Forgotten Heroes
Forgotten Heroes Diarmuid Jeffreys | Lead Investigative Programmes, Al Jazeera English
There are always more ideas than there are slots to accommodate them. Every week brings a new set of pitches. One filmmaker has exclusive behind-the- scenes access to a presidential candidate in Bolivia, another has found evidence linking cobalt mining to child deformities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a third is convinced that the only way to cover the plight of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean is to accompany them on a dangerously overcrowded rubber boat from Libya. For well over a decade commissioning films for People & Power, I’ve pretty much heard it all. In that time, we’ve investigated everything from the abuse of people with disabilities in Romania, to the consequences of Russian bombing in Syria to the impact of fake news on elections in India. On occasion our filmmakers have gone undercover, been threatened, beaten up, arrested, deported and shot at, but usually - and most mundanely - they’ve just laboured very long and hard to get to the bottom of some remarkable stories. But, every now and then, along comes a proposal that makes you think it will be the best film you’ve ever commissioned; not because it will win a ton of awards, but because you sense it could make a difference - even if that difference is only that
without Al Jazeera the story would never get told at all. In late 2018, independent producers Allesandro Pavone and Jack Losh made just such a pitch. And it concerned a gross historical injustice - the UK’s treatment of its colonial-era African soldiers. During World War II, Britain mobilised a huge army of African troops from its colonies to take on Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan in battlefields across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. More than 500,000 of them were sent to fight in searing desert heat or in dense jungle thousands of miles from home and they played a pivotal role in the Allied victories that defeated Hitler and Mussolini and drove the Japanese out of their Asian conquests. But they were subject to systematic discrimination, both during the war and in later years. Not only were serving Black African soldiers paid up to three times less than their white counterparts, many were also subject to much more savage discipline, enduring beatings even though the British Army had by then supposedly outlawed corporal punishment. The real kick in the teeth though, was the disregard with which they were treated after the war. Having risked, if not lost, their lives for the Allied war
effort, the racist discrimination continued. Once a soldier was demobilised, Britain paid him a lump sum known as a war gratuity - given to his wife if the soldier had died. But again the colonial regime placed a different value on African life than it did on European life; gratuities paid to white soldiers were up to five times greater than those given to Africans - for equivalent ranks.
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