A brief survey of British newspapers at the beginning of the twentieth century reveals a wide variety of social discrimination based on “race” or colour. Long ago I documented the experiences in London in 1903 of a group of African American entertainers, including a separate incident of a group of black gentlemen being refused service in a central London pub [website page 041; Green, Black Edwardians 1998, pp 206-208]. White American guests had influenced the London hotel management to reject the black entertainers, and the pub manager had been unhappy with an earlier noisy group of black customers hence his decision.

In 1905 an African American seated in a London restaurant led to objections from a group of white Americans, so he quietly departed – reported in the Liverpool Post and coped by the Bournemouth Daily Echo of 26 September 1905, page 4, which ended its report “It is impossible to get Americans to take the same view of the negro as we do”.

Both the Gloucester Echo (page 2) and Hull Daily Mail (page 3) of 3 July 1907 reported on an inmate of the Strand (London) Board of Guardians workhouse. A “dark coloured boy” had been born in the workhouse and had been at the Union school “for several years”, playing the drums in the institution’s band. The Guardians tried to enlist him in a West African regiment but were informed enlistment only took place in the country where the regiment belonged. They then found him a place on the navy training ship Exmouth – which housed five hundred orphan boys from the age of twelve. The ship’s committee said they could not provide a career for the lad after he left the ship so they returned him to the workhouse. The Hull newspaper concluded that it was “a scandalous thing [that] a clever lad should be debarred from serving in his Majesty’s Navy or Army”.

In the summer of 1908 a black woman was mentioned in several newspapers in connection with a beauty contest in Southend, Essex. Refused permission to enter a beauty competition in Yarmouth, another east coast holiday resort, on “account of colour” she asked the Southend authorities if she was accepted there. Reports appears in the Yorkshire Evening Post (18 August 1908, page 4), London’s Evening Standard (20 August 1908) and the Western Daily Mercury (18 August 1908). “Princess Dinubolu” of Senegal (there are other spellings of the name) was driven around Southend in an open carriage – one suspects this was a publicity venture, for there was no beauty contest in Yarmouth (see Green, Black Edwardians 1998, pp 99-100).

In April 1909 the decision made by American owners of a Birmingham skating rink to exclude “a coloured student of Birmingham University from one of our West African Colonies” led to criticisms, a petition, and the syndicate’s solicitor expressing regret, reported in the Yorkshire Evening Post (13 April 1909, page 2), the Southern Daily Echo (15 April 1909, page 2), and the Midland Counties Tribute (17 April 1905, page 2).

The London Daily News of 25 October 1909, page 9, had its column headed “The Colour Bar” and stated “An unpleasant stir has been caused here [in Birmingham] by the attitude adopted by the authorities towards coloured students at the university who are anxious to avail themselves of the military preparations afforded by the Officers’ Training Corps”. Two Indians were victims of a War Office edict – “they are disqualified from sitting for the examinations for commissions which are held in connection with the Officers’ Training Corps”.

A glimpse of an institutional colour bar is seen in reports of the British Hospitals Association meeting in London in July 1915. The problem of the “shortage of resident medical officers in the voluntary institutions” was raised and it was suggested that a solution would be “that the ‘colour bar’ should be removed” – and the number of female doctors should be increased. This report in the Nottingham Journal (31 July 1915, page 8) was repeated in the Western Mail (31 July 1915, page 6), the Manchester Courier (31 July 1915, page 8) and the Shoreditch Observer (6 August 1915, page 3).

Much more space and to be found in a substantial number of newspapers were reports of the colour bar in the USA, and the new constitution for South Africa which permitted only those of European descent to become members of parliament.

One suspects that like the British Hospitals Association and the War Office, British institutions had semi-formal colour bars which have somehow escaped the attention of historians.