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
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