Windrush 75: The contributions they've made
It's been 75 years since the Empire Windrush ship docked in Essex on June 22 1948
Last updated 22nd Jun 2023
Events are taking place across the country today, to mark 75 years since the HMT Empire Windrush docked in Tilbury.
The HMT Empire Windrush first docked in England on June 22nd 1948 at Tilbury Docks in Essex, bringing people from the Caribbean who answered Britain’s call to help fill post-war labour shortages.
Greatest Hits Radio has spoken with Caribbean Studies Expert, Dr Juanita Cox, about Windrush, it's importance, and the contribution of those from the Windrush generation, as well as those who came before them.
What is Windrush?
"The concept of Windrush emerged out of the arrival of the ship HMT Empire Windrush into Tilbury Docks on 21st June 1948. The passengers just disembarked on the 22nd of June. Hence, that's the day we have this national observe and it's called Wednesday.
"The ship's route took it from Jamaica to the UK, with stops at Trinidad, Bermuda and the Azores, and over 802 passengers gave the Caribbean as their last place of residence.
"Many were returning military personnel who served Britain during the Second World War, but the passengers of course included over 200 women over 70 children over the age of 12 and their arrival has come to basically kind of symbolise the post war migration of Caribbean people to Britain during the post war period up until the 1971 Immigration Act, which effectively brings migration from the new Commonwealth territories to an end."
Why do we mark the anniversary each year?
"The arrival of Windrush and its passengers is really significant. It had a profound effect on British society, British culture.
"So many would have played an important role in the rebuilding of Britain after the Second World War, and they also importantly helped to resolve Britain's labour shortage. So you've got to think about British firms such as the British Transport Commission, the Lounge and Transport Executive and the British Hotels and Restaurants Association. All of those companies actively recruited workers from the Caribbean.
"It's also important to mention the NHS because we know that was established in 1948, and it's no coincidence that Caribbean nurses have provided the bedrock to the NHS for numerous decades now."
Why is it still so important, 75 years on?
"I think one of the reasons why we need to still be thinking about this 75 years on is because despite the contributions of the Caribbean Community and also the wider Commonwealth to Britain, we're still stuck in this situation, where we are unable to have mature conversations about British history, about issues of race and racism that still prevail kind of in British society.
"There doesn't appear to be this understanding that the history of Windrush is British history, that the history of black people in Britain is British history. It's not a separate history. We're not a separate group of people, you know, and and we tend to look like a set of group with a separate group of people simply because the complexion. But you know, when we talk about migration and people, you know constantly, it's always about people who are visible.
"Whereas we need to remember that same time as the Caribbean community came here in the in the 20th century, there were an equal number of people, 500,000 people from Poland came and those people, because of their complexion, have been able to completely slip into British society unnoticed and become part of, you know, what we see as 'White Britain'.
"So I think it's really important that I guess we use this period of Windrush 75 to start having really mature conversations about race and understanding that we're here because Britain was there, because Britain had an empire and actually more importantly that, anybody born on British territory, whether they liked it or not, was automatically a British subject.
"So when people came from the Caribbean, they didn't come here, as you know, people from foreign place. They arrived here as citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies. They had the exact same status as the white population that was here at the time."
Windrush Influences - some of the key people
Sports
"The influences are vast and I think the obvious ones, of course, are it in sports.
"So we think of sport and we think of Olympic gold medallist winners like Linford Christie, who was the a former sprinter. Think of people like Lewis Hamilton, whose heritage is Grenadian and he's the Formula One driver.
"We think of people like Dina Asher Smith, who again is another Olympic medallist with Jamaican heritage.
Music
"And of course, you know, if you're thinking about the musical landscape. British music has been completely transformed by Scar, by Reggae, by Calypso and I think what people often forget is that even groups like The Beatles, you know, their musical style became heavily influenced by the people who mentored them.
"And I'm thinking in particular of their mentor and the promoter of The Beatles in the early years, a man called Harold Phillips, who others will know as Lord Woodbine. He was a calypsonian who'd been born in Trinidad. He served in the Second World War. He returned to Britain actually on the Empire Windrush and opened a club. It's called the new Colony Club in Liverpool and he was really central to the success of the long term success of The Beatles"
Literary and Cultural Theorists
"Britain obviously has a really rich tradition of literature going back to Shakespeare, but at that key period in the 20th century, it needed a bit of shaking up.
"And it got that from the Caribbean writers who came here. So you're looking at writers like Sam Selvon, Edgar Middlehouse, E.R Brathwaite, Wilson Harris, George Lamming, people like that. But then you looking at people like I've just mentioned, E.R Brathwaite. He wrote the book To Sir, With Love.
"That but became, you know, a brilliant film. That famous film that most people across the world will have seen added to that is the kind of Caribbean English, you know, Caribbean people have their own unique expressions, many of which have added richness to the English language itself."
"The intellectual life I really want to mention, because that's something we very rarely talk about and you think about figures like the Jamaican born cultural theorist Stuart Hall. He became the founder of the influential Left Review. He played a really key role in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University and he literally before he died was one of Britain's leading cultural theorists.
"You then have amazing people like again, Paul Gilroy and extraordinary historian and thinker, award-winning architects like Sir David Adjaye. You know, you think about the NHS and the nurses and the people that kept us alive during COVID they were, you know, people of colour were primarily the key workers within the NHS, you know, disproportionately represented as key workers during that period of coved.
"But also politically, we have people like Baroness Amos, who came from British Guiana, who served in the British cabinet."
Art
Food
"Of course, the culinary landscape in Britain has moved from being bland to being extremely diverse, extremely rich from jerk chicken to currys - you name it!"
Dr Juanita Cox is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, working on an AHRC funded project called 'The Windrush Scandal in its Transnational and Commonwealth Context.'