Mixed Race Studies

Black History Month Firsts: Lilian Bader

Black History Month 2015
2015-10-13

Omar Alleyne Lawler, Editor

Lilian Bader, Photo Credit courtesy of the Imperial War Museum

The contributions and efforts of Lilian Bader to World War Two for the Caribbean community actually starts before her birth, with her Fathers contribution in World War One.

Marrying in 1913, Marcus Bailey was a Barbadian born migrant who found himself in England, coupled with an English born, Irish raised woman^* on the outbreak of war. The possibility of a happy family was postponed as war broke out in 1914 and Marcus would find himself serving in the Royal Navy as a Merchant Seaman until the war finished.

However, upon the wars end, the Baileys would parent three children, one of which would be Lilian Bader. Born in 1918, she would go onto be quite possibly the first Black woman to join the British Armed Forces…

…The reality of being a Mixed Raced Woman, in Britain in the early 1930’s, would be one her intelligence and popularity would never be able to escape and at the age of twenty, Lilian would still be at the Convent she joined as a nine year old, simply because nobody was willing to hire her for work…

Read the entire article here.

Leading Aircraftwoman in the WAAF and one of the first black women to join the British Armed Forces

The Independent
2015-04-06

Stephen Bourne

Lilian Bader (1918-2015)

Bader trained as an instrument repairer, became a Leading Aircraftwoman and soon gained the rank of Acting Corporal.

I first met Lilian Bader at the Imperial War Museum in 1991 at the launch of Colin Douglas and Ben Bousquet’s book West Indian Women at War. She was the only black Briton interviewed in the book. Feisty, outspoken but not without a sense of humour, Bader was proud of the fact that, by the end of the 20th century, three generations of her family had served in the British Armed Forces.

She was born in 1918 in the Toxteth Park area of Liverpool to Marcus Bailey, a merchant seaman from Barbados who had fought for the British in the First World War, and Lilian, her British-born mother, whose parents were Irish. The Baileys had married in 1913 and Bader was the youngest of their three children. In 1927, Bader and her older brothers, Frank and James, were orphaned – and she was raised in a convent where she remained until she was 20, because no one would employ her. However, she was determined to overcome racial prejudice.

She found employment in domestic service, but, when the war broke out, she joined the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) at Catterick Camp, Yorkshire. She was enjoying herself until she was asked to leave when her father’s West Indian heritage was discovered by an official in London. For weeks her supervisor avoided informing her of this decision – but eventually he had to tell her the truth, and release her…

Read the entire article here.