We Die Like Brothers, the Sinking of the SS Mendi by John Gribble and Graham Scott

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This book not only honours those that lost their lives on the SS Mendi but opens up a wider story of the role those from across the British Empire played in the First World War.

While the First World War played a key role in creating a sense of nationhood in some parts of the Empire, especially for Australia, for most places and people the contributions were marginalised, erased even, in the process of commemoration.

Books like this one play a small, slow, part in reversing that marginalisation – giving people their stories back.

And so we come to the story of the South African Native Labour Crops. The British were drawing ‘Black’ labour from the Empire to support the war effort, but reluctant to have ‘Black’ soldiers fighting in Europe against the ‘White’ Germans in case this encouraged the idea that the ‘Black’ population of the British Empire might take up arms against their ‘White’ British rulers.

And in the case of South Africa the racial policies were extreme, even against the benchmark of the injustices of the wider British Empire, the seeds of what would become the apartheid already growing. The Government of South Africa placing strict conditions on the labour it was sending to Europe, seeking segregation of its people for fear that they might experience some form of equality, that they might be treated with humanity and dignity, and return home after the War with expectation of the same.

Within these fears it seems that was an awareness that the structures of Empire were flawed – the superiority of the ‘Whites’ a fiction that needed to be cared for – that it would take but a feather to bring the house down.

That so many died when the Mendi sank was due in large part to the conversion of the cargo holds to accommodation, without provided appropriate means of access – hatches suitable for one or two crew to access and inspect the cargo, completely unsuitable as the access point and critically emergency exit for hundreds of men.

That this arrangement was allowed appears to not be solely down to the carriage of ‘Black’ labourers, there were similar arrangements on troop ships, but one is still left with the sense that there would have been greater scrutiny of the arrangements on a ship carrying ‘White’ British personnel – the lives for the British Working Class held in higher regard, even if only marginally, but the decision makers of Empire.

The book was published in 2017 to tie into the centenary of the tragedy, now the best part of a decade on and that growing distance, the First World War no longer part of living memory but firmly in the category “history”. It was part of the memories of my Grandparents’ parents in a family while has had long generations, for many there will be an extra generation or two. But the importance of continuing to tell the stories – to tell an ever fuller story – remains. These people deserve to be remembered, and we need to remember the horrors of that war to ensure we do all that do not allow history to be repeated.