Windrush generation’s search for a better life
The Windrush scandal that recently rocked the Government had its roots in an event 70 years ago.
The passenger ship HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, in London, carrying the first group of almost 500 Jamaican immigrants and marking the start of modern immigration to the UK.
The British Nationality Act 1948 had given citizenship of the United Kingdom and colonies (CUKC) to all British subjects connected with the UK or a colony.
The idea was to encourage mass immigration from the Commonwealth and what was then the Empire to fill shortages in the labour market caused by the Second World War.
Prior to 1962, there was no immigration control for CUKCs who could settle indefinitely in Britain without restrictions.
But a cost-based decision by the Home Office six decades later, to destroy the landing cards of what became known as the “Windrush Generation” meant many could not prove their right to remain and they and their children were denied passports, benefits and jobs. Some were even deported.
The political fallout saw Amber Rudd resign as Home Secretary though many felt her predecessor in the role, Prime Minister Theresa May, bore the brunt of the blame as the problems resulted from policies implemented on her watch.
The Empire Windrush was a troopship carrying servicemen back from leave in Australia via Jamaica.
As she was far from full, an advert was placed in Jamaican newspapers offering cheap passage to anyone who wanted to work in the UK.
Many former servicemen who’d served in the war took the opportunity to go in the hope of finding better employment or rejoining the armed forces in what many called “the mother country”. The ship docked on June 21, 1948, with its 1027 passengers disembarking the next day. The usual figure given for West Indian immigrants aboard is 492 but the ship’s records state 802 were from the Caribbean.
There were also a group of Poles who had travelled from Siberia to Mexico and had been granted permission to settle in the UK, with the ship calling at Tampico to pick them up.
The disembarkation of the passengers was a major news event and “Windrush” came to be used as shorthand for West Indian migration and the beginning of modern, multicultural Britain.
Some stowaways were found, and after brief prison sentences, they were allowed to remain.
Many of the new arrivals were housed in the Clapham South deep-level air raid shelter, two miles from Brixton, where many settled, unaware that 70 years later people would think “scandal” and not “generation” when they heard “Windrush”.