Challenging the Accepted View: A Remembrance Day reflection

William De Sousa

4 months ago

In this Remembrance Day blog, our Head of PR and Communications Cornelius Alexander reflects on the overlooked contributions of Black and Brown Commonwealth soldiers in the World Wars, urging a more honest remembrance that recognises their shared sacrifice.

🕒 Estimated read time: 3 minutes

One of the more poignant moments of Remembrance Sunday is when the High Commissioners of all the Commonwealth countries lay wreaths at The Cenotaph.

Having grown up in an era when a common refrain was “there’s no black in the Union Jack,” it’s great to see such representation from the Commonwealth at one of the most solemn times in our country’s year.

At a time when the UK was supposedly holding off the Nazis alone, the entire Commonwealth came to its aid by taking on the Axis forces across Europe and worldwide.

This was not just a case of representation but participation, with thousands of volunteers posted around the world to do what they perceived was their duty.

The facts speak for themselves:

The British Indian Army was among the largest volunteer armies in history with 2.5m men in its rank.
600,000 men from Africa served in British forces in WW2
90,000 African servicemen were deployed to Burma (Myanmar) and were part of the main British military unit, the 14th Army.
Approximately 1m Indians served in WW1 with nearly 75,000 fatalities.
16,000 West Indian men and women served in Britain’s forces during WW2 with many paying their own passage

Despite this, there is still little cultural recognition of the participation of Black and Brown Commonwealth troops in the World Wars and other conflicts.

Watch any drama or film about World War I or World War II, and you will see that the lack of Black and Brown Commonwealth faces is a slap in the face.

For the Black and Brown Commonwealth servicemen who stayed or eventually returned to the UK after the war, it must have been shocking to see campaigns they were part of portrayed on the big screen as if fought only by white British troops.

For the following generations, what they saw became truth – and then fact: that Black and Brown did not serve during the wars.

I remember watching the 1960s film 633 Squadron, and being shocked that one of the pilots of the Mosquito fighter/bomber squadron was Sikh and proudly wearing a turban.

Unfortunately, this was one of the few films which portrayed Black and Brown Commonwealth participation in the fighting. For whatever reason, the powers that be did not challenge this notion and allowed it to be part of the story this country told itself.

Years later examples of rebalancing the narratives are still rare. In recent years, Ulric Cross DFC DSO was the subject of a recent film, and in 2017, the African and Caribbean War Memorial in Brixton was unveiled with the inscription “Remembering The Forgotten.” This memorial is the centrepiece of a Remembrance service in Windrush Square which takes place every Remembrance Sunday.

The following videos were produced by the Royal British Legion for the 75th anniversary of the end of WW2 to challenge the narrative: