Oldway Mansion Gardens

I walked through here this morning on my way to a talk by Kate Werran based on her book ‘ An American uprising in Second World War England’.
It happened in Launceston in 1943 - a shoot-out between black and white American soldiers in a quiet Cornish town. The black soldiers were banned from visiting pubs and all the social opportunities that the white soldiers were allowed, and rebelled. The subsequent court martial into what tabloids labelled a 'wild west' mutiny became front page news in Great Britain and the USA, and was held in Paignton, far away from Launceston. It mirrored and bolstered a fast-accelerating civil rights movement in the USA , and caused Churchill himself 'grave anxiety'.This account of a shocking drama the authorities tried to hush up has been painstakingly pieced back together from wartime cabinet documents, secret government surveys, opinion polls, diaries, letters and newspapers as well as testimony from those who remember it.
It was a fascinating and enlightening talk. The men were given years of hard labour, simply because of racism in the American army. The location of the trial was just yards from the Palace Theatre where the talk was held.