Barry Renfrew - Britains Black Regiments: Fighting for Empire and Equality

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First published 2020

This paperback edition first published 2022

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Barry Renfrew, 2020, 2022

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For Margaret

The arrival in Jamaica of a slave ship sometime in 1797 was unlikely to have attracted much attention from the merchants, clerks and labourers thronging the docks. Such vessels with their human cargoes from Africa for the islands plantations were a humdrum part of life in the thriving British colony. And yet this vessel had caused a political storm at the highest levels of power because it carried the first recruits for an army of slave soldiers. Clad in the red tunics of the British infantry, these captives would be formed into black regiments of the regular army to fight the kings enemies and guard his far-flung colonies. It was the start of one of the most remarkable and unlikely chapters in the long history of the British Empire.

In three global conflicts and countless campaigns between 1795 and 1945, tens of thousands of black West Indians fought and died for Britain and its empire. Their story is unique in that, unlike the Indian Army and other colonial forces, these formations were part of the British Army. For almost a century and a half, the West India Regiment, which began as a slave formation, was a regular regiment composed of West Indian and African troops. The British West Indies Regiment, which served in Europe, the Middle East and Africa during the First World War, and the 1st Caribbean Infantry, which served in Italy and the Middle East during the Second World War, were also part of the British Army rather than colonial formations. All were stepchild units, unloved and unwanted, an embarrassment to an army that was loath to number blacks in its ranks, and yet unable to do without them: their courage, endurance and loyalty were all too often repaid with prejudice, mistreatment and imperial ingratitude. Denied their due recognition in their lifetimes, the story of Britains black soldiers is all but forgotten.

For many years, the West Indies rather than India was the heart of the British Empire. Control of the Caribbean and its riches dominated British colonial policy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Britain fought a long series of wars against France and other European powers for mastery of the West Indies: islands encompassing a few square miles became some of the most fought over real estate in history.

Entire British armies were annihilated in these conflicts, not by enemy bullets and blades, but by disease and the climate. The militarys losses were often far greater than anything it endured on the battlefields of Europe, earning the West Indies a morbid reputation as the graveyard of the British Army. Despairing British generals concluded that the only way to avoid defeat was by raising regiments of black slaves who could withstand the local conditions far better than white troops.

Slave troops under white officers would help save British fortunes in the Napoleonic Wars, and later serve against the young United States in the War of 1812. After the abolition of slavery, the West India Regiment would serve in Africa and Latin America, battling slave raiders, Islamic war lords and even the French Army. West Indian soldiers were often the only regular British troops in the most remote and pestilential imperial outposts, places deemed lethal for white men. They were also the first black soldiers to win the Victoria Cross and other awards for exceptional bravery. And all the time, these men faced mounting discrimination and disdain as the British military immersed itself in pseudo-scientific notions of white supremacy. Many of their own officers despised and mistreated the West Indians, and yet they showed unswerving loyalty.

Patriotic fervour swept the British West Indies on the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Thousands of young black West Indians, proud to be citizens of the British Empire, clamoured to fight alongside volunteers from Australia, Canada and other colonies. Government and military officials were horrified at the prospect of thousands of black men descending on Britain to fight in a white mans war and rejected the offers of the West Indies to raise troops for the war effort.

A few black men who were determined to fight stowed away on ships bound for Britain with the idea of enlisting in the army, only to be arrested, mocked and jailed as criminals. At the same time, white West Indians, many of them the sons of wealthy planters and businessmen, were welcomed by the British Army with open arms.

It took the direct intervention of King George V to overcome the militarys opposition to enlisting his black West Indian subjects. While the High Command had to bow to royal pressure, the generals waged a rearguard action to use the West Indians as labourers. Men who had volunteered and trained to fight were instead used to carry artillery shells up to the front line or build roads, despite the armys dire need for infantry to replace its vast losses. West Indian troops suffered shocking mistreatment, with some forced to use unheated accommodation in winter or denied adequate medical care; their white officers complained that German prisoners were treated better.

Throughout the conflict, these men who had left their homes and families and travelled thousands of miles to serve the empire, endured official discrimination from the generals and insults and violence from some white troops. Resentment at the unfairness and humiliation finally exploded in 1919 in a mutiny that shook the British Army.

Even harsher treatment was meted out in the Second World War when West Indians once again volunteered in their droves to fight for Britain. The British Army did not want black troops in its ranks, especially West Indians, who saw themselves as British and expected to be treated the same as white troops. Not even Winston Churchill could shake the generals implacable resistance. The High Command found time during some of the darkest days of the war to wage a bureaucratic campaign against accepting black West Indian troops despite the armys chronic manpower shortage. It was only towards the end of the war that a single, token West Indian regiment arrived in Italy to be almost immediately sent packing. British commanders snorted at the idea of such men fighting in a war proclaimed as a crusade for democracy.