African and Afro-Caribbean Repatriation, 1919–1922: Black Voices, by Jane L.?Chapman

摘要

During the GreatWar the black population of Britain probably doubled in number to about 20,000. People of African origin and descent, mainly men, came tothe metropole to aid the war effort as workers, soldiers, and sailors in the mercantile marine. At the end of the war there was violent racial unrest in majorBritish ports. The press and popular sentiment often blamed black men for theviolence. The truth was frequently the reverse with white hostility to Blacksfueled by claims that they posed a threat to white women, jobs, and housing. Government-sponsored repatriation was a response to pressure from organized labor, employers, and officials who argued for the “public good,” an old liethat often works. The chief constable of Cardiff was outspoken in his condemnation of unemployed black men as “indolent” and immoral, demanding that“immediate steps to be taken for repatriation of all unemployed coloured seamen,” and that it was the responsibility of “Government to remove this menace”(pp. 14–15). Repatriation posed a dilemma for government in that many of theblack immigrants were British subjects legally entitled to remain in the country.