Ashley Jackson

The Secret War: Censorship, Radio Propaganda and Code-Breaking

Warfare is rarely confined to the sphere of combat alone. In the Second World War the role of military intelligence was pivotal and the employment of propaganda to undermine the loyalty of enemy subjects reached new heights of sophistication. It was a war of the airwaves in which propaganda was beamed across enemy frontiers, and the enemy’s cable and wireless signals intercepted and decoded. The war also saw the extensive use of censorship to screen the correspondence of private individuals for disloyalty or the revelation of sensitive information, and to filter the accounts of the war received by the general public in the newspapers, at the cinema and over the airwaves.

The End of the War and Strategic Transformation in the Indian Ocean

VE Day was greeted with all the paraphernalia of victory throughout the British empire. In Mauritius, the Council of Government held a special session and announced a two-day public holiday,1 the cannons at Port Louis fired a salvo, church bells rang throughout the island, the Police Band entertained at the Champ de Mars, the Town Hall, the Luna Park and the Majestic were illuminated, there was a Chinese dragon procession, fireworks at Champ de Mars, bonfires at the Citadel and on Signal Mountain, and flags and bunting festooned the streets.2 At Champ de Mars a huge Union Flag hung from the grandstand and the Governor, resplendent in the white dress uniform and pith helmet of the Colonial Service, took the salute. After the victory over Japan there were further celebrations. A reception was held at Le Reduit on 24 August, and a grand parade took place at Port Louis on 30 August; September was declared a public holiday, and around 50 000 people attended a gathering at Champ de Mars.3

Colonial Military Labour in Europe and the Middle East

The most valuable military contribution of the colonial empire to the war effort of 1939–45 was its provision of the military labour force upon which imperial troops fighting in the Middle East and Southern Europe depended.1 In North and East Africa, the British had by early 1941 extinguished the imperial ambitions and the core of the military forces of Italy through spectacular victories in Libya, Abyssinia and Somaliland. Yet these bold successes were overshadowed by the arrival of General Rommel in February 1941 to command the Afrika Korps, and his successful attacks prolonged the desert war for many months.2

Mauritius and the Indian Ocean in Imperial Wars and Imperial Strategy: from the Eighteenth Century to the Interwar Years

The military, naval, and strategic significance of Mauritius and its scattered dependencies has a lengthy pedigree. This stretches from Anglo-French disputes like the Seven Years War (1756–63) and the Napoleonic Wars, through the period of two world wars, into the Cold War era and up to the present day. The history of the islands of the Indian Ocean demonstrates how profoundly being part of an empire could affect remote territories and how far Britain — especially in times of war — relied upon its colonies for military, naval, manpower, financial and intelligence resources. An oceanic and naval view is valuable for an understanding of the history of the British empire, though is seldom integrated into the work of imperial historians.1

Defence of Empire and the Sea Lanes: the Royal Navy and the British Indian Ocean World

The Royal Navy was always an instrument of empire, even though it was never an adjunct of empire. As Nicholas Rogers argues, imperial historians have sometimes assumed that the navy was there because of the empire, whereas the navy was older than empire and traditionally saw its role as a world role befitting Britain’s worldwide interests — interests bigger than those of empire alone.1 However, even if empire was not the aim of naval actions, the fact was that empire often resulted from Britain’s efforts at sea in support of its trade or in its numerous wars against continental powers.

The Mauritius Regiment and the Madagascar Mutiny

On 17 December 1943 the 1st Battalion The Mauritius Regiment boarded the troopship Burma and embarked for the grand harbour of Diego Suarez in Madagascar. It was a new Regiment of the British Army that had only had its colours granted in principle by King George V in October 1943.1 During the three-day crossing from Mauritius conditions onboard ship were cramped, the food was unpleasant and many of the men were sea sick. Arriving in Madagascar, the Battalion was made to parade in full kit in the afternoon sun before beginning a route march to their camp at Orangea, about 12 miles inland. This was in spite of the provision of motorized transport and was indicative of the attitude of the Commanding Officer (CO), Lieutenant Colonel Yates, who was determined to seize the moment and show off his troops and himself. In the course of the march, order disintegrated, men began to fall out and the Battalion arrived at Orangea in straggling batches. At the camp, by accident or design, a grass hut was set alight. Others followed through deliberate ignition. Men left the camp against orders. The following day hundreds of men failed to appear on parade for physical training. African soldiers of the KAR were ordered to round up the mutinous Mauritians and hundreds were charged with indiscipline. Some ringleaders were sentenced to death.

Defending the Home Front: Local and Imperial Defence Measures

Governors throughout the empire were left in no doubt by the Colonial Office that, when war broke out, their primary duty was to do all in their power to provide for the security of their territories and to ensure their greatest possible self-sufficiency. Supplies of foodstuffs and essential goods were likely to be cut off as shipping was either sunk or requisitioned, and imperial garrisons, where they existed, were likely to be depleted or withdrawn. To this end, efforts had been made to stockpile supplies in the colonies before the outbreak of war. Britain was not the only part of the empire that relied on imports to feed itself and exports to pay for them. Mauritius was almost a hundred per cent dependent upon imported foodstuffs, and the production and export of sugar was its overwhelming commercial activity.

The Effects of War on the Home Front

As has been demonstrated, the colonial home front was deeply affected by the Second World War, and many of the widely remembered images of the British home front can be applied to the scattered dependencies in which Britain’s 60 million colonial subjects lived.1 A summary of the war’s main impact on the home front is important for the balance of this study. The main areas are: wartime political developments; the economic effects of war; the food situation; development policy; the experience of the Franco-Mauritian community; and the story of the 1600 Central European Jews detained on Mauritius from 1940–1945.

Introduction: War and Empire

According to Captain Alfred North-Coombes, based on the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues with a company of Mauritian soldiers guarding a British cable and wireless station, the greatest war excitement came on 3 March 1942 when the Cocos-Keeling Islands were shelled by an enemy ship, causing an interruption in the imperial cable link with Australia. This caused panic in Rodrigues, and ‘at Oyster Bay was heard a humming, that was the sound of people praying aloud, even those who had never prayed before, that they would be saved from the Japanese. Rosaries were cut into pieces and shared with neighbours’.1 Meanwhile, on Mauritius, 344 miles west across the Indian Ocean, ‘one Indian widow, calling at the [Labour] Department with some copper utensils, said with pride “that she could spare them for England’s hour of need’”.2 Such minutiae demonstrate the truly imperial scope of the 1939–45 conflict, a war that generated a host of experiences common to both the people of Britain and the 60 million inhabitants of the British colonial empire.