By Mathew Norman
EVENING STANDARD
July 6, 1993
THE link between money and religious faith is no preserve of Catholicism, as we saw at the beginning of Birthrights: The Reunion (BBC2), a series returning to look at the contribution made by black communities to British life.
There, meeting up again with a group of wartime friends, Hermine Williams was asked how often she indulged in Buddhist chanting. Morning and evening, she replied. As often as I can now Im
having this problem with the Inland Revenue. Hermine, a fashion designer, was one of five women reunited some 50 years after 150 of them came from Jamaica to serve in the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service), an outfit which took over male soldiers desk duties freeing them to fight at the front.
It took the War Office two years of infighting to allow black women to join up, and Frances-Anne Solomons upbeat film made good use of some hideous WO internal memos (Dear Thomas, In brief we are quite prepared to accept European women from the colonies, but I must emphasise we cannont accept coloured womn for service in this country), and also of archive footage and still photographs of these young women looking astonishingly exotic in foggy wartime London.
Some settled here in peacetime, one becoming a head teacher and another a midwife. Their exuberant pleasure in reliving their comradeship going through parade-ground drills, and singing Hitler Has Only Got One Ball was hugely infectious.
One said she made the journey through U-boat infested waters because: It was the way you were brought up England is your mother country, and you must do something to help. Another hilariously recalled giving a pint of blood to a wounded man who, when he saw her, was terrified that he might one day sire a black baby. This was great, and a fine example of how to make a minority programme with real mainstream appeal.
