Struggle for Britishness British National Identity and the Remembrance of Colonial Soldiers During the World War One Centenary

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM Struggle for Britishness British National Identity and the Remembrance of Colonial Soldiers During the World War One Centenary Figure 1 “One of the Lion’s Cubs”. A West Indian soldier poses with one of the lion statues at Trafalgar Square, London. Robin Hendriks Studentnr.: 5879515 Masterscriptie Geschiedenis 5 Juli 2017 Begeleider: Paul Knevel 1 For Izzy Content Content _________________________________________________ 2 Introduction _________________________________________________ 3 Chapter One _________________________________________________ 8 Early commemoration _____________________________________ 8 Remembrance, identity, and heritage ______________________________ 12 Modern remembrance and national politics ________________________ 14 Remembrance and intranational politics ________________________ 21 Remembrance and the white Dominions ________________________ 22 Chapter Two ______________________________________________________ 24 Race and the British Empire in the early 20th century ____________ 24 Indian soldiers and laborers ____________________________________ 29 Remembrance __________________________________________ 33 West Indian soldiers and laborers ______________________________ 37 Remembrance __________________________________________ 43 Conclusion ________________________________________________ 44 Chapter Three ______________________________________________________ 46 Government intent ____________________________________ 46 British Broadcasting Company ______________________________ 48 British Library ________________________________________________ 52 Imperial War Museum ____________________________________ 54 National Army Museum ____________________________________ 56 Analysis ________________________________________________ 59 Conclusion ________________________________________________ 65 Chapter Four ______________________________________________________ 70 West Indian remembrance ____________________________________ 73 West India Committee ______________________________ 73 The Empire Needs Men ______________________________ 74 Black Poppy Rose ____________________________________ 76 Great War to Race Riots ______________________________ 78 Indian remembrance ____________________________________ 79 Commemoration in Wolverhampton ________________________ 79 Sikh Museum __________________________________________ 81 Empire, Faith & War ____________________________________ 82 Unknown & Untold ___________________________________ 85 Analysis _______________________________________________ 86 Conclusion _______________________________________________ 93 Conclusion _____________________________________________________ 96 Image sources _____________________________________________________ 105 Bibliography _____________________________________________________ 106 Abstract _____________________________________________________ 118 2 Introduction The First World War conjures up a series of well-known images: young men cheerfully signing up for the army to serve King and Country, muddy trenches filled with rats and disease, gas masks, a landscape torn apart by bombs, and millions of deaths. The United Kingdom alone lost 888,236 lives, essentially a generation of men.1 The impact this had still resonates a century later, and is reflected by continuous interest in the war from artists and novelists. War and death and lost youth, despair and loss of control, class and gender; the Great War provides a setting to explore basic human themes. But the war that plays out in the public imagination only shows a small part of historical reality. The setting is almost exclusively the Western Front, in Belgium and northern France. This is where the protagonists of the British war narrative, the English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish boys fought and died. Because of the inclusion of white Dominions such as Australis and Canada in the narrative, there may be a small excursion to Gallipoli, but the main action takes place just across the English Channel. But the Great War extended far beyond the Western Front, and far beyond Europe. Fighting happened in Turkey, in the Middle East, across the Atlantic Ocean and in the Caribbean Sea, on the Pacific Ocean, and across Africa. The colonial presence of the main European players meant that this truly was the First World War. Soldiers from across the British Empire served both in Asia and Africa and on the Western Front. The Indian subcontinent alone mobilized 1.4 million men during the war, one million of whom served abroad.2 English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish men weren’t the only ones to fight and die for King and Country. So did African, Indian, Punjabi, and Caribbean men, as well as Canadian First Nations. They, however, are not very present in the public imagination of the war, if at all.3 This raises the question of what is happening in public imagination and remembrance right now, during the Centenary of the war. In 2012 Prime Minister Cameron held a press conference at the Imperial War Museum and announced the launch of a national program of 1 Emma Hanna, “Contemporary Britain and the memory of the First World War”, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 113-114:1 (2014) 115 2 Lawrence Sondhaus, World War One. The Global Revolution (Cambridge 2001) 27. 3 A welcome change to traditional Hollywood representation of the First World War was provided by the superhero movie Wonder Women in 2017. Her team featured an Algerian man and a Native American, and the movie showed people of various ethnicities walking around London in military uniform, most prominently among them Sikhs. 3 remembrance. The government reserved 50 million pounds to fund special educational programs for schools and an upgrade of the facilities at the Imperial War Museum. The BBC alone has announced 2500 hours of programming on both television and radio, to be broadcast over the course of four years.4 Funding has also gone to institutions such as the British Library and to the development of school programs, but the bulk of the money was allocated to the Imperial War Museum. The World War One Centenary has been a politicized issue from its inception, and continues to spark criticism and praise. One of the main criticisms is that the remembrances center too much on the British experience of the war. After Jonathan Jones visited the Tower of London poppies in 2014 (see figure 2) he wrote the following in The Guardian: It is deeply disturbing that a hundred years on from 1914, we can only mark this terrible war as a national tragedy. Nationalism – the 19th-century invention of nations as an ideal, as romantic unions of blood and patriotism – caused the great war. What does it say about Britain in 2014 that we still narrowly remember our own dead and do not mourn the German or French or Russian victims? The crowds come to remember – but we should not be remembering only our own. It’s the inward-looking mood that lets Ukip thrive. But that’s probably an overinterpretation, because the spectacle of all these red poppies is emptier than that. In spite of the mention of blood in its title, this is a deeply aestheticised, prettified and toothless war memorial. It is all dignity and grace. There is fake nobility to it, and this seems to be what the crowds have come for – to be raised up into a shared reverence for those heroes turned frozen flowers. What a lie. The first world war was not noble. War is not noble. A meaningful mass memorial to this horror would not be dignified or pretty. It would be gory, vile and terrible to see. The moat of the Tower should be filled with barbed wire and bones. That would mean something.5 For Jones, the way Britain remembers the First World War says something about her identity, and about her position in the world. Remembering only the British dead ignores the enormous size of the tragedy and is dangerous, because it feeds modern nationalism. The poppies at the Tower were immensely popular, however, with an estimated 4 million visitors, and to say people disagree with Jones would be an understatement.6 4 Emma Hanna, “Contemporary Britain and the memory of the First World War”, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 113-114:1 (2014) 111. 5 Jonathan Jones, “The Tower of London poppies are fake, trite and inward-looking – a Ukip-style memorial”, The Guardian 28-10-2014 (25-11-2016) https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/oct/28/tower-of-london-poppies-ukip- remembrance-day. 6 Ibidem. 4 Figure 2 Sight to remember? … the sculpture Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London The Daily Mail’s Robert Hardman responded to Jones’s piece, writing: Many will be astonished that anyone could politicise this magnificent project, any more than someone might quibble with the Cenotaph. Some chapters in the history of this country are of such a different order and magnitude that they transcend the petty squabbles of Left and Right. The death of close to a million men and women in the Great War is one of them.7 Hardman, however, is also guilty of politicizing the discussion: “Why is it that the Left have such a loathing for home-grown patriotism while they are so keen to salute it elsewhere?”8 Both sides acknowledge the importance of remembering, and of what and in what way we remember. This thesis will look specifically into the remembrance culture around non-white soldiers who fought in the British Army. The central question is what the way colonial soldiers are remembered tells us about the position of minority migrant groups from the

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