A US serviceman dancing with a girl at Frisco’s International Club, Piccadilly, London.
The League of Coloured Peoples
The mixed-race babies of the Second World War
1945
There is a many a wartime myth about dashing American men wooing British women with stockings and taking them to jitterbug jives to dance the night away, but what was the reality?
In the Second World War there certainly was an influx of American soldiers on British soil, but it wasn’t all fun. Ministry of Heath correspondence contains a particularly shocking letter from the campaigning organisation the League of Coloured Peoples, one of the most active organisations on race relations in this period. The letter notes that the conditions of war are leading to a ‘large number of unwanted babies’, specifically children of African American descent.
The letter claims that, while the white children seem to be dealt with, the authorities are either ‘unable or unwilling’ to handle the babies of African American parentage. The League of Coloured People claimed a de facto colour bar was in place, affecting the way that mixed-race babies were being treated.
The League of Coloured Peoples, led and founded by Dr Harold Moody, continued to campaign against the colour bar as one of its central issues. The colour bar was a social system in which black people were denied the same rights as white people, affecting job opportunities or even whether people would be served in certain premises. It was never enforced by law in Britain, but racial discrimination was often a de facto reality. At different times this affected multiple areas of public life, with the League protesting the existence of colour bars in British hotels in 1932, and correspondence from all over Africa and the West Indies.
These letters exist in a file concerning conference proceedings about supporting children born illegitimately as a result of the Second World War. At this conference, the children of white women and black men were considered in particular, as there were concerns as to whether these children or their mothers would be discriminated against because of the colour of the children’s skin. However, reports at the conference showed that this was not necessarily the case.
This was not a single-organisation issue; many other organisations were also campaigning for change. The conference was attended by the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child, the League of Coloured Peoples and other representatives from around the country. They discussed the scale of the problem in different areas and what was to be done in the best interests of the children, the mothers and the country.
The Second World War was already a time of particular awareness of racial discrimination for the League; agitation peaked again around the limits initially imposed on black men to obtain commissions to serve in the Second World War. The campaign was led through both a deputation and correspondence with the Colonial Office.
The League worked closely with the government to push for progress, however one Home Office file notes that ‘Dr Moody, and that is the League, have no extreme views – far from it’. Their methods of campaigning were different from other pressure groups, having a reputation as a moderate Christian organisation. Indeed, despite the discrimination League members faced in Britain, the letter closes by proclaiming they are writing ‘both as coloured people and as citizens of a country we love and whose good name we desire to see enriched’.
A table included alongside this letter detailed the ‘number of illegitimate children born in this country whose fathers are alleged to be coloured American soldiers’, organised by county. It includes the breakdown by married and unmarried mothers, with the highest figure in Devon with 83 babies – showing the impact of change as a result of the war all over the country.
