BWIR at the Western Front
The sacrifices made by the 16,000 black West Indians who volunteered to serve under British imperial command have largely been ignored in accounts of World War I. One of the few facts about these men to make it into the official histories of the conflict is the violent mutiny at Taranto, Italy, in which some of them participated at the end of the war.
For the first time, Mutiny reveals disturbing facts about the treatment of the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR), combining recently declassified government documents and the exclusive testimony of Britain's oldest surviving World War I veteran, 110-year-old Clifford Powell. He and other BWIR veterans discuss how they fought a battle against racism just to be allowed to fight for King and Country, and how the rebellion - and the harsh treatment meted out afterwards - were turning points in the fight for equality and freedom in the Caribbean.
Loyal subjects of the empire
'I was so joyful to go and fight for England,' recalls 106-year-old veteran Eugent Clarke. 'We can't talk bad about the English. The English are great man, greatest in the world,' reminisces Clifford Powell.
In 1914, after more than 300 years under the yoke of slavery and colonial rule, the majority of black people in the British West Indies saw themselves as loyal subjects of the empire. The islanders made many generous donations of goods and equipment for the imperial war effort, and they contributed cash that was the equivalent of £60 million in today's money. But patriotic young black men who wanted to enlist were not allowed to fight - because of their colour.
The British imperial establishment, who feared that the participation of black men in the war would encourage a challenge to the supremacy of colonial whites in the Caribbean, displayed appalling racist attitudes towards the idea of black soldiers. These prejudices were official, as recorded by the British minister of war, Lord Kitchener: 'Blacks' colour makes them too conspicuous in the field ... Black soldiers; a greater source of danger to friends than enemy.'
Joining up
With the loss of huge numbers of British troops and the backing of George V, black volunteers were finally allowed to join up. Conditions were harsh; many lost their lives even before they reached the war zones. In one incident, over 600 khaki-clad BWIR recruits suffered severe frostbite during a blizzard at sea because the winter uniforms on their troop carrier were never issued to them.
Eight of the BWIR's 11 battalions were sent to the Western Front. However, the army's high command had decided at a secret meeting that they would not be allowed to fight on the front-line - a decision of which the BWIR was never officially informed. Instead they were used as labour battalions at Ypres and on the Somme, supplying British artillery batteries with high-explosive ammunition while under heavy fire - vital and life-risking roles only recently acknowledged. Letters home to the Caribbean spoke of the poor treatment meted out to black soldiers compared to the white troops, and the indignity of their non-fighting role was captured in the war poems they wrote, such as the 'Black Soldier's Lament'.
In the Middle East in the autumn of 1918, two BWIR battalions finally saw combat in General Allenby's decisive encounter with the Turkish army. They performed their crucial role with exemplary courage and professionalism, capturing and holding a strategic bridge, so cutting off the Turkish line of retreat. Days later, the entire Turkish army surrendered.
'How the World Is at War - a contemporary map of the world with the empire in red'
Mutiny and liberation
At the end of the war, the 'other ranks' of the BWIR - still under the thumb of the British command and stranded in
an Italian transit camp - were disillusioned and embittered. A pay rise of six pence a day awarded only to white soldiers
and then shameful instructions to clean the latrines of their fellow white soldiers and Italian civilians proved to be the
final straws at the conclusion of what had been, for the most part, a humiliating and degrading tour of duty. When
their commanders refused to take seriously complaints that they were being discriminated against, the black soldiers
rose up in a violent mutiny. Many of the mutiny's ringleaders were jailed; one was executed by firing squad.
The mutiny was a turning point for the West Indies. The black soldiers had volunteered their lives, yet back in the Caribbean, the oppressive, racially based social and political structures remained unchanged. The colonial authorities - fearing that these politicised and weapons-trained veterans would return to lead a violent revolution - encouraged over 4,000, nearly a third of the BWIR veterans, to emigrate to Cuba to work on the sugar and fruit estates. Some remain there to this day, including Clifford Powell.
But throughout the Caribbean, BWIR veterans - including Norman Manley, who would become Jamaica's first prime minister in 1962 - led the struggle for black pride, civil rights and national liberation. As a Colonial Office memo of 1919 recognised: 'Nothing we can do will alter the fact that the Black Man has begun to think and feel himself as good as the white.' The tide of change was irreversible.