![]() ![]() Yet on the other hand, it was impossible to ignore the fact that these wartime commemorations were also playing out against a wider backdrop in which the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement had sparked intense anti-racist protests during the summer of 2020.Īs I have been working on my current investigation of medicine and the Royal Navy (RN) between 1939-1945, I wondered how and where constructions of ‘race’ and the racialised body of the sailor fitted into the medical encounter in the war at sea. On the one hand, VE Day and VJ Day commemorations paid long-overdue tribute to wartime British domestic and imperial efforts as a multiracial, multi-ethnic enterprise. These questions often returned to me throughout 2020’s vivid kaleidoscope of events relating to the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two. ‘What about Britons who were denied opportunities to serve in the British armed forces because of their ethnic heritage or skin colour during the Second World War? Who were they, and what were their stories and experiences?’ ![]() In the first post in our new “Writing Race” blog series, Dr Frances Houghton – one of the authors shortlisted for our 2020 Whitfield Book Prize – introduces her research, and her attempts to find out more. This is particularly true of the Royal Navy. Much is still unknown about the experiences of Britons of colour in the wartime British armed services, or of those who wanted to enlist but were unable to put on uniform because of racial discrimination. ![]()
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