The multicultural effort to defeat fascism | Letters

Regarding Gary Younge’s nonfiction (Millions of the achromatic and brownish radical who fought for Europe’s state didn’t get a VE Day, 8 May), it is refreshing to work astir what really happened astatine the extremity of the 2nd satellite war. But I bash defy powerfully the framing of the millions of colonised radical successful the British empire arsenic having “fought for the allies”. They were the allies. These people, including my precocious father, were subjects of the British empire, conscionable similar immoderate worker from Liverpool oregon an Auxiliary Territorial Service enlistee from Maidenhead. They were trained arsenic the British service and they fought and died, oregon survived, conscionable similar those from Scotland oregon Wales.

Many British radical don’t privation to perceive that millions of the grandparents and parents of those “foreigners” surviving present were calved and lived nether the aforesaid regularisation arsenic immoderate Bristol oregon Birmingham assembly estate, but that was the case. The far-right “othering” of radical is simply a effect of a deliberate and hateful ideology aimed astatine seizing power.

The words we usage matter. The soldiers and work unit that Younge is talking astir were British subjects and Britain was a complex, global, multicultural empire – not a achromatic bastion of antiauthoritarian absorption that fought unsocial from the shores of Blighty.
Judy Vertannes
Churchdown, Gloucestershire

I work with involvement that astir 2.5 million unit from the Indian subcontinent fought during the 2nd satellite war. They are possibly not the lone forgotten ones. My parent was successful India erstwhile warfare broke out. She joined the Women’s Royal Army Corps (WRAC) successful India and served passim the duration, ending up with the fertile of captain.

Her past days would person been made easier if her work had been acknowledged. On inquiring whether other pension rights (she had a precise tiny authorities widow’s pension) arsenic a erstwhile servicewoman were hers to claim, she was told nary records were disposable for WRAC successful India. End of story.

And a precise shabby extremity to the story. Quite isolated from the fiscal side, it was arsenic if her work to the federation had simply ne'er existed.
Angela Blazy-O’Reilly
Villeneuve-la-Comptal, Aude, France