The celebration of ‘Windrush Day’ in Great Britain, marking the anniversary of the arrival of the troopship HMT Empire Windrush on June 21, 1948, has sparked both appreciation and outrage.
The British troopship HMT Empire Windrush anchored at Tilbury Docks, Essex, on 21 June 1948 carrying hundreds of passengers from the Caribbean hoping for a new life in Britain - alongside hundreds from elsewhere. Who were they?
The former passenger liner's journey up the Thames on that misty June day is now regarded as the symbolic starting point of a wave of Caribbean migration between 1948 and 1971 known as the "Windrush generation".
Many were enticed to cross the Atlantic by job opportunities amid the UK's post-war labour shortage. But, despite living and working in the UK for decades, it emerged last year that some of the families of these Windrush migrants have been threatened with deportation, denied access to NHS treatment, benefits and pensions and stripped of their jobs
The ship - which dropped anchor on 21 June and released its travellers a day later - was carrying 1,027 passengers, including two stowaways, according to BBC analysis of the ship's records kept by the National Archives.
The appreciation comes from those black Caribbean Britons who migrated to “the motherland” and their descendants born in the U.K., who have felt that their contribution to British society has been too long ignored. The outrage surrounds their treatment and the aforementioned deportations.
The entire subject of the Windrush generation and what is called ‘the Windrush Scandal’ in the British press is a major issue for the government, and in the media over there. It isn’t one here, since most of our media coverage of the United Kingdom centers on the Brexit issue. Coverage of issues around race and not related to Brexit is thin, and tends to be centered on the new black duchess.
As a child and as a young adult, I probably had the same idea about who lives in Great Britain that most people do here in the United States. I grew up on a steady diet of Shakespeare, the mystery novels of Agatha Christie and Dick Francis, romance novels set in Scotland, science-fantasy fiction derived from Welsh mythology, television series like Upstairs, Downstairs and World War II footage of Winston Churchill and the blitz of London. I read about the British Empire in school, and the popular press was always full of articles about Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana.
What do all these things have in common? It was all about white people. I didn’t consciously think about it. I knew that ‘West Indians” (the black, English-speaking Caribbeans) spoke English because they had been colonized by England. I knew the British role in the slave trade, and the history of abolition. But if you asked me to close my eyes and picture a Brit, they wouldn’t be a person with African ancestry.
I learned differently when I made a trip to England to facilitate a conference of black filmmakers in 1981, which I wrote about for Black Kos. I went to Brixton, where I met black and South Asian activists.
I did not know about what is now called the “Windrush Generation” and only learned that history as a result of the major scandal that was heavily covered in the British press last year. At the time, I wrote “If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas': MP blasts Brit Home Secretary over 'Windrush Generation.”
MP David Lammy spoke brilliantly on the floor of Parliament:
The Windrush story does not begin in 1948; the Windrush story begins in the 17th century, when British slave traders stole 12 million Africans from their homes, took them to the Caribbean and sold them into slavery to work on plantations. The wealth of this country was built on the backs of the ancestors of the Windrush generation. We are here today because you were there.
My ancestors were British subjects, but they were not British subjects because they came to Britain. They were British subjects because Britain came to them, took them across the Atlantic, colonised them, sold them into slavery, profited from their labour and made them British subjects. That is why I am here, and it is why the Windrush generation are here.
There is no British history without the history of the empire. As the late, great Stuart Hall put it: “I am the sugar at the bottom of the English cup of tea.”
The controversy around the celebration of Windrush Day this year, and the parallels to our own rising tide of xenophobia and hate pushed me to revisit Windrush again.
Dawn Butler, a member of Parliament in the Labour Party who is black, born in London, and whose parents were Jamaican immigrants tweeted:
The New York Times published a story titled “U.K.Tribute to ‘Windrush’ Generation Draws Criticism”:
On Saturday, which was declared the first National Windrush Day, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain announced that a memorial to their efforts would be built at Waterloo Station, where many immigrants first arrived in London after docking at Southampton. It was also where they met friends and family member who had already settled in Britain.
Mrs. May called the occasion an “annual opportunity to remember the hard work and sacrifice of the Windrush generation.” “They crossed an ocean to build a future for themselves, for their communities, and above all for the United Kingdom — the country that will always be their home,” Mrs. May added.
But the tribute on Saturday was overshadowed by criticism of the government’s immigration policy and by the lingering effects of a clampdown on members of the Windrush generation last year. And the prime minister’s tribute video drew a backlash, with critics reminding the public of Mrs. May’s legacy before she became prime minister. As minister responsible for immigration, Mrs. May championed a “hostile environment” policy intended to make life in the country difficult for undocumented migrants and to dissuade potential arrivals.
The New York Times article mentions the following two tweets from London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and from the head of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn:
May’s announcement of a Windrush memorial was met with surprise and anger.
May’s plan for Windrush memorial at Waterloo met with ‘disgust’
Karen Doyle, the national organizer of Windrush pressure group Movement for Justice, said that memorializing the arrival and contribution of the Windrush generation was important and welcome, but “ripping up the hostile environment polices would be a fitting monument.”
“[A] gesture in bronze and steel feels empty and meaningless from a government that championed the hostile environment bringing destitution, detention, deportation, exile and death to this important generation,” she said. “It is particularly galling when there are still so many who live in fear of detention and deportation, the descendants and family members who are currently excluded from help by this government.
“The money would be better spent tackling the racist core of British immigration law, which bequeathed a permanently impermanent second class citizenship on the Windrush generation.”
The memorial announcement comes a week after another prominent Windrush victim, former Middlesex cricketer Richard Stewart, died without receiving compensation or a personal apology from the government.
If you have some time and are interested in learning more, I highly recommend you view the new documentary from British-Nigerian historian, broadcaster, and writer David Olusoga, The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files.
The Guardian gave it a five-star review.
The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files review – who could feel proud of Britain after this?
Everything begins with the British Nationality Act of 1948, which confirmed the right of all British subjects to move freely and live anywhere they liked within the newly created Commonwealth. But the act, Olusoga argues, was intended to ensure frictionless travel for the large white populations of Canada and Australia. “No one imagined that black and brown people from Asia, Africa and the West Indies would use their rights under this act to come and settle in Britain.”
Incriminating archival material reveals the scale of official panic about immigration and the underhand measures taken to discourage residents of Britain’s colonies from settling. Crucially, politicians wanted to restrict access without actually appearing to be racist. The film exposes their shameful contortions as they scrabbled around to justify their prejudices.
We learn how ministers in the 1950s commissioned researchers to come up with reasons for concluding that non-white immigration was problematic, with senior civil servants instructing dole officers to conduct secret race surveys to see if there was any truth in the assumption that migrants were coming to live off the welfare state, and asking police chiefs around the country leading questions such as: “Is it true that they are generally idle?”, “Do they have low standards of living?”, and “Are they addicted to drug trafficking and other types of crime?” Winston Churchill was obsessed by the “considerable” number of “coloured workers” employed by the Post Office, and, by 1955, was suggesting to ministers that they should fight the next election on the slogan “Keep England White”.
Though the percentage of people of color in the U.K. is smaller than we have here, racism is a major issue and overt incidents, which have been ongoing for many decades, have been exacerbated by Brexit, similar to what we see here on this side of the pond due to Trump and his Republican enablers.
There are links most recently explored by investigative journalist Peter Jukes
This recent Guardian article has some of the data on the rise of racism, post Brexit:
Racism rising since Brexit vote, nationwide study reveals
Ethnic minorities in Britain are facing rising and increasingly overt racism, with levels of discrimination and abuse continuing to grow in the wake of the Brexit referendum, nationwide research reveals. Seventy-one percent of people from ethnic minorities now report having faced racial discrimination, compared with 58% in January 2016, before the EU vote, according to polling data seen by the Guardian. The data comes amid rising concern at the use of divisive rhetoric in public before this week’s European parliament elections, where some leading candidates, including Ukip’s Carl Benjamin and the independent Tommy Robinson, have records of overt racism.
This short documentary from Amanda Kirton links her family history to the past—and to the slave trade.
The BBC's Amanda Kirton journeys from Britain to Jamaica and uncovers not only her family's hidden past but the dark history of the two islands. She discovers why the Windrush scandal was about more than the politics of immigration.
Is there hope for the future? Watch these young “white” members of the Alford family learn from their black great grandfather.
As the far right grows in strength on both sides of the pond and anti-immigration becomes a central issue they promote, we need to counteract their messages of hate by speaking truth, and refusing to allow history to be erased.
Black people are part of that history.