Talk:Billy Strachan

Military career info box

@BulgeUwU: I've embedded some fields into the info-box, you might want to fill in the missing data for them. Cheers. Govvy (talk) 11:31, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Hey @Govvy: I just saw what you did, selecting "module" and then adding a second mini infobox attached to the first. I had no idea that this could be done and I'm extremely excited that you've shown it to me. This will be very useful to me on some of the other pages I've edited including Charlie Hutchison and Bill Alexander (politician), and Clem Beckett :) BulgeUwU (talk) 12:14, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

See also

Re this revert: If he spent his whole life supporting the MS, we should say that (with a source) in the body, as no reader would understand why there is a See also entry for it. The CPB link should go too, as it's in the body text. Relevant policy: MOS:NOTSEEALSO. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:13, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

It is in the body. The Daily Worker and the Morning Star are the same newspaper, it was renamed in 1966. As mentioned in the article body, Strachan and his wife supported themselves selling the Daily Worker, he advertised the Daily Worker in his own newspaper Caribbean News, and he also occasionally wrote for the Daily Worker. The History Wizard of Cambridge (talk) 20:51, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. In that case neither should be in the See also, as already linked in body. See MOS:NOTSEEALSO. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:23, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• We meet again.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 04:12, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Billy Strachan's RAF flight crew.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 02:23, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Changes in the lead - discussion and timing

I'm glad more editors are showing an interest in this page but @Jagmanst these changes to the lead couldn't have come at a worst time. The GA Review only started a few hours ago. Multiple editors also worked very hard during both the peer review and failed FA review to create the perfectly balanced lead.

There are other issues to such as his CPGB membership being mentioned in two paragraphs, and the changes make it sound as though it wasn't his hotel which was bombed but some other hotel, etc. The words "newspaper editor" should be kept in the lead seeing as he is notable for being the editor for one of Britain's earliest black newspapers Caribbean News. "British legal expert" also needs to be kept as Billy Strachan also contributed to multiple fields of British law including adoption, matrimonial proceedings, and drink driving, and held numerous high level positions in British courts.

How would you feel if we changed it back to the original and then we call you for final comments near the end of Liewee's GA review? This way we all get say without stepping over eathother. The History Wizard of Cambridge (talk) 05:30, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Ye no problem. Jagmanst (talk) 10:23, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Cool, I'll make sure to tag you when the GA is coming to a close :) Also tagging @Llewee so he sees this. The History Wizard of Cambridge (talk) 10:54, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

My main suggestion is the first few sentences in the lead should focus on his most important contributions (I suggesting picking two). I also thought some minor details could be omitted in the lead, and it be made more succinct. But I think it can wait the review process. Jagmanst (talk) 03:43, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Sourcing

@Llewee - Since this issue has come up at ANI and at other pages, it should be noted for the GA review that a lot of the sourcing here is dubious in quality and much of it does not appear to be independent of the subject and is essentially communist party-origin. Taking some examples:

1) Caribbean Labour Solidarity, of which Stachan was a founder, published Billy Strachan 1921-1998 (apparently pamphlet, not a book, as it was 30 pages long), and it was re-published by the Communist Party of Britain. David Horsley is a member of the Communist Party of Britain. It is not clear that this pamphlet or Horsley are independent of the subject.

2) Simon Meddick is the leader of the Bristol, Bath & Gloucester Communist Party of Britain. Liz Payne is the chairwoman of the Communist Party of Britain. Phil Katz is head of communications for CPB. Manifesto Press Cooperative Limited does not appear to be a well-established publishing house. It is not clear that Red Lives: Communists and the Struggle for Socialism is independent of the subject.

3) www.africansinyorkshireproject.com appears to be a blog. The article relied on on that website is sourced to an interview with Strachan (i.e., not independent coverage).

This is not to say there is no independent coverage at all of Strachan, but I think an article written based on independent sources would probably be quite different (but way more NPOV) than the present one. FOARP (talk) 10:02, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

FOARP, I have started a discussion on this subject at the good article nominations talk page. Llewee (talk) 11:06, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

And more

Llewee I looked in yesterday and didn't have time to type this up there, so will add it here. There are also close-paraphrasing and source-to-text integrity issues:

• Following his death, Strachan's friend Marika Sherwood paid tribute to Strachan in the newsletter of the Black and Asian Studies Association.

That wording is sourced to Sherwood's own paper, yet it is copy-pasted from one of the few independent and reliable sources used in the article, page 56 of Stephen Bourne's book (you can borrow the book at archive.org and read pages 54 to 57 for the entry on Strachan).

I checked all of the Bourne content, and also found source-to-text integrity problems:

• Struggling to afford the trip to Britain, he became the only passenger on a ship sailing to the United Kingdom, which had previously arrived in Jamaica full of wealthy passengers escaping the war in Europe for the safety of the Caribbean.[9]

  Bourne does not say only passenger and does not say wealthy.

• He was prone to "joyriding" and attempting dangerous tricks that his instructors did not approve of. During a training flight in a Tiger Moth aircraft, he crashed the aeroplane and was sent to Ely Hospital in Wales.

  Bourne does have the joyriding bit, but not the aircraft or the hospital.

So I suspect some of the content comes from places other than what it is sourced to, and a closer look at source-to-text integrity and close paraphrasing or copyvio is warranted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Based on what Wizard said over on the Harry Pollitt talk-page about using a non-independent source and then googling to find other sources, I suspect what happened was a case of using a non-independent source (most likely Red Lives) to provide the information and then just googling and switching out the non-independent source for another. FOARP (talk) 13:56, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Likely. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:05, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Yep. See 5 May 06:44 followed by 06:49; the best source of the lot was an afterthought, tacked on to pre-existing text. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:51, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

And an example of puffery: the article cites this content (in an awkward called-out section):

• Strachan rose to the rank of flight lieutenant within the RAF, a rare achievement for a black person in 1940s Britain.[2][10][25]

... to Meddick and Horsley, a writer for a British communist tabloid. This source calls it a "remarkable achievement", as does this source. Neither calls it "rare", and yet this statement is summarized in the lead as (emphasis added):

• Rising to the rank of flight lieutenant, an extremely rare achievement for a Black person in Britain during the 1940s

It remains to be verified if the "extremely rare" comes from Meddick, not an independent source as described at the ANI, or if it is original research. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:50, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

This kind of content should not be sourced to a British communist tabloid: SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:01, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

• According to the Morning Star, Strachan strategically allowed the British princess Anne, daughter of British Queen Elizabeth, to serve as the charity's president, while he himself served as the charity's vice-president.[36]

Nor this:

• Racism continued to plague his civilian career, as he was denied promotions in the civil service based on his race.[25]

.. which is not attributed to the British tabloid, although the need to do so, and to use Horsley more carefully was pointed out by Z1720 and Mujinga back in May. Horsley and the Morning Star are still used quite extensively, and without attribution. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:07, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

References

Torquay

The Palace Hotel, Torquay, was certainly attacked by an enemy Focke-Wulf 190 fighter-bomber in December 1942, but since 1939 it had been in use as an RAF hospital, which is what Strachan, injured when he crashed a Tiger Moth in pilot training, was doing there. (It wasn't exactly a honeymoon hotel as the article's authors imagine, and it had Red Crosses painted on its roof which the Luftwaffe used for targeting purposes.) https://www.devonheritage.org/Places/Torquay/CiviliancasualtiesofthebombingofTorquay.htm It's also of interest that Strachan was apparently allowed to qualify as a pilot after crashing, indicating preferential treatment, because the usual rule was that a crash instantly washed you out of pilot training.

The claim that Strachan saw 'Soviet four-engined bombers fighting over Berlin' in 1941 is strange. There was the odd night when RAF Wellingtons (the type on which Strachan was serving as an air gunner at the time) and Soviet Pe-8s may have been over Berlin, notably the night of 12-13 August 1941, but it would be curious if they both happened to be there at the exact same time, and even more curious if Strachan had spotted a Pe-8 at any distance in the dark (bearing in mind that RAF air gunners had only a 50/50 chance of spotting a German night fighter closing in for the kill at under 400 yards) and more curious still if he could identify it as a Pe-8, which would not have featured largely if at all in his aircraft-recognition training. If he saw a four-engined heavy with a single tailfin he would probably have taken it for an RAF Stirling, of which there were nine present on the 12-13 August raid, along with 40 Wellingtons, nine Manchesters and 12 Halifaxes (Halifaxes being four-engined but twin-finned, though in the dark all big four-motor heavies probably looked much alike, and even German night-fighter pilots, who got in very close, often misidentified the quarry in their after-action reports). See Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt, The Bomber Command War Diaries, Midland Publishing 2000, p.191.

Generally this is not a good article. It's absurdly over-reliant on a single 30-page Communist pamphlet which is not a reliable source by any standard, it makes clumsy mistakes (Strachan was never a pilot with 156 Squadron, and when he apparently became a pilot with 576 Squadron later, he can't have been a very good one if he was barely able to avoid hitting Lincoln Cathedral, the best-known landmark of all to Bomber Command crews, only a few minutes' flying time from their runways) and it aggressively promotes the subject as a big deal when he does not seem to have been a big deal at all, except to doctrinaire Communists, who appear to have interjected references to Strachan into a number of vaguely related articles as well. Yes, it was unusual for black aircrew to reach flight-lieutenant's rank in wartime, but Cy Grant, a Lancaster navigator who held that rank, seems considerably more notable. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:40, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Average life of an RAF bomber crew during the Second World War was between six and seven operations

On average a a crew member of a bomber would not make the end of their tour (of 30 operations) but to say the "average life of an RAF bomber crew during the Second World War was between six and seven operations" is rubbish. It may have been "6 or 7 operations" for a short period during the very early war years (when Blenheims were being used for day operations) but that was about it. Strachan only started flying ops in June 1941, long after the (almost) suicidal Blenheim daylight ops finished. 31.185.187.58 (talk) 21:29, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Better sources needed

I have flagged this article because it relies heavily on the publication by Horsley. This does not imply there is anything wrong with the publication, but having additional sources would strengthen the article. Horsley's membership in an organisation involving Strachan shouldn't be a problem. Nor should the fact that it is a communist organisation unless the author is shown to be unreliable. Humpster (talk) 00:48, 16 November 2024 (UTC)