Windrush Day: Origins, History and Relevance

 by Simon Lemieux


Introduction

Those of us who can still, just about, remember that memorable opening ceremony to the 2012 London Olympics, the one with Daniel Craig as 007 and featuring the (real) Queen may also recall the scene below depicting the Empire Windrush. 22nd June is Windrush Day, but what does it commemorate and what is its relevance today?



Celebrating the Windrush generation — Near Neighbours (near-neighbours.org.uk)

Origins of the day

The historical calendar is packed full of anniversaries and memorial days. In the United Kingdom interestingly, none actually make it as official bank holidays unlike America with its Presidents Day, and Martin Luther King Day, to name just a couple. Even our long established and higher profile days such as the 5th November and 11th November (Guy Fawkes and Remembrance Day respectively), don’t give us holidays, though civil servants get an additional day’s holiday on the Queen’s Official Birthday, lucky them! Still, these anniversaries and days of national remembrance play an important part not least in what they say about our values, and what we see as worth celebrating and commemorating. Windrush Day is no exception. The day itself is relatively recent, only being officially recognised in 2018, the 70th anniversary of HMT Empire Windrush’s arrival in Britain with immigrants from the Caribbean. It followed a campaign by Patrick Vernon, social commentator, amateur cultural historian and political activist with ancestral roots in Jamaica and West Africa, who was also behind the 100 Great Black Britons project.

Patrick Vernon OBE, FRHS

According to then Communities Minister, Lord Bourne in 2018, "A Windrush Day will allow communities up and down the country to recognise and honour the enormous contribution of those who stepped ashore at Tilbury Docks 70 years ago," More widely, it is an opportunity to focus on the wider impact and contribution made by immigrants to our country. But what exactly was historical significance of Empire Windrush’s voyage in 1948 and what of the vessel itself?

History

The arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury docks in Essex on 22nd June 1948 marked the effective start of large-scale immigration to Britain of people from colonies of the British Empire, most of which by the 1960s would of course be ex-colonies. But the context of the Empire Windrush was also inextricably bound up with the Second World War. Firstly, the vessel itself was actually a former German troopship, and originally named the Monte Rosa, she came under British Government ownership at the end of the war when she was seized in Kiel as a ‘prize of war’. She was renamed as His Majesty’s Troopship/Transport Empire Windrush.  She is most famous for bringing over one of the first large groups of post-war West Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom, carrying 1,027 passengers and two stowaways on a voyage from Jamaica to London. 802 of these passengers gave their last country of residence as somewhere in the Caribbean: of these, 693 intended to settle in the United Kingdom. The link with the Second World War is also due to the fact that many of her passengers were ex-servicemen who had fought for Britain during the war. British Caribbean people who came to the United Kingdom in the period after World War II, including those who came on later ships, are sometimes referred to as the Windrush generation.




Why did so many want to make a new start in Britain, and leave the West Indies? Part of the answer is because they could now do so legally. The 1948 British Nationality Act, gaving the status of citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC status) to all British subjects connected with the United Kingdom or a British colony, was going through parliament at the time, and some Caribbean migrants decided to embark "ahead of the game". Many wanted to escape the poverty found in the West Indian colonies and would find work in Britain often as bus drivers, cleaners and nurses in the newly created NHS. Prior to 1962, the UK had no immigration control for CUKCs, who could settle indefinitely in the UK without restrictions but also without much documentation. As we shall see, this would cause problems in the future.

There is an interesting sub-plot too, to this important voyage. The ship also carried 66 people whose last country of residence is recorded as Mexico – they were some Polish people who had travelled from Siberia via India and the Pacific, and who had been granted permission to settle in the United Kingdom under the terms of the Polish Resettlement Act 1947.They had been among a group of Poles who had been living in Mexico since 1943, and the Empire Windrush had called at Tampico, Mexico to pick them up after stopping in Jamaica and Trinidad. So her passengers were actually quite a multicultural assortment, a mixture of refugees from the war, and those in search of a new life in the ‘mother country’. Among the passengers and aspirant immigrants, more accurately Caribbean-British settlers, were several famous calypso musicians including Lord Kitchener and Lord Woodbine (their stage names) and also Sam Beaver King, who wanted to rejoin the RAF. He would later help found the Notting Hill Carnival and become the first black Mayor of Southwark. Their arrival made the headlines in some of the newspapers, though the arrival of immigrants was not expected nor particularly welcome by the Labour government of the day, who sought to discourage large scale civilian migration. Most of those who disembarked from the Empire Windrush settled permanently in the United Kingdom. Many faced discrimination and hostility, and it is worth noting that discrimination on the basis of race remained legal until the 1965 Race Relations Act.



 

Relevance

Aside from the prejudice and racism many of the Windrush and subsequent vessels’ passengers faced when they arrived in Britain, is the more recent story of the ‘Windrush Scandal’. Many of these early arrivals and not just those from the Empire Windrush, lacked the full official paperwork to stay legally in the UK. Furthermore, the Home Office kept no record of those granted leave to remain and issued no paperwork - making it difficult for Windrush arrivals to prove their legal status. To make matters worse, in 2010 it destroyed landing cards belonging to Windrush migrants making their status even more unstable. Fast forward to 2018, and scandal broke as it emerged that many of the original arrivals and/or their children were threatened with deportation, in some cases carried out, on the grounds they were in the country illegally. The government was forced to apologise, offer compensation, and offer guarantees of citizenship to those caught up in the scandal. It also set up an official inquiry into how the scandal emerged in the first place.  So while Windrush Day is perhaps a day of thanks for the contributions made by immigrants of all backgrounds to British life, it is also perhaps a day for some sober reflection. If you want to find out more about the Windrush generation, their stories and also the 2018 scandal, I can thoroughly recommend the links below.

Windrush Foundation | Remembering a generation

Windrush Stories - The British Library (bl.uk)

Windrush: Who exactly was on board? - BBC News

Windrush generation: Who are they and why are they facing problems? - BBC News

MPs urge May to resolve immigration status of Windrush children | Commonwealth immigration | The Guardian

 


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