'Mixing It: The Changing Faces of Wartime Britain' at IWM North

If you've read Crinoline Robot for any length of time, you'll know I get a bit of a bee in my bonnet about our nation's multicultural history being forgotten or ignored, especially around November when the 'My granddad didn't fight for [insert minority group here]' brigade get going in the run up to Remembrance Day. Because of that, I was really pleased to see that from the 12th of September 2015 IWM North, part of the Imperial War Museum, is going to be running a display entitled 'Mixing It: The Changing Faces of Wartime Britain'. It's showing research conducted by the University of Huddersfield into the stories of people who came to Britain because of the Second World War: a Jewish teenager, a tot from the Kindertransport, the first Nigerian pilot to serve with the RAF, Czech airmen and more.

My great-grandmother,
Mary Florence de Solminihac, in uniform

I think it's important for us to remember and acknowledge how many different faiths and nationalities were involved in the war. My own grandfather, who was born in Burma, would probably have ended up in Britain anyhow – he was already in the British Army when war broke out, and had already met the girl who would become my grandmother. I don't know if the rest of the family would, though; I doubt they'd have stayed in Burma post-independence, but perhaps they'd have moved to India (my great-grandmother was from Calcutta) or even Australia. As it was, my great-aunts married soldiers, and my great-grandmother was, to go by her uniform, in the Women's Auxiliary Corps (India), and all of them ended up in England. I now live in a town where the oldest Polish residents have lived since the war. And that's just one story; look at the wartime history of people round you and you'll find other tales of people who came to this island and left traces behind, or who came and stayed on, as a result of war. Sometimes it feels to me as though the story of the Second World War is being cut down in scale, reduced to a narrative about white men fighting for one nation. Displays like this new one show how far it reached, and how much it changed Britain and the world.

To accompany the exhibition there are special dramatic performances on the 12th, 13th and 20th of September (first performance at 11:15am, last one at 2:15, free), plus there's an opportunity to meet Professor Wendy Webster and the researchers from the University of Huddersfield on the 4th of October at 2pm.