coming to terms with its diminishing status in the world needed to present the Second World War as a reminder of its greatness. In recent decades, as the contribution of West Indian personnel became more widely acknowledged, particularly in the RAF, the Caribbean’s wider role in the war remained massively understated. The vital raw materials the region provided, and its strategic importance to the United States, are still overlooked.