88 Facts About Billy Strachan

William Arthur Watkin Strachan was a British communist, civil rights activist, and pilot.

Billy Strachan 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.

Billy Strachan survived 33 bombing operations against Nazi Germany during a time when the average life expectancy for an RAF crew was seven operations.

Billy Strachan 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.

Postwar, Billy 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.

Billy Strachan 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.

Between 1952 and 1956, Billy Strachan published the newspaper Caribbean News, one of the first monthly Black newspapers in Britain.

Billy Strachan 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, Billy Strachan was called to the bar, becoming an expert on British laws regarding drink driving and adoption.

Billy Strachan helped found a charity that taught disabled people how to ride horses.

Billy Strachan 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.

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.

Billy 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.

Billy Strachan was raised alongside two sisters: Dorothy who migrated to Britain, and Allison who migrated to Canada.

Orynthia, Billy Strachan's mother, was a descendant of enslaved African people.

Billy Strachan 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.

Billy Strachan was taken by his father to listen to Cripps speak at a political meeting.

In 1939, after leaving school, Billy Strachan gained employment as a civil service clerk in Jamaica.

Billy 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.

Billy Strachan 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.

Billy Strachan arrived in Bristol in March 1940, with little money and a suitcase containing only one spare change of clothes.

Billy Strachan then travelled to London, arriving at Paddington station, and spent a night at the YMCA near Tottenham Court Road.

Billy Strachan said this experience was the first time he had ever heard about what was happening in Nazi Germany.

The airmen on guard duty at the Air Ministry racially abused Billy Strachan, telling him that "his sort" should "go back to where they came from".

Billy Strachan decided it was best not to correct the young officer on Jamaica's actual location.

Billy Strachan was taken inside the building and introduced to a Flight Lieutenant.

Billy Strachan underwent health, education and intelligence tests; passing all these tests, he was given an RAF uniform.

Billy Strachan was sent on a train to Blackpool later that evening for military training.

Aged 18, Billy Strachan arrived at the RAF base in Blackpool for training.

Billy Strachan 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.

Billy Strachan was trained in aircrew skills and his first bombing mission was over Nazi-occupied Europe in June 1941.

Billy Strachan 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.

Billy Strachan undertook 15 operations as a pilot with No 576 Squadron, flying Avro Lancasters from RAF Fiskerton in Lincolnshire.

Billy Strachan was greatly impressed by the Soviet aircraft, realising that their chances of returning to the Soviet Union were extremely slim.

Billy Strachan was prone to "joyriding" and attempting dangerous tricks despite the disapproval of his instructors.

Billy Strachan had damaged his face and hips, suffered a broken nose, broken cheekbones, a fractured right hip, and was in a semi-coma for three weeks.

Billy Strachan recalled the events of this incident, the stress of which ended his ability to continue his career as a pilot:.

Billy Strachan ordered them all to stop fighting and most of the personnel obeyed except for two white men, who advanced towards him.

Billy Strachan then ordered a white corporal to arrest the two approaching men, which the corporal did, giving a great boost of morale to the black RAF personnel on the base.

Billy Strachan considered this incident an important moment in his life.

Billy Strachan rose to the rank of flight lieutenant within the RAF, a rare achievement for a black person in 1940s Britain.

Billy Strachan completed 33 missions against Nazi Germany when statistically most bomber crew did not survive their tours.

Billy Strachan's rise within the ranks of the RAF earned him a personal servant known as a "batman".

Billy Strachan's batman had previously been the servant of the British King George VI.

Once, while stationed in Yorkshire near Hull, Billy Strachan visited a dentist in an underground surgery, returning to the surface to find that all the buildings above ground had been destroyed by bombs.

Outraged at the racism that blocked him from promotion, Billy Strachan wrote multiple letters to news media, although he signed the letters in his wife's name since he was not allowed to openly criticise the authorities as a civil servant.

Billy Strachan would from then on support the communist movement for the rest of his life and was an avid supporter of both the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party.

Carter was the cousin of famous Black-British civil rights activist and communist leader Claudia Jones, who founded one of Britain's early black newspapers, the West Indian Gazette, which both Carter and Billy Strachan helped to launch.

Between the late 1940s and 1990s, Billy Strachan had written articles for many newspapers and journals, many of which were openly communist.

Billy Strachan often wrote them under the pseudonyms "Bill Steel" or "Caliban".

Examples of communist publications for which Billy Strachan wrote include the Daily Worker, Comment, Caribbean News, and Labour Monthly.

In 1954, Billy Strachan wrote the chapter "Terror in the West Indies" for the Report of the Second Conference of Workers Parties Within the Sphere of British Imperialism, from their conference held in London.

Billy Strachan became an important member of the CPGB's International Committee and their West Indian Committee.

In 1948, Billy Strachan helped to found the London branch of the Caribbean Labour Congress, a socialist organisation dedicated to promoting worker's rights and universal suffrage in the Caribbean.

Billy Strachan was elected to serve as the secretary of the London branch from its founding in 1948 to 1956.

In 1950 Billy Strachan wrote a letter to the editor of The Manchester Guardian defending Seretse Khama, a Black African man who had been persecuted for marrying a white woman, and naming himself as the Joint Secretary of the Seretse Khama Fighting Committee.

Under Billy Strachan's leadership, the London branch of the CLC held regular educational classes for its members, reading books such as Eric William's Negro in the Caribbean, Cheddi Jagan's Forbidden Freedom, Harold Moody's Negro Victory, Andrew Rothstein's A People Reborn, Learie Constantine's Colour Bar, and Richard Hart's Origin and development of the People of Jamaica.

Billy Strachan took up this issue and mobilised the CLC to campaign against the removal of Jagan's government, mobilising all his contacts, Communist party activists, left-wing Labour Party members, and trade unionists, to ensure that the issue was brought up in the British Parliament.

In 1956, the London branch of the Caribbean Labour Congress reformed into a new organisation called the Caribbean National Congress, without Billy Strachan serving as secretary.

Billy Strachan soon began receiving letters, primarily from men, expressing their difficulties in securing employment and accommodation, many of these letters being written to him due partly to his reputation as a war hero, and others because he was the secretary of the London branch of the Caribbean Labour Congress.

Billy Strachan came to believe it was necessary to create a regular newspaper that could reflect the views of the London branch of the Caribbean Labour Congress.

Billy Strachan's initiative produced a socialist and Anti-imperialist newspaper called Caribbean News, which was published between 1952 and 1956.

At a meeting in 1953, Billy Strachan reported that Caribbean News had a circulation of 2,000 copies, half of which were sent to the West Indies and the rest circulated across Britain.

In defiance of Adams and his persecution of leftist activists, Billy Strachan planned a speaking tour of the Caribbean alongside fellow communist Caribbean activist Ferdinand Smith, who was most notable for co-founding the first desegregated union in the history of the United States.

In 1952, Billy Strachan and Smith embarked on their speaking tour of the Caribbean, organised by the World Federation of Trade Unions, an organisation in which Smith was a leading member.

Billy Strachan had wanted to study law earlier but could not afford to do so, due to the combined weight of his family commitments, his political work, and his fulltime employment, first as a cost-accountant in Kilburn for a baker's and confectioners, then later as a clerical assistant for Middlesex County Council.

Billy Strachan intensely studied law using books he borrowed from the library, and in 1959 he was called to the bar.

Billy Strachan earned his Bachelor of Law degree from the University of London in 1967.

Billy Strachan worked as Clerk of Court and held several important positions as the Chief Clerk at Clerkenwell Magistrates' Court, and he then held the same position at Hampstead Magistrates' Court, becoming the Clerk to the Betting and Gaming Committee.

Billy Strachan was elected the President of Inner London Justices' Clerks' Society.

Pansy Jeffrey, a civil rights activist and a founder of the Pepper Pot Centre, said that Billy Strachan once advised her to become a magistrate.

In 1971, Billy Strachan was elected president of the Inner London Justices Clerks Society, before becoming involved in Lord Avebury's investigation into the death of Walter Rodney, a political leader in Guyana.

Billy Strachan became a key figure in the creation of the Riding for the Disabled Association, a British charity that provides horse-riding lessons to disabled people.

Billy Strachan served as the secretary of the Harrow Branch of the charity.

Billy Strachan was one of the founders of the Movement for Colonial Freedom.

Billy Strachan was a supporter of Grenada's New Jewel Movement and opposed both American intervention in Haiti and the UK Labour Party's intervention in Anguilla in 1969.

In 1977, Billy Strachan condemned then Home Secretary David Owen for refusing to halt the execution of two Black people in Bermuda.

Billy Strachan then became a founding member of Caribbean Labour Solidarity, an organisation formed in London by his friends Richard Hart and Cleston Taylor in 1974.

Billy Strachan contributed to a programme that allowed students from the Caribbean to study in the Soviet Union free of charge, using his connections with politicians in the Caribbean to find men and women from working-class backgrounds who otherwise would never have been able to afford a university education.

Billy Strachan was a close friend of both Cheddi Jagan, the first chief minister of Guyana and the first person of Indian descent to become the leader of a country outside Asia, and Guyana's president and wife of Cheddi, Janet Jagan.

Billy Strachan was cared for by his wife during his final years, and died on 26 April 1998.

Billy Strachan 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.

Billy Strachan was held in high regard by many leading British black civil rights activists, including Trevor Carter, Claudia Jones, Cleston Taylor, and Winston Pinder, the latter describing Billy Strachan as "our father".

Billy Strachan was praised by many Caribbean leaders whom he had known during his life, among them Richard Hart, John La Rose, and Cheddi Jagan.

Billy Strachan played a role in supporting the work of Dorothy Kuya, a Black British civil rights leader and communist activist; she was Liverpool's first community relations officer, and Billy Strachan travelled to Liverpool to speak for Kuya when she was applying for the job of community relations officer in the city.

In 1955, Billy Strachan was interviewed by Pathe News for a report titled Our Jamaican Problem, where he acted as a spokesperson for black people in Britain.

Billy Strachan was a genuine Caribbean man always in the forefront of labour and political challenges of our region I will miss him very much.

The UK National Archives hold records relating to Trinidad barring Billy Strachan from entering the country, and further archival material relevant to Billy Strachan's life, including 40 boxes from his personal collections, is held at the University of London.