View resource
Did you know that when WW1 began, there were churches in the British West Indies with racially segregated seating; or that the vast majority of their populations were non-Whites – Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people – excluded to the edges of society; kept in extreme poverty without the right to vote? And did you know by the end of WW1 a new Black pride and civil rights struggle had ignited the British Caribbean? This is the story of that awakening: an incredible shift from loyal volunteers for King and Empire in 1914, to Black pride and mutiny by the war’s end. MUTINY is unique among the countless documentaries and films about the First World War. It is the only time WW1’s Black British veterans have been allowed to tell their own story. By doing so they reveal a history that was suppressed, ignored and forgotten for 80 years – a landmark that shaped the parents of the Windrush Generation.
- Inspiring extraordinary eyewitness accounts of Black WW1 veterans reveal a fight for racial justice in a world at war.
- Their testimonies are supported by evidence of secret documents and richly illustrated by a stunning collection of vintage photographs
- Black WW1 veterans Eugent Clark, Clifford Powell and Gershom Browne tell their incredible story – the story of the British West Indies Regiment.
All hidden history projects rely on specialist research to find and bring together the sources that enable their stories to come to life. This task becomes even more difficult when dealing with hidden stories of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) experiences: sources are invariably scattered in public and private collections; sometime wrongly described; sometimes not catalogued at all…
For MUTINY (2018 reversion), we traced and sifted through thousands of images – to create a stunning collection that supports and gives context to our unique eyewitness accounts: evoking their Caribbean backgrounds, the BWIR, and the First World War. We would like to take this opportunity to once again thank all of those in Britain and around the world who helped us in this colossal task. The images that feature in this information pack are available to download below:
Download here
