First World War: Commemorations

Baroness Young of Hornsey Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the contribution of people from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean to British efforts in the First World War is recognised in the forthcoming commemorations.

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

With the announcement of a significant programme of activities and commemorative events next year, more than £50 million of government funding being made available—and many arguments about the scale, nature and purpose of marking this anniversary—historians, other scholars, politicians, culture commentators and members of the general public have all joined the fray, making for a fascinating and lively debate.

Of course, commemorative events are nearly always contested and throw up all sorts of unexpected and, indeed, unintended consequences. In 2007, many of us were involved in commemorating the abolition of the slave trade on British ships and there was certainly plenty of controversy there. But reasoned, vigorous discussion is a healthy sign and I welcome the public debate that continues to develop about how we mark—or not—the triumphs and tragedies represented by and flowing from World War I.

In 2007, one of the key issues to arise was how the stereotyping to which many of us are subjected today springs from assumptions and misrepresentations embedded in British history centuries ago: we have been defined by stifling categories, with our histories in this country and elsewhere all but ignored.

In the 1980s, when I first conducted sessions with school students on historical figures of African descent from Roman times through to the Second World War, a young boy of Caribbean ancestry told me that we were making it up. If what we said was true, he argued, then why were there not books and television programmes on the subject? I am pleased to say that over the past 40 years, certainly in terms of scholarly works, there has emerged an ever-growing body of books and learned essays that continue to add to the sum of our knowledge about our presence and agency in British history. The Black and Asian Studies Association has been one of the key organisations in this regard, with innovative research and website materials by the Runnymede Trust most welcome too.

We should bear in mind that it was only as recently as 2002 that the tremendous effort of colonial troops from African, Asian and Caribbean countries was finally officially recognised with the creation of the memorials on Hyde Park Corner. I am delighted to take this opportunity to salute the diligence of my noble friends Lady Flather and Lord Bilimoria for their unstinting hard work on that project, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howells of St Davids, for contributing to debates and Questions and thus making sure that our place in history is not forgotten.

Although we have moved on from the 1980s, there is still so much ignorance. I have noticed recently how well educated, intellectually curious people react when I speak about the subject of our debate today. They are amazed and often want to know more, but even if they do not intend to follow up the matter, they usually say something like, “Why were we not taught about this at school?”. If we look for a moment at the scale, we must wonder why so little of this history is known. Some 1.5 million volunteers came forward from India and were in action on the Western Front within a month of the start of the war. India’s contribution was not confined to the army or to combat. The Royal Indian Marine and the Indian merchant services had equally crucial roles. From the African countries of Nigeria, Gambia, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya and what were then Rhodesia, Nyasaland and the Gold Coast came the 55,000 men who served in combat and the many hundreds of thousands more who served as carriers and auxiliary troops.

From the Caribbean islands came vocal and financial support for Britain’s war effort. Ambulances, maintenance costs and approximately £2 million—£60 million in today’s money—were given to the British Government. More than 15,500 men of the British West Indies Regiment served with the Allied Forces. We should remember that it is not just in terms of military and support services that sacrifices were made. Food and other forms of production were disrupted in those countries and the safety and security of their populations were jeopardised.

Thanks to their commitment to education in the broadest sense, museums, other cultural organisations and the voluntary sector are expert at examining these less well known histories through a variety of analytical prisms. For example, the Imperial War Museum is conducting a research project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council entitled “Whose Remembrance?”, which will investigate how local communities are addressing the colonial experience during the two world wars.

As a commissioner with English Heritage, I am pleased to say that English Heritage has grant-aided the repair of the grade 2 listed Muslim Burial Ground at Woking, where Indian troops who died in the Indian Military Hospital at the Brighton Pavilion were laid to rest. This complements the grade 2 listed Chattri memorial in Brighton, erected where Hindu and Sikh soldiers who died in the war hospital there were cremated. A further designated memorial to Indian troops is at Barton on Sea in the New Forest, where a grade 2 listed obelisk commemorates a convalescent depot for Indian troops. English Heritage has also funded investigative work on the SS “Mendi”, the troopship carrying more than 800 members of the South African Native Labour Corps that sank off the Isle of Wight in 1917 with the loss of more than 600 lives. A meeting of interested parties has recently been convened to discuss ways in which the “Mendi” dead might be remembered and the site appropriately managed. Research is also ongoing at Orford Ness in Suffolk regarding the sea defences constructed there by a Chinese labour battalion; again, it is worth noting that most of the 140,000 men who came from China to work for the French and British actually did so on the Western Front.

Now here is the difficult part: there are plenty of challenges as well as opportunities. Simply pointing out how heroic the combatants from what were then British colonies were is not, on its own, enough. To gloss over the racism and discrimination that manifested itself in a variety of ways, for example in the division of labour and the allocation of resources for fighting, would be to hide the truth. Although racism still permeates our society and there is still much work to do on this issue, to say that nothing has changed would equally be to deny reality. Relevant here is that the Armed Forces have been striving for many years to demonstrate in practical terms their positive approach to equality of opportunity and diversity in their institutions.

I believe that most, if not all, noble Lords present here today understand the need to ensure that our citizens, particularly the younger ones, from every cultural and ethnic background have a firm grasp of the complex ways in which our heritage and histories are interwoven. A sense of belonging must be predicated on the keen sense of how we and our ancestors have all contributed to the making of contemporary Britain.

I have noted that a number of government responses to questions about the commemorations have emphasised the educational dimension. There are aspects of the programme that suggest some exciting opportunities to engage young people with the human stories behind the historical headlines, which I welcome. There are several references to activities in partnership with a range of Commonwealth countries and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which I again welcome. However, while the concept of the Commonwealth may make sense to us here, that is not necessarily the case for many young people. I thank the Minister for our helpful conversation earlier this week. Will he tell us how the Government intend to ensure that the material that they will be generating resonates in a profound way, encouraging analysis, critique and, yes, perhaps some uncomfortable conversations with young people—especially, but not exclusively, those of African, Asian and Caribbean descent? Of course, the most obvious way of effecting this would be in some way to recognise this material in the national curriculum.

We are not talking here about what some insist on calling “political correctness”, a term which is particularly unhelpful in this context but which was used recently to justify the removal of Mary Seacole from the national curriculum. After a petition signed by more than 35,000 people, she was restored to her rightful place. I hope that sequence of events was a clear demonstration of the importance of this issue of the recognition of the role in British history played by African, Asian and Caribbean people.

Finally, one Indian soldier, doubting that he would survive the conflict, consoled himself in his writing with the thought that his name would be,

“written in letters of gold and inscribed in the list of the brave”.

I hope that, whether that man survived or not, at least symbolically we will acknowledge him and all those women and men from across the world who played their part in that most difficult, desperate and often tragic theatre of war.