Wartime Britain’s welcome for black GIs was complicated | Letters

While Hugh Muir’s observations on the positive reception received by African American troops in the UK during the second world war are largely accurate (Intolerant Britain: history shows we’re better than this, Opinion, 31 December), the full story is more complicated. The presence of American soldiers was a temporary wartime expedient, and the treatment these young men received, particularly those who were black, was partially because they would not be staying. Moreover, while Afric