On 10 April 1920, the British Daily Herald carried an extremely racist front page article headlined: "Black Scourge in Europe". (Content note: racism and sexual violence) The author, Edmund Morel, went on to accuse "Black savages" and "primitive African barbarians" in the French army of raping large numbers of German women. He claimed their race was especially significant since "for well-known physiological reasons, the raping of a white woman by a negro is nearly always accompanied by serious injury and not infrequently has fatal results". What makes this noteworthy is that the Herald was Britain's biggest left-wing daily, and Morel was a committed progressive and campaigner against European colonialism in Africa. Over the coming months, much of the left, the trade union and women's movement in Britain, and internationally, including the national executive of the Labour party, approved various
racist motions calling for a withdrawal of French African troops stationed in Germany after the end of World War I. Independent investigations found that the allegations were exaggerated, overblown, and that what crimes did occur were carried out by white French soldiers as well. Some on the left did criticise the campaign, for example Claude McKay, a Caribbean radical poet in London. He wrote a letter to the Herald, who refused to publish it, so instead left communist Sylvia Pankhurst published it in her Workers' Dreadnought. McKay decried Morel's "obscene maniacal outburst about the sex vitality of Black men in April a proletarian paper," and pointed out that "Rape is rape; the colour of the skin doesn't make it different." Feminists also began to change their tune, with one activist criticising the hypocrisy of white liberals who were suddenly defensive of womanhood despite having previously "ignored the sanctity of women wherever [they] went."
Daily Herald publishes racism - WCH | Stories
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