Billy Strachan
William Arthur Watkin Strachan was a British communist, civil rights activist, and pilot. He is most noted for his achievements as a bomber pilot with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, and for his reputation as a highly influential figure within Britain's black communities.
As a teenager in Jamaica at the outbreak of the Second World War, Strachan sold all his possessions and travelled alone to Britain to join the RAF. He survived 33 bombing operations against Nazi Germany during a time when the average life expectancy for an RAF crew was seven operations. He survived numerous life-threatening situations including being shot by the Nazis, a training crash, the Nazi bombing of the hotel he was staying at during his honeymoon, and a near mid-air collision with Lincoln Cathedral. Rising to the rank of flight lieutenant, an extremely rare achievement for a Black person in Britain during the 1940s, he was charged with investigating incidents of racism on RAF bases throughout Britain, boosting the morale of many Caribbean men in the British military.
Postwar, Strachan became a communist and a human rights activist, campaigning for universal suffrage and worker's rights, and promoting anti-colonial and anti-imperialist politics. He was a leading member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, an admirer of both the Cuban Revolution and the Viet Minh, and a committed communist activist for the rest of his life. His communist beliefs saw him become the victim of political persecution, once kidnapped by the United States for his communist politics, and being banned from legally travelling to multiple countries, including British Guiana, St Vincent, Grenada, Trinidad, and even his home country of Jamaica.
Between 1952 and 1956, Strachan published the newspaper Caribbean News, one of the first monthly Black newspapers in Britain. He was a mentor to many leading black civil rights activists in Britain, including Trevor Carter, Dorothy Kuya, Cleston Taylor, and Winston Pinder, and was a close personal friend of the president of Guyana, Cheddi Jagan. In later life, Strachan was called to the bar, becoming an expert on British laws regarding drink driving and adoption. He also helped found a charity that taught disabled people how to ride horses. He is recognised by numerous historians, activists, and academics as one of the most influential and respected black civil rights figures in British-Caribbean history, and a pioneer of black civil rights in Britain.
Early life (1921–1938)
Billy Strachan was born in Jamaica on 16 April 1921 to a family of former slaves and was raised within a predominantly white and wealthy area of Kingston. Strachan recalled in interviews during his later life that his family had all been admirers of the British monarchy and the British Empire, all standing up in salute whenever the national anthem "God Save the King" was played. As a young boy, Strachan once stole his father's car, before his father then reported him to the police. During his school days, Strachan played the saxophone in a band with his friends.Family background
Billy was raised alongside two sisters: Dorothy who migrated to Britain, and Allison who migrated to Canada. Cyril Strachan, Billy's father, was a black man who worked as a manager at a tobacco company. Although Cyril was far wealthier than most black Jamaicans during this time, he received lower wages in comparison to the white company directors, who worked far less intensely yet received enormous profits. Cyril admired the British Empire, believing that the British monarchy would protect them against the injustice of the colonial authorities in Jamaica. Despite not always being able to afford an elite lifestyle, Cyril would often attempt and fail to emulate the wealthy strata of Jamaican society.Orynthia, Billy Strachan's mother, was a descendant of enslaved African people. Billy's paternal grandfather was a wealthy Scottish man who fathered many illegitimate children with black women; however, he favoured Strachan's father Cyril, who never met his half-siblings.
Education
Strachan attended preparatory school between 1926 and 1931. From 1931 to 1938, he attended one of Jamaica's most prestigious yet racially divided schools, Wolmer's Boys' High School, in Kingston. His father often struggled to pay the school fees. Despite being described as a rebellious student, Strachan graduated.Strachan would later describe the wealth and racial divide in the school, noting that more than half the boys were white fee-paying students who arrived in expensive cars such as limousines, while the rest were black or mixed-race who arrived either on foot or by bicycle. Although Strachan believed there was no physical violence between the children, there was very little social mixing between different races of children outside school hours.
Early experience of racism
Before he was old enough to attend school, Billy would only socialise with white children as a result of his relatively privileged upbringing. He experienced a traumatic racist incident when at the age of 11 while playing with a white girl, he was forced to hide under a bed from her racist father. This incident had a profound effect on Billy's worldview, leading to a lifelong hatred of racism.Witnessing political unrest in Jamaica
In 1938, Jamaica experienced a wave of labour unrest as a result of the Great Depression; in January of the year, a strike by Kingston workers resulted in riots and 46 deaths, and further labour unrest occurred from May to June. These riots resulted in the British government dispatching a royal commission, which included British politician Stafford Cripps, to investigate the causes behind them. Strachan was taken by his father to listen to Cripps speak at a political meeting. During this meeting, Strachan witnessed the founding of the People's National Party.Military career (1939–1946)
Travelling to Britain
In 1939, after leaving school, Strachan gained employment as a civil service clerk in Jamaica. In response to the British declaration of war against Germany, he left his job in the civil service to join the British Royal Air Force. In order to fund his voyage to England, Strachan sold his bicycle and saxophone. Struggling to afford the trip to England, he became the only passenger on a merchant ship which had previously arrived in Jamaica full of wealthy passengers escaping the war in Europe for the safety of the Caribbean. Strachan risked the long and dangerous journey in U-boat-infested waters, spending his time smashing tin cans to provide metal for Britain's war effort against Germany. He was the only passenger on the entire ship during the approximately month-long trip, being given a first-class cabin and the honour of dining with the ship's captain.Joining the Royal Air Force
Strachan arrived in Bristol in March 1940, with little money and a suitcase containing only one spare change of clothes. Struggling to understand British culture, Strachan saluted a porter at a train station in Bristol, believing that he was an admiral because of his work uniform. He then travelled to London, arriving at Paddington station, and spent a night at the YMCA near Tottenham Court Road. The next day he met a Jewish refugee at a TMCA meeting who told Strachan about the Nazi Party and her reasons for fleeing Europe. Strachan said this experience was the first time he had ever heard about what was happening in Nazi Germany. After another night at the YMCA, Strachan travelled to the Air Ministry based in Adastral House, believing that this was where he was supposed to enlist in the RAF. The airmen on guard duty at the Air Ministry racially abused Strachan, telling him that "his sort" should "go back to where they came from". Some sources say that the guard told Strachan to "piss off".After this exchange with the guard, a sergeant passed by and told Strachan that Adastral House was not the correct place to enlist in the RAF. When the sergeant asked where he came from, Strachan told him he was from Kingston in Jamaica. However, the sergeant mistakenly believed that he meant Kingston in Surrey and told him to travel there to enlist.
Eventually, a young officer came to Strachan's aid, telling Strachan that he was educated and knew that Jamaica was in West Africa. Strachan decided it was best not to correct the young officer on Jamaica's actual location. Later in life, he described the young officer as a "Hooray Henry type", a pejorative British term for an arrogant upper-class man. Strachan was taken inside the building and introduced to a Flight Lieutenant. He underwent health, education and intelligence tests; passing all these tests, he was given an RAF uniform. He was sent on a train to Blackpool later that evening for military training.
Air force training
Aged 18, Strachan arrived at the RAF base in Blackpool for training. He was the only non-white recruit, and many of his fellow recruits accused him of being crazy when he told them he had left the peace of the Caribbean to travel to wartime Britain. Strachan and the men he trained alongside were taught by a corporal who happened to be a former circus clown for Bertram Mills. He told his men that he would choose the most physically fit recruit to be his deputy, which happened to be Strachan, and the corporal told Strachan: "Darky, you are my deputy." Strachan was emotionally torn by the racial insult, which he had never been called before as he was relatively light-skinned in comparison to the majority of black people in Jamaica. Despite his conflicted feelings, he was glad to have been promoted to squad deputy.Bombing missions against Nazi Germany
Strachan was trained in aircrew skills and his first bombing mission was over Nazi-occupied Europe in June 1941. He was initially a radio operator, then he became a gunner, flying a tour of operations in RAF Bomber Command as an air gunner on Vickers Wellington bomber aeroplanes with No. 156 Squadron. After completing his first tour of 30 operations Strachan retrained as a pilot, flying solo after only seven hours of training. He undertook 15 operations as a pilot with No. 576 Squadron, flying Avro Lancasters from RAF Fiskerton in Lincolnshire.Strachan shared his advice on how he managed to survive being targeted by German aircraft: "The trick," he explained, "was to wait until the enemy was right on your tail and, at the last minute, cut the engines, sending the aircraft into a plunging dive, letting the fighter overshoot harmlessly above." He also vividly recalled seeing four-engined Soviet bombers during a bombing mission over Berlin in 1941. He was greatly impressed by the Soviet aircraft, realising that their chances of returning to the Soviet Union were extremely slim. During a night raid over Germany in October 1941, he was wounded in the left leg by a Nazi fighter aeroplane, a wound that caused him medical problems throughout his life.