Re-presenting War Stories: a reflection on the Tapestry of Black Britons

As part of Black History Month, Bristol Beacon hosted the Tapestry of Black Britons exhibition by Paula Ogun Hector. It featured multiple tapestries, including a striking World War II work, newly embroidered by the Royal School of Needlework with the support of the Company of Gold & Silver Wyre Drawers.

As Paula says of the exhibition: “Tapestry of Black Britons is designed to foster a deeper understanding of our collective past and present. The World War II design honours the Black contribution, marking this year’s 80th anniversary of VE and VJ Day; while the Yoruba creation story connects us all to powerful mythology.”

As part of the event, writer, historian and poet Dr Edson Burton MBE gave an address to the relatives of some of those depicted in the World War II tapestry, which he has kindly adapted here as a reflection on the occasion of the Tapestry being displayed and for this Remembrance Day.

Some of my most cherished father son memories are of us watching war movies on Saturday afternoons. Ideas of manly discipline, heroism and in particular identification with the Mother Country explain I think why Dad was drawn to the genre. I followed suit, in my own way. My favorite poets were Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. I read All Quiet on the Western Front when I was thirteen. As a child I barely questioned the absence of Black representation in the public rituals of Remembrance or in pop culture. Identifying entirely with the White hero – John Wayne, James Cagney, Robert Eli – was the norm for my father and for my own generation.

I was in many ways as duped as my forebears. As colonial subjects they were brought up to witness carefully orchestrated displays of White power and thus to internalise the myth of White supremacy. Maintaining this myth was vital to the running of The Empire.

War created a conundrum for Britain and other European nations. How could they draw upon colonial resources including personnel and still maintain the myth of invincibility. The answer in World War I was to deny West Indian regiments access to the Front. This could not be maintained in World II without exposing the lie of equality that governed the Empire. Far simpler, it seems, to have colonial troops serve but to underplay if not entirely erase their efforts in the myth-making that followed. It is then no wonder as a child of the Windrush I did not see these epoch defining wars as intimately related to my own.

Times have changed. Paula Ogun Hector’s Tapestry of Black Britons, recently exhibited at Bristol Beacon, celebrates the role of Black service personnel. The tapestry is part of a growing body of research and creative endeavors revising our understanding of the Commonwealth’s contributions to both World Wars. But the interest in Britain’s wider War story is sporadic and uneven. Publications, exhibitions and broadcast media emerge and are quickly forgotten except among a niche specialist circle. We are far more likely to encounter the persistent and pervasive beige celebration, Vera Lynn and Churchillism. Furthermore, in our currently polarised political climate attempts to broaden the narratives of war have been decried by ill-informed if not cynical pundits as ‘wokism’. Between charges of ‘wokism’ and our culture of celebration, efforts to transform our representation of war time resistance are nullified. The result is to lose the opportunity to rethink our national identity. World War II is remembered as a glory moment in Britain’s history, one of national unity. If we erase or subdue the story of Black and Asian service personnel, we maintain a myth of a White hermetically sealed nation looking and longing for its monocultural past. Furthermore, we reinscribe a racial order in which only White men are capable of fully attaining heroic status.

I hope one day another Edson will know, without having to venture into an archive, that others who look like him also helped to liberate this land and keep it free.

Dr Edson Burton MBE