Under the headline ‘Trinidad Recruits at The Mansion House’, The Times reported on 4 November 1915 that ‘The Lord Mayor received at the Mansion House yesterday a contingent of 130 white recruits for the Army, including a bugler lad, 15 years old, who arrived in London from Trinidad on the previous day’ (The Times, 4 November 1915, 2). The Morning Post explained that the soldiers were ‘recruited and brought over under the auspices of the West India committee’, adding that ‘Major Brown was in charge of the contingent, who are all white men and comprise planters, shippers and others used to outdoor work generally’. The men, officially known as the ‘Trinidad Merchants’ and Planters’ Contingent’, marched from St Pancras to the Mansion House led by the band of the Royal Fusiliers and were inspected in Walbrook. The London Standard quoted from the Lord Mayor’s speech to the men. ‘You do credit’, he stated, ‘not only to yourselves but to the great Empire upon which the sun never sets’. The paper, quoted in the Daily Gleaner in Jamaica, finally wrote that this ‘fine body of men … were heartily cheered by the crowds’ (Daily Gleaner, 24 November 1915, 6).

The Daily Gleaner offered further insights into the formation of the ‘Trinidad Merchants’ and Planters’ Contingent’. It explained that ‘the fine body of youngsters’ who had volunteered had met the movement’s instigator, George F. Huggins, the President of the local Chamber of Commerce, at his home in August. The paper spoke admiringly of Huggins – ‘by his patriotic action in this matter, [he] has added to the esteem in which he has long been generally held’ – and explained that the funds for the trip were generated by a committee of professional and business men, including the Mayor of the Port of Spain (Daily Gleaner, 1 November 1915, 6).

Historian Glenford Howe emphasised the segregationist ideology that motivated the formation of the contingent, arguing that merchants, ‘very much in sympathy with the view that blacks, whites and mulattoes should not be in the same contingents’, had sought to display their loyalty by forming a white contingent of their own. Howe suggested that since the War Office had ‘reluctantly’ allowed black West Indians to participate in the war, the social divisions between the groups had become a ‘major issue’, particularly in Trinidad and Barbados. He illustrated the extreme and inherent racism within the recruitment and selection process across the West Indies, but noted that local officials, who were wary of racial unrest, had ‘tried quietly to discourage’ the formation of the Trinidad contingent, denying them police protection and the services of the band. The trip to England was thus, in part, a response to the treatment that they had received from local authorities and an attempt to generate support for this segregated contingent (Howe, 2002, 49).

Richard Smith notes that black West Indians were on display at the Lord Mayor’s show in November 1915, but suggested that the ‘favourable’ coverage – which primarily emphasised their physique – rapidly shifted and fuelled established racial fears of a ‘“Black Peril” threatening to breach the sexual and racial boundaries of the Empire’ (Smith, 2007, 176). Black soldiers from Trinidad had been sent back to the West Indies in October 1915 after refusing to parade – ‘no money, no work’ – and shortly after the arrival of Huggins’ contingent, George Grindle, the principal clerk of the Colonial Office, ‘acceded to the group’s plea that the whites should have their own contingents… and the Colonial Office instructed the governor of Trinidad to assist the merchants in their endeavour’ (Howe, 2002, 93, 49).

By 1915 two thirds of all cinemas took a newsreel. While Luke McKernan notes that Topical Budget only accounted for 11% of the market (Pathé remained dominant claiming 30% of the market with Gaumont reaching 22%), the company delivered a healthy annual profit in September and continued to prosper. McKernan describes Topical’s output as a ‘mixture of processions, protests, personalities and occasional glimpses of the war’ overseas (McKernan, 1992, 25, 28). Footage of the Trinidad troops in London had featured earlier in November 1915 in Topical Budget 219-2, ‘Trinidad to the Trenches’, showing the men ‘who have answered the Empire’s call’ marching to the Mansion House. It also featured in other newsreels. For example, in 1915 Pathé included an item entitled ‘Trinidad Troops’ (aka ‘To Fight For’), which again showed the troops marching and on inspection, while similar footage appeared in the Gaumont Graphic on 8 November under the title ‘Our Overseas Troops’.