On American Juneteenth, the Royal Mint has issued a new design of 50p (£0.50) coin to commemorate Windrush Day on June 22, 1948. That was when the ship Empire Windrush landed carrying Britons from Jamaica to find their fortunes in the “Mother country”. Many were already familiar with Britain, having served in the RAF during WWII and were answering the call for labor to help reconstruct the country after it. The date is regarded as the start of modern large-scale immigration of people of color to the UK from the Empire and Commonwealth. It meant a radical change from a white nation (outside of the major port cities) to the multi-cultural society the UK is today.
They arrived full of hope and were met by newsreel cameras.
Like the guy in the newsreel who wanted to support his mother in Jamaica, many intially saw this as a chance to become successful and return “home”. For most the UK became their and their families’ home. Sadly the welcome also meant that they were to be financially exploited by employers and discriminated against in housing - landladies would put cards in the windows of their lodging houses indicating “No Dogs, No Irish, No Blacks”. They suffered loss of citizenship and any benefits and even deportation under the dreadful anti-immigration policy of Theresa May when she was Home Secretary until the Government was forced to recognise their right to stay in Britain.
The Windrush scandal began to surface in 2017 after it emerged that hundreds of Commonwealth citizens, many of whom were from the ‘Windrush’ generation, had been wrongly detained, deported and denied legal rights. Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman investigated and began reporting their experiences. As these shocking stories hit the headlines, Caribbean leaders took the issue up with then-prime minister, Theresa May.
There was widespread shock and outrage at the fact that so many Black Britons had had their lives devastated by Britain’s deeply flawed and discriminatory immigration system.
(For clarity, I should add that during WWII the British public rejected attempts by the US armed forces in instigate a color bar. Pubs refused to not serve black GIs with some putting up “No White Americans” signs. This resistance culminated in the “Battle of Bamber Bridge” in which locals and black GIs fought white military police.)
You may have noticed be using “modern” and “large scale” in this piece. Recent archaelogical investigations show that there have been people with dark to “black” skin in Britain since the end of the last ice age when the land was able to support humans. The retreating ice shelves meant that there was a walking route over what is now the North Sea. Gene analysis on the remains of “Cheddar Man” shows that they all had dark skin and blue eyes before their descendants had to adapt to the levels of sunlight and lost the melanin in their skin.
There is also evidence of trading, particularly tin and copper to make bronze, between Britain and (North) Africa in antiquity. Ironically from the 17th century to 1805 copper and tin in the form of manillas were traded for slaves with West African rulers at the slave ports. this has compliicated sending the Benin bronzes to Nigeria where they were made and raises ethical questions about their link with slavery.
There were certainly Black Romans in the 1st century C.E. invasion and a group of black legionnaires were stationed on Hadrian’s Wall in Northern England (It’s not known if legionnaires from Britain served on Hadrian’s other wall in North Africa) The first image of a known black person is of John Blanke on the Westminster Tournament Roll of 1511. He is recorded in the King’s accounts as receiving 20 shillings (£1) a month for his work as a “trumpet”, That was more than a skilled tradesman could earn.
A “black presence” in Britain continued with some direct and indirect evidence of them. This was often in the trading ports of the growing British Empire. Despite slavery having no legal status in England and Scotland, the country was involved in it within the Empire. Confirmation in the courts in 1773 that a slave was free as soon as they set foot in England fueled a growing abolitionist movement. By 1805 the slave trade had been banned with the Empire although slavery itself was not until 1835. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, with the help of black sailors in Nelson’s fleet, the British went on something of a crusade. When Brazil was unpersuaded to stop trading, the Royal Navy blockaded the country. The West Africa Squadron interdicted trans-Atlantic slave ships, including those from the United States. Slaves were freed (see Sierra Leone) and the slavers punished.
There was a bit of an arms race between the UK and US as the shipyards of Boston attempted to build clippers that would outrun the British fleet. The Royal Navy captured one and put an end to that game. The Americans would join the blockade of West Africa in 1860 after they resolved their local difficulties. After tje revelations by Livingstone of the even more barbaric Arabian trade on the East coast, which included the full castration of the men, the Royal Navy’s East Africq Squadron suppressed the trade into the 20th century.
The extent of African involvement in the slave trade is often the subject of ignorance or denial. Slavery for the European nations was a trade that happened at coastal ports. These exploited the existing trade within Africa itself as a source.
The wealth of the richest man ever to live was based on slavery. Mansa Musa, the 9th Mansa of the Mali empire, took the throne in 1312 C.E. and expanded it by conquering neighbors and enslaving them. His wealth is literally incalculable but is guesstimated at US$400 billion. On his legendary Hajj in 1324/5 CE he was accompanied by his entire royal court and a supporting caravan including 80 camels carrying between 50 and 300lbs of gold dust each and 12,000 slaves each carrying 4lb of gold bars. At current prices the slaves carried a total of $42 billion. His generosity in Cairo, including building a mosque every Friday, caused the local gold market to crash.
Slavers trading out of England had the same dichotomy of being engaged in the most despicable and dishonorable practices which in part funded their chartitable endeavors like building alms houses and schools for the poor. Often this led to them being honored by the erection of statues which we are having to reconcile today.
The British Empire ruled 23% of the planet’s population over 13.7 million square miles. The current British Overseas Territories, excluding Antarctica and the South Atlantic island groups cover under 1000 sq miles. Apart from the sovereign military bases on Cyprus and those territories with no permanent population, all have self-governing councils. In the process the UK and London in particular has changed profoundly since 1948. (Cutting is from 2012)
London has achieved what one recent report calls "superdiversity", a melting pot of nationalities [270], ethnicities and languages [>300] unequalled in Europe. It's a fantastically complicated picture - and one that's full of surprises. Who knew that Americans, for example, are one of the biggest groups from outside the EU? Many foreign-born Londoners - 43 per cent - are now British citizens, and that rises to more than four out of five of the city's foreign-born Afro-Caribbeans.
Those last join the Windrush Generation and their descendents to enrich a society and culture founded by dark skinned immigrants who walked accross Doggerland thousands of years before, So it is only right to now honor and commemorate the post-WWII vanguard annually. This special year is marked by a coin designed by a daughter of the Windrush Generation from Jamaica who joined her parents at age 5 in 1964.
Valda Jackson, designer of the 50p coin said of the coin design, “It’s more than a celebration of one moment, it is an acknowledgment of the real, lived experience of generations of ordinary working people, and though we may have struggled, and we still struggle in so many ways, we and our descendants are, in fact, at home. And this is what the image – these figures and the added Union Jack – represents. I am very happy to have my design selected for this coin, which honours our parents and their legacy; and which celebrates our presence, achievements, and contributions that continue to enrich our society.”
Although Windrush Day has particular relevance for Britons of Afro-Caribbean heritage, it should also be remembered that the Generation included those who came from Asia, Africa and other continents. Such are the consequences of empire that in 1972 the country took in Africans of South Asian descent who were to literally enrich it.
In summary, the distributions of occupation, education and employment status for this group appear to be better or at least no worse than for the rest of the population, particularly for the younger cohort. Similar proportions have ended up in high occupational status jobs as UK-born individuals. By 2011, East African Asians were significantly overrepresented among professional and managerial occupations. This is quite remarkable, given the many disadvantages with which the group arrived