This is is the third part of an going series on the history of black Bermudians in the military.

Bermuda on the whole treated her First World War veterans well and for the rest of their lives, blacks were not wanting for adulation amongst their own people. They were singled out as heroes as were white Bermudians.

By contrast, West Indian servicemen returning home were disillusioned. In fact, as the war drew to a close some soldiers stationed in Italy mutinied because of the appalling racism they were experiencing at the hands of those whose war they were fighting. Their bitterness helped fuel a period of unrest that wracked the West Indies immediately after the war.

In Trinidad, war veterans set up the Returned Soldiers and Sailors Council and Organisation in 1919. That same year saw a wave of strikes in Trinidad. Likewise Jamaica, British Honduras, Grenada and other parts of the British Caribbean were also hit by strikes. Specifically, the West Indies in the 1920s was seething with discontent and political upheavals which escalated in the decade of the 1930s. An estimated 46 people were killed, 429 injured and thousands arrested during those upheavals.

So violent was the unrest which swept the region, and so paranoid were the governments there that every British Governor called for warships, marines and aeroplanes.

It is important to note here the extent to which Bermuda was a key factor in the colonial affairs of the West Indies. Historians noted "the Caribbean was the laboratory in which the ideology of racism was concocted".

That ideology was enforced by the Royal Navy which was headquartered in Bermuda. The Chief enforcer therefore was the Commander-in-Chief of the Bermuda West Indies Fleet who flew his flag from Admiralty House in Pembroke West, and whose warships were based at the Naval Dockyard at Ireland.

From time immemorial Bermudians were indoctrinated by the claim of the colonialists, that they were not ideologically or otherwise part of the Caribbean, and that blacks were different from their cousins there. But the fact is that Bermuda had a pivotal role in maintaining Britain's colonialist policies in the West Indies.

History books are larded with references to the Bermudian factor; how cruisers and destroyers were dispatched from Bermuda to suppress or otherwise deal with oil workers in Trinidad, portworkers in Jamaica and sugarcane workers in other islands on strike for higher wages and better working and living conditions.

Likewise in the United States tens of thousands of Blacks encouraged by First World War propaganda about making the world safe for democracy, upon returning from the battlefields overseas, had their dreams tarnished by events of the immediate postwar periodo There had been riots directed against blacks during and after the war, with more than 25 recorded in the last half of 1919. Most serious was the Chicago riot of July of that year resulting in 38 blacks and whites killed, over 520 injured and 1,000 families homeless. Black soldiers still in uniform were lynched, and strife and racial tensions mounted through discrimination in employment and substandard living conditions in the ghettos.

The emotional effects of those events spilled over to the Caribbean and Bermuda. Also in that time-frame Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey's New Yorkbased movement was gaining momentum. Garvey encouraged pride of colour and heritage as well as political and economic self-determination.

His call for racial solidarity did not develop the militancy among blacks in Bermuda as elsewhere. But whites in Bermuda were put on their guard by his theories of Pan Africanism and warnings that the world ought to know that whites could not keep 400 million blacks down for ever,

As militant new leaders emerged in the region, potential troublemakers in Bermuda were kept under close surveillance and were effectively neutralised. Chief among them being Dr. Edgar Fitzgerald Gordon. The Trinidadian-born, Edinburgh University trained physician was a contemporary of labour leaders in the Caribbean; Others included David Tucker, a Howard University and Oxford University scholar who qualified as a lawyer at Middle Temple. He was the Editor of the black newspaper The Bermuda Recorder. And Dr. E.A. Cann, an articulate Howard University trained physician.

Evidence of the intelligence network that was in place in the region was revealed in a secret cable from the Governor of Bermuda to the Governor of The Leeward Islands dated 15th May 1942:

"Your telegram of 7th May from subsided Antigua on W.G. Brown, address Box 71 St. John's Antigua. Resident of Bermuda. Dangerous agitator and possible subversive." (Brown was a young black entrepreneur who developed a chain of grocery stores in Bermuda which posed a problem for the white establishment. He traveled to the W.I. to make his own wholesale purchases).

Between the two world wars, a lot of water had gone under the proverbial bridge to affect the thinking of the imperial overlords in Britain and the white rulers in Bermuda as well as the West Indies. Their judgment was warped by their own racism and fear of what later became known as black power.

When the Second World War broke out in September, 1939 there was a complete reversal of the attitude of the Colonial Authorities in Britain and the powers-that-be in Bermuda towards the engagement of black Bermudians in particular as well as a blacks in the Caribbean and other parts of the empire compared to the First World War.

Simply put, black Bermudians were just as eager to go overseas as was the case 25 years earlier, but they had no way of knowing that they were not wanted because of the pervasive fear of rising black power. Neither could the blacks have been fully aware of the downright conspiracies and hypocritical intrigues undertaken in Bermuda and London to circumvent and thwart them, this time around.

Marika Sherwood in his book –"Many Struggles" reveals that as early as November 10, 1939 the British Foreign Office had advised its Consular Offices that 'only offers of service from white British subjects should be considered.' And he quotes from Colonial Office telegrams marked "Secret" sent to all Colonial Governors advising them that "it is not desirable that non-European British subjects should come here for enlistment." And on January 6, 1940 the Colonial Office reassured the Cabinet that the colour bar was firmly in place: "Colonial Governments have already been informed that it is not desired that non-European British should come here for enlistment."

It must be borne in mind that in the First World War, the two contingents of Black BMAs sent to the front comprised twice as many volunteers making up the white BVRCs. And additionally the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London was so pleased at the high assessment given the performance of the Bermudians under fire at the warfront, that he actually requested more BMAs; and that the only reason why the Governor of Bermuda did not send more was, as he stated "because of labour shortages in the Island."

Both the BMA and the BVRC were embodied at the start of the Second World War. The Militia was up to full strength. But it was a matter of considerable embarrassment that the white BVRC was not. The depth of that embarrassment on the part of race conscious leaders such as House of Assembly Speaker Reginald Conyers is evidenced in the tone of the advertising campaign he spearheaded for white volunteers.

Speaker Conyers placed this notice in The Royal Gazette and Colonist Daily dated Saturday, September 16, 1939:

"NOTICE To the Young White Men of Bermuda between the ages of 18 and 24. The BVRC is still under strength. There are plenty young men in the Colony between the ages above mentioned who, if they enlist, would bring the Corps up to full strength. Are you going to allow it to be said that this could not be done WITHOUT CONSCRIPTION?

The Committee feel that you young men will not permit such a stigma to come upon this ancient and loyal Colony. COME FORWARD. The Committee sits daily (including Sunday) at the Hamilton Hotel until the 19th instant. From 12 noon to 1.00 p.m. From 8.00 p.m. to 11.00 p.m. On Monday the 19th the Committee will also sit between the hours of 4.00 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.

Let us prove that we are a Volunteer and not a conscript Colony, and remember Monday the 19th is the last day.

(Signed) J. REGINALD CONYERS, Chairman of the Committee Appointed to Consider Conscription."

Two days later, Conyers in the Royal Gazette of September 18, published what he called a FINAL NOTICE to the young white men of Bermuda between the ages of 18 and 24 years, stating: "There are at least 80 of you who up to last night had not reported. Do you wish it to be known to the Committee and perhaps to the public that you failed to answer your country's call in this national emergency?

The Final Notice went on to state that not only would the Committee be sitting at the previously advertised place and time, but the hours had been extended into the night by five hours. It added:

"If any of you are considering going overseas, the Committee has been informed that if you join the BVRC no obstacles will be put in your way to stop you.

"The Committee believe your chances of going overseas are greater by joining now. "

It is vitally important to take note of Speaker Conyers' categorical assurance to the recalcitrant young white Bermudians that if they were desirous of going overseas for service in the war no obstacles would be put in their way. It is noteworthy because "obstacles" was the operative word when it came to the overseas aspirations of young Bermudian blacks, and Conyers was fully aware of racist policy militating against "non-European colonial subjects".

Despite the fact that the loyalty of blacks towards the national emergency was demonstrably clear, with the BMAs running over with volunteers, malicious rumours began circulating in the community about the mood of the black civilian populace, and about so-called disturbances. That was revealed in the pages of a secret Diary on the War kept by the Colonial Secretary of Bermuda accessed by this writer.

In consequence of ill-founded In consequence of ill-founded rumours of impending disturbances among the coloured population, the Acting Governor had several meetings with the coloured leaders. On all these occasions, the idea that there could be disloyalty in their community was warmly repudiated; and at a meeting on September 21, Mr. Crawford (later Hon. R.C. Crawford), senior coloured member of the House of Assembly, stated that "he had not heard one person regret he belonged to the British Empire".

Next week: Bermudians at war