Jamaican Flight Sergeant Vincent Bunting in conversation with the Station Commander at RAF Biggin Hill, January 1943. This photo is taken from Jan Safarik's website of air aces.

With the outbreak of the First World War, black labourers resident in Britain who had previously struggled to find work now found themselves in demand in munitions factories, as merchant seamen and as soldiers at the front. They were soon joined by men from Bermuda, the West Indies and other British colonies who had come to help in the war effort. By 1918 it is estimated there were 10,000 black people in Britain. After the armistice many found themselves to be unemployable as, once again, white workers were given priority in recruitment. The old racial tensions that had been set aside during the war reasserted themselves. This occasionally escalated into violence such as the riots in Liverpool in the spring and early summer of 1919 when white mobs set upon black people in the streets and wrecked their lodging houses. You can read more about the West Indies and World War One on the BBC History website.

During the Second World War, the first wave of Caribbeans to enlist were looking to join the prestigious Royal Air Force. The character Michael in Small Island was part of this elite. His mother tells Hortense:

They need men like my son. Men of courage and good breeding. There is to be a war over there. The Mother Country is calling men like my son to be heroes whose families will be proud of them.

Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips describe these early volunteers as 'the most talented, most energetic products of the Caribbean population, and intensely conscious of their worth' being largely of the professional or officer class. They were followed in the latter years of the war by a broad social spectrum of men recruited in their thousands for the invasion of Europe. Gilbert was among these and although he was proud to be called an airman, in practice he and his fellow volunteers tended to be given ground duties on the home front including sweeping up, driving and clerical work.

The following interview extracts from former Caribbean service men are taken from the BBC's Windrush - Arrivals website and the book Windrush: the irresistible rise of multi-racial Britain by Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips.

There were one or two shocks. I remember we came over by boat and we landed at Greenock, and we were met by an RAF transport which took us into Glasgow and then we came down by train to London... and my first shock, being I suppose what you would call a gently nurtured middle-class Trinidadian, was the language. I mean I'd never heard it, normally, that sort of language being used, and that was the first shock, which shocked all of us, you know. Of course you got used to this. Four letter words were the normal currency. There appeared to be only one adjective known to these people. Now of course it's widespread. Even children, even in Trinidad, speak that way now...

I never felt I'm going to aid the mother country. Some people did but I would say the majority of us didn't. Reasons differ, but certainly for myself, you know, you're young, this was a tremendous adventure and you were doing it for the right reasons. Maybe that, I suppose we'll always be romantics at heart, I think I probably still am, but no question about it, I think it was worthwhile. Ulric Cross from Trinidad who flew bombers on 80 missions for the RAF.

I as a young man volunteered to contribute and fight Nazi Germany and by the Grace of God we won. It was a close thing, for example during Dunkirk a lot of people don't realise that Britain stood alone for nearly two years against tyranny. We as part of the former British Empire volunteered and contributed and I am glad I did that.

We came on the ss Cuba, which was a freight boat. The main thing is at that time you had the German Wolf pack, the submarines and for every three ships left the American coast to Europe one is still underneath the sea. So we had to go far north, to Iceland, it was very cold and it was winter. So it was not a good journey. That was not important. What was important, was that we arrived safely. I was shocked. Although Britain was at war, we assumed that the head of the Empire would be flourishing. Of course we learnt about rations, but when you realise you could not go into the shop and buy a loaf, it hit you. Secondly the people did not have much things. The average English man in those days had one working suit, and a suit to dress to go to the pub on Sundays.

Things were very bad, about 15% of the British Isles were bombed, for example places like London Bridge, for a quarter of a mile, each side, it was flattened. Many people living in the country were not living in houses, they were living in huts in the woods. It was terrible, but they had the will to win, and that was good, and we became a part of it. Sam King from Jamaica who joined the RAF in 1944 and later became Mayor of Southwark.

At the early stages, we were very welcome, everywhere. We wore distinctive badges, you know, Jamaica, or Trinidad, as the case may be, and we were received, because there were to many - not just West Indians, you had Poles, you had France - and it was, "This is the gang come together to fight." We were very well received everywhere. And you are very, very impressed by those people who, every night, went down into those underground places, and slept there every night and came up with a joke on their mouth every day. It really impressed me, the fact that these are people who I'm fighting for - fighting with. Later on, towards the end of the war, it varied, you had a very different composition there. You had, instead of a few hundreds, you had thousands, and tens of thousands, coming from British Honduras, coming from other parts there. You had munition workers who are civilians, and you had the civilian forestry men, some forestry men from British Honduras and Belize. So with the multiplicity of them and people, I would say, of a low educational standard, things got quite different, they were not so well received, there were quite a few racial incidents took place. Dudley Thompson who joined the RAF in 1940 and became Jamaica's Minister of Foreign Affairs during the first Michael Manley administration.

The only West Indian I was likely to meet on a regular basis were those who were in the flying service. Otherwise there were very, very few blacks that I would see on the stations to which I went. There was just this one other, and we happened to be in the same crew. and we were the only two on the squadron at the time. He went on to join the RAF. When we all went out together he didn't used to go. He didn't. No. No. And you wonder why? Well, that's because he was as black as your trousers, and I think he was conscious of it. Nobody stopped him, he could do what he liked because we, as I say, we worked as a crew. But I think, now that it comes back, I didn't think about it at the time, but he must have been more conscious than I was of the problems that he could have. But nobody stopped him. He just stopped himself. William Natley from Jamaica who joined the RAF in 1943 and stayed on after the war to work in the Civil Service.