Format: four-part documentary series
Project stage: Complete
Creator/ director: Mariel Brown
Release date: 2015
Executive producers: The Parliament Channel
DOP: Sean Edghill
Composer: Francesco Emmanuel
The West Indies at War is a four part television series that tells the little known story of soldiers from the West Indies who fought and died in World War One. Many of these valiant men were not allowed to enlist because of their race. After months of struggle and with a steadily rising death toll on battlefields across the world, the black men of the Caribbean were finally allowed into the fray. During the war, the men experienced discrimination at the hands of their white counterparts and were forced into menial labour roles. Upon their return to the Caribbean, the embittered soldiers, including Arthur Cipriani, Uriah Butler and Norman Manley, rallied the masses against their colonial oppressors for the right to vote and appoint local men onto the Legislative Council. The First World War shook everything up.
Watch the full series here
