I’ve been mulling over our visit to the National Archives.

The item that I investigated was an online one, a document circulated by the Home Secretary regarding concerns that unrest in the United States will spread to the UK.

 

(Item: CAB 24/89/89 Unrest Amongst The Negroes 7^th October 1919)

 

The League for Democracy in the US is composed of negro officers and enlisted men who served in France during the war, the Home Secretary reports. It is an “organisation dedicated to the Negro cause”. A chilling appendix to the document details the names of agitators, including Marcus Garvey.

 

The report goes on to detail unrest in the British Colonies, with particular reference to disturbances in British Honduras and Jamaica. Rioting is rife with discharged coloured soldiers and sailors: “Their slogan is “Kill the Whites”. This counterblast to the riots in Cardiff and Liverpool is a powerful one. The anxiety is spreading.

 

Immersed as I am in this narrative as it unfolds in the National Archive, I am pulled up short by the process of uncovering such stories. These (his)stories won’t be found with search terms such as “Black Sailors” or “Commonwealth Soldiers”. They are cloaked under search terms that unsettle me. Search terms that this keyboard does not know. Search terms that I wouldn’t think to try because they are not part of my vocabulary.

 

Negro.

 

Coloured.

 

Perhaps it’s a simple, obvious thing – we need to use the vocabulary of the time – but I don’t like it. In the very activity of researching, I am confronted by the very core of this project – difficult histories, national identity and empirical past. I am implicated. I have to go back to go forward.

 

Helen Bendon Senior Lecturer, Film.

So far during this project, we have been on numerous trips to gather more research for our outputs about the hidden heroes of the Middlesex Regiment from the First World War. It is a fascinating experience, having the chance to uncover the identities, photographs and experiences of soldiers who were beforehand unknown and unrecognised, and being able to finally tell their stories.

 

National Army Museum, Stevenage

Our first trip was to the National Army Museum in Stevenage, where we looked through archives of photographs and newspaper articles for likely Commonwealth soldiers. The artefacts I examined were various photographs of soldiers, including a whole album with 62 photos. These featured soldiers involved in various military events such as during street parades, military funerals, trophy ceremonies and formal photographs. Although the photos had become a little faded and discoloured with age, it was fascinating seeing the soldiers visually brought to life.

 

The National Archives, Kew

More recently we went to The National Archives in Kew, to find some more information about Middlesex and British West Indies Regiment soldiers to include in our projects. We had to take precautions while using the artefacts we used for research, including using foam blocks to support books and weights to hold open pages to preserve them.

The work was very independent, searching for what you wanted, collecting and reading through it, taking photos using the camera facilities and returning the records all yourself. Both the records I looked at were heavy books consisting of a multitude of documents about certain issues at the time.

The first piece of research I read was “African seamen repatriated to W. Indies”, about whether these seamen should be paid because they “must have misled authorities, in regards to their nationalities”. There were 3 from Sierra Leone – Henry William, Samuel Nichol, Thomas William; 1 from Gold Coast – Joseph Johnson; and 4 from Nigeria – Frank Smith, David Hunter, James Lilly, Joseph Nichol.

In the end it was agreed that 4/- (shillings) should be paid to them up until the day of their embarkation. It was disheartening to read that they did not want these soldiers because of their nationality, although there was a positive outcome through it being agreed that they were still be paid for their services.

The second piece of research was about “West Indian Negroes in British Regiments”, which “called attention to and suggests they should be demobilised at once”. It consisted of a collection of documents with discussions about the returning of these soldiers to the West Indies, which I found a little harrowing to read. There was a greatly negative exchange about the soldiers in these documents because of their origins, including angry criticism of the man who recruited them in the first place.

However the third piece of research I read was refreshingly more positive, about “Grants to returned soldiers of British West Indies Regiment” which consisted of documents about the payment of discharged soldiers from the British West Indies Regiment who had served in the Antigua Contingent. They were given a choice between a free grant of 5 acres of Crown Land and a grant of £5 in cash, and additionally passports were issued free of charge to men who wished to emigrate. This was an uplifting change to the previous research I had read, with these Antigua Contingent soldiers being greatly rewarded for their service in the British West Indies Regiment.

It was great to experience being able to access some of the many important documents and artefacts stored there, conducting first-hand research and finding detailed research and documents to enhance our projects. What with the reading room being nearly silent and many pages of research to read through, it was easy to lose myself in these written words from the First World War.

So off we went to the National Archive in Kew; a gloriously sunny but frosty Friday morning in December. 10 heads are better than one.  The first time in an archive for most of us – nearly all undergraduates – under the firm and enthusiastic guidance of Simon from Eastside Community Heritage.  But ten miners will always produce more gems than one!

It’s many years since I had to work independently in an archive for something other than a piece of journalism and I was reminded of the thrill of discovery I first experienced many years ago whilst doing my own undergraduate dissertation (1983).

Looking for a particular reference – in my case CAB 65/28/10 – can be daunting working out the mechanics of the new digital databases.  Then the 40-minute wait to receive the document in person or if you are lucky viewing it online.

I always remember the smell of the original documents a sort of musty remnant from the past.  But then there is the script and the attention to detail in the minutes of the meetings that were held in the distant yonder.  I often wondered if the people who wrote them in some colonial outpost in Barbados or India – or wherever else in an Empire on which the sun never set – realised they would be revealing their thoughts and feelings to be judged by future generations.

Back to CAB 65/28/10.  Almost certainly these people in this meeting did have an eye on posterity. It was a meeting of the War Cabinet in October 1942 in the Prime Minister’s rooms in the House of Commons.  Amongst the men present (it was only men in those days) were Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Sir Stafford Cripps, Oliver Littleton and Ernest Bevin; giants from a previous age whose reputations were still being forged. A gathering of powerful men at the heart of an Empire on which the sun had truly not set in a century, to consider issues of great importance during the long bitter fight against Nazism.

On this day though they are to consider a memo – remember this is a meeting of the most powerful people in the land – from the Secretary of State for War on how army personnel should be educated about what attitudes to adopt towards “coloured” troops serving in the US Army when they come into contact with the English.

By our standards this seems absurd.  But then we are eavesdropping on a conversation in another time where segregation was rife in the US and the British were still ambivalent towards their “coloured” imperial subjects.  Such another world is being revealed, the sources of residual modern tensions.

But even then the world was not straightforwardly black and white.  In a discussion of the “Notes on Relations with Coloured Troops” it was obvious that the Secretary of State for the Colonies was less than happy at the guidance being proposed for the officers of Southern Command.

Whilst they did not want to tread on the toes of their segregationist cousins in America and the way they handled their troops, Stafford Cripps advised “the Americans should recognise that we had a different problem as regards our coloured people and that a modus vivid between the two point of view should be found.”  In short the US Army should not be stopped from segregating their own troops but “they must not expect authorities, civil or military, to assist them in enforcing a policy of segregation.”  So black American soldiers were allowed to fraternise with white women in England (although we know from the record that this was often frowned upon).

But there is more profound argument in this room and in those times.  One Minister Clement Attlee expresses his deep unease at the proposal that “it was deeply desirable for the people of this country (that they) should avoid becoming too friendly with coloured American troops”.

Although formally expressed you can see Attlee’s discomfort with this kind of racism. He himself doesn’t use the word but said “he thought this involved some departure from the attitude hitherto adopted towards coloured British subjects who came to this country and that there is a risk of creating an atmosphere which would give offence to the coloured people now in this country and lead to them becoming a focus of discontent when they returned to their homes in the Colonies”.  Wow!

The rumblings and rioting of the freedom fighters, Independistas and anti-colonial agitators was clearly leaving its mark.  A creeping anxiety in Old England, that Empire was negotiated and not to be taken for granted.  Lets not forget it all began to unravel with 6 years as India gained independence and the Imperial pack of cards collapsed.   The “natives” were revolting against the Mother Country and were making their impact in the highest offices of state.

Of course this would have been well hidden and disguised at the time.

But CAB 65/28/10 reveals how much can be learned from such a small conversation more than seventy years ago in a small room overlooking the River Thames.  A window on our past that reveals the connection between those from the Commonwealth who made their presence felt both then and now.

There is more to come but this was an epic start in CAB 65/28/10. Mine was just one head.  There are others to share their interpretation of this Friday gander through the National archives. What we can learn from our combined historical endeavours we will share with others.

 Professor Kurt Barling December 14^th 2014

 

Another bright and early start, you can tell this blog is about the British as we keep on starting it off talking about the weather!

Today we travelled out to Kew Gardens to access the extensive collection of files at the National Archives. The records go as far back as to feature the very first Doomsday Book in the late 13th-century! You can read more about that (here) if you like.

We however, are only interested in one specific period of time, that being the First World War.

After registration, a mandatory process as we were to be handling historical and valuable papers, we began to search for documents that might be of interest of us. By using the National Archives’ search engine ‘Discovery’, we managed to find several documents, which we then put in a request to take a closer look at. If you’ve never visited the National Archives, the way it works, is you have to order/request the object that you are interested in and it will be sent up to you within 40 minutes; a bit like a restaurant! The objects available to view in the archive can vary from something as slight as a piece of paper or single photograph, to massive volumes as large as a telephone directory.

All of us broke off into smaller groups to peruse our respective papers. I was personally interested in the widows’ pension regarding coloured soldiers and a correspondence between the Colonial Office concerning expatriate matters of coloured seamen.

The first item, was a letter petitioning the rights of the wives of coloured soldiers in the West Indies. The document itself was hard to discern due to the age of the document and the irregular handwriting it contained; but to give you a general idea, the two images you see below are two letters. One is a request to draw the attention of the Army Council to the exclusion of pensions to the widows of coloured soldiers; and the second is the response.

 

The general gist of the documents is that the issue is of some relevance, yet not of urgent importance, the authors do not come across as particularly concerned.

The second group documents that I came across, involved issues regarding ‘coloured’ seamen. The first document was a letter from an individual appealing to the Colonial Office, to deport a certain coloured seaman. The views of the author were rather strong. He asked for the deportation of an individual who had arrived in London without official papers, and according to him, shouldn’t be trusted. He then lists the man’s various faults, stating how he had supposedly embezzled the empire’s money and should be removed right away.

The second set of letters detailed a situation that involved a group of seamen who were shipped to the West Indies by mistake. The exchange of letters were concerned with whether or not these seamen were to be paid during the time it took to get them back. The correspondence sought to find a way to ship them back that would cause little or no cost to the empire. These two particular selections of documents caught my interest (especially the first collection), as coloured soldiers that were rejects of the colonial Office had no one else to turn to but a charity called The Coloured Men’s Institute founded by Kamal Chunchie, one of the ‘Hidden Heroes’ at the heart of this project. Although there is a possibility the two men never crossed paths, it is his predicament that Chunchie’s organisation had specialised in.

The others in the group looked at other items; take a look at our blog to see their views on their findings.

Subsequent to reviewing these files, I became aware of the choice of language used by the black servicemen when addressing the Colonial Office. Their manner was self-demeaning to say the least and it dismays me how it was an actual norm for non-white soldiers to talk to there so called betters in this undignified way; which reinforces the work me and my team are doing and how important it is that their stories are told.

After a quick lunch we went back upstairs and burrowed ourselves in the past once more.

If you have been following this blog you may remember previously from our visit to the National Army Museum, that we had managed to acquire a list of names by browsing their photographic library. Throughout the afternoon we entered their names in to the ‘Discovery’ search engine and we were able to pull up their medal certificates. From the information featured on the certificates we were able to obtain basic information such as dates of birth, and from there,  able to search for descendants via Ancestry.

I personally thought it had been a very productive day; we left the National Archives building with lots of new source material, pictures and copies of documents. We are all now very eager to begin piecing everything together, which you should expect to see on here very soon.

I hope this post has given you some insight into our experience, but for the full experience, I urge you to pay a visit to the National Archives yourselves.

I will be back at the beginning of the next year and  we at Hidden Heroes wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy New year!

 

Alex Man

Writer and Content manager for Heroes from the Empire.

 

Our destination: The National Army Museum, Stevenage

Our Mission: To uncover the hidden soldiers of the Middlesex regiment of World War I

Ok so what really happened wasn’t as action packed as that themed mission statement may imply, but it was in fact, equally as interesting!

Bright and early on the 24th, a group of us headed off to Stevenage to access the National Army Museum’s photo library. We were hoping to discover more soldiers to add to our project and hoped that by delving through their vast photographic archive we would be able to uncover more stories.

The National Army Museum is currently undertaking a redevelopment project called ‘Building for the Future’, so this meant that instead of visiting them in their custom headquarters in Chelsea, we all got cosy in a far less grand reading room in Stevenage. Armed with magnifying glasses, we began to scan old photographs.

As you are likely aware, we are looking for soldiers of ethnic minority backgrounds, so our task at that point was to simply examination the photographs in the archive and scope for any soldiers that appeared to be of an alternative heritage. The next step would then be to find out more information of the individual by tracing the picture to the regiment and battalion. I say simple, but it was far from it! It was the epitome of a needle in a haystack.

After several hours and many faces later, we struck gold!

We came across two pictures, one depicting the Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge’s Own) holding a black cat as their mascot. The second depicted a different battalion of the same regiment, but this time, with a black soldier: Drummer Roberts from Trinidad towering over his peers.

  The shocking language used to describe these soldiers in the captions attached to the photographs, perhaps indicates to the underlying socio-cultural attitudes that lead to these stories remaining hidden from a mainstream historical narrative.

During the afternoon we managed to collate a list of definite potential candidates, and a larger quantity of maybes. I say maybes because some soldiers’ appearance did look different from the sea of white faces, but it was hard to tell if their darker complexion was naturally dark, or if they were in fact simply covered in mud.

We managed to take a few documentary photos of our visit that might help give you a clearer image of what we were up to. Thanks goes out to Alistair and his team at the National Army Museum!

We remain optimistic! Our next trip will take us to the National Archives where we feel sure that we will be putting our new list of names to good use. We are also hoping to uncover even more soldiers and to discover their stories.This is where I sign out, and will check in again soon to report on our findings at the National Archives!

 

Alex Man

Writer and Content manager for Heroes from the Empire.