Nadia Cattouse, wartime ATS volunteer who faced racism and became a ‘giant of the folk-song revival’

Hearing in 1943 that the Army was recruiting volunteers for the ATS, ‘I was so eager I jumped on my bike straight away to get to Drill Hall’

Nadia Cattouse, who has died aged 99, was among the first group of Caribbean women volunteers to sign up for British Auxiliary Territorial Services (ATS) during the Second World War; returning to Britain after the war, she found success as an actress and folk singer.
Nadia Evadne Cattouse was born in Belize City, British Honduras (now Belize), on November 2 1924. Her mother, Kathleen, née Fairweather, was a teacher; her father, Albert, was a civil servant who went on to become deputy prime minister of British Honduras.
When, in early 1943, she heard that the British Army was recruiting volunteers for the ATS, “I was so eager I jumped on my bike straight away to get to Drill Hall.” After travelling to Jamaica with six other recruits for initial training she and other West Indian women volunteers began their journey to Britain.
This took them through some of the US “Dixie” states, and Nadia recalled that they were unprepared for the racism they encountered. In Miami, the hotel booked for them by the British Army turned them away; another establishment, managed by a Scotsman, agreed to take them in, but only if they entered by the back door.
At the railway station for the train to Washington, they found two queues, one for whites and a “Jim Crow” queue for blacks. Unused to segregation in the West Indies, they joined the white queue, but were warned by African-Americans in the other line that “something bad” might happen to them on the train. 
Eventually, after refusing to travel in the “Jim Crow” car, they were given a “white” carriage to themselves, but they were turned away from the dining car and had to make do with food bought from platform buffets.
Nadia arrived in England in June 1944 and was sent for training as a signals operator to Edinburgh where, she recalled, “there was no racial tension – no problem at all. We had cameraderie.”
As well as serving in signals, Nadia also served part-time as an ATS physical training instructor. After the war she qualified as a teacher in Glasgow before returning to British Honduras, where she became the head teacher of a mission school and lectured at a teacher training college.
In 1951, however, she returned to Britain to study social sciences at the London School of Economics, and it was in London that she first encountered British racism: “You could see the cards in the window. You know, it would say ‘no blacks, no dogs, no Irish, no children’, but always no blacks.”
She went on to train as a social worker, working in Nottingham helping newly arrived Caribbean immigrants and becoming involved in racial equality campaigns. In 1959 she played a pivotal role with her Trinidadian activist friend Claudia Jones in organising the inaugural West Indian Carnival, which was held indoors at St Pancras Town Hall and broadcast by the BBC .
To help pay her way through college, Nadia Cattouse began doing some acting and singing. In 1954 she landed a role in the BBC television film The Runaway Slave, and she went on to appear in other BBC productions including Your People and My People (1959), a “West Indian ballad opera” broadcast on the Home Service; she and Cy Grant played Jamaican siblings who travel to London and are rapidly disillusioned by the discrimination they encounter.
Her career as a folk singer took off after she took part in a BBC folk musical written by Ewan MacColl, alongside Peggy and Pete Seeger and Steve Benbow, all key figures in the British folk song revival, who encouraged her to join them on tours: “Suddenly there was this scene with circuits all up and down the country. And then you had the Welsh, the English, the Irish, the Scottish and maybe half a dozen Caribbean people involved. 
“Singing, exchanging music, folk songs, taking part in these big concerts, Usher Hall in Edinburgh, Festival Hall, London, and we are all joining in the chorus… And if I wanted to sing a calypso, they join in the chorus.”
She took part in the prize-winning television production Freedom Road: Songs of Negro Protest (1964), in which she sang protest songs of the US civil rights movement alongside Cy Grant, Cleo Laine and Madeleine Bell and, as an actress went on to appear in television series including Angels, Play for Today, Crown Court, Within These Walls, Dixon of Dock Green and Johnny Jarvis.
As a singer in the 1960s, she performed at Les Cousins club in Greek Street, Soho, and on television shows including the BBC’s Sing Along and Hootenanny as well as the “God slot” programme Hallelujah alongside performers such as Sydney Carter and Martin Carthy.
Melody Maker once hailed her as “one of the giants of the folk-song revival in Britain”, and she went on to release two albums of folk adaptations and original compositions, as well as a number of singles. Her Long Time Boy (1961), produced by George Martin, was described by the television and record producer Jack Good as “the most magical record I have heard for months; this could be sensational”. But it did not sell enough to chart.
In her later years, Nadia was involved with veterans’ associations, including the British Commonwealth Ex-Services League. In 2009 Nadia Cattouse received a Meritorious Service Award from the Belize government “in recognition of her advancement of social, cultural, and political awareness among Belizeans and other Caribbean people in the UK”.
In 1958 she married the composer and arranger David Lindup, with whom she had two sons, but the marriage was dissolved.
Nadia Cattouse, born November 2 1924, died October 29 2024