Fighting Racism: Black Soldiers and Workers in Britain during the Second World War

Abstract

The Second World War led to a substantial increase in the number of black people living and working in Britain. Existing black British communities were bolstered in this period by the arrival of war volunteer workers from the Empire, who came to serve Britain in a variety of military and civilian roles, as well as by the arrival of 130,000 black GIs in the US army's invasion force. This article considers the reception that these communities received from the British government and the British general public, questioning the extent to which racial ideas of white difference and superiority continued to shape white British reactions to black workers and soldiers. Using a variety of sources, including government papers and Mass Observation reports, this article interrogates the roots of changing dynamics of racial thought in wartime Britain, highlighting in particular the extent to which fears of racial mixing continued to undermine white responses to growing black British communities.