Life In Britain
Despite only intending to stay for a short time, many of the Windrush Generation settled in Britain permanently. They became trailblazers, the first of successive waves of migrants from across the former empire. These waves of migrants changed British culture forever, introducing new food, new music and new outlooks on life. Even the British urban landscape began to change. Many inner city areas, such as Brixton in south London were originally poor, white working-class neighborhoods that metamorphosed into multicultural melting pots.
However, the reason why the Windrush Generation settled in places like Brixton in the first place was that they had nowhere else to go. Many of the British population did not welcome the extra competition for resources that were already in short supply. They saw the Windrush generation as competition for things like new housing- and resented them for it. As for the jobs, the British government had promised, there were indeed plenty. However, they were not the jobs many had hoped for or expected. Many of the Windrush Generation had to start out in positions they were overqualified for such as factory work and driving buses.
Then there was the plain and simple prejudice the migrants faced. Some boarding housekeepers took to putting up ‘No Coloureds, No West Indians” signs in their windows. However, this prejudice did not just stem from the lower classes. The Windrush Generation was not quite the workforce, Clement Attlee had hoped to attract from Britain’s former empire. When he had heard about the Empire Windrush, he tried to prevent it from leaving Kingston. When this failed, he attempted to have it diverted to the East African coast, with the suggestion that the passengers could find employment as agricultural laborers in rural Kenya.
However, despite the prejudice and the fact that they never intended to stay for long, many of the Windrush Generation settled permanently in Britain. Windrush history is now part of British history. Today, Brixton is the location of Britain’s black cultural archives. It is also the home of Windrush Square, built to commemorate this pioneering generation. There is even a National Windrush Day on June 22, to celebrate the contribution the Windrush generation made to post-war Britain.
This celebration, however, is a very recent event. For Windrush Day was established in the wake of a scandal that arose after it was discovered the British government had destroyed the original Windrush landing cards in 2010– without backing the information up. In April 2018, it emerged that as a result of this, members of the Windrush generation were facing the loss of their rights as British citizens- even facing deportation- despite many of them having been residents for over 50 years. The resulting public outcry, however, proved one thing: that the majority of the British public now share the same belief that the Windrush Generation has always held: That they are British.
Where Do we get this stuff? Here are our sources:
“London is the place for me.” David Olusoga, History Extra, July 2018
Britain, the Commonwealth and the End of Empire, Dr. John Darwin, BBC History, March 3, 2011
World War 2 Statistics, Second World war History.com
Commonwealth Association of States, Encyclopedia Britannica, June 21, 2018