Reflections on Windrush

The Context of Windrush

After World War II, it was Britain who asked their overseas territories to come over to help rebuild their Motherland. The British territories including the commonwealth came as British Citizens: “We did not come to Britain, it was Britain that came to us.” Many came wearing their veteran uniforms and medals, other men and women were skilled in a trade. 

Black people struggled to find anywhere to live. Signs in windows read “no blacks, no Irish and no dogs.” They had to rent rooms in houses in multiple occupations. They took on jobs at the British Railway or as bus drivers and conductors; they worked at Ford’s car dealership. They worked as labourers and carpenters on building sites, or at hospitals as auxiliary nurses and cleaners.

Banks refused to loan money and mortgages to black people. 

Racial tensions were particularly fraught during the 1980s. Various riots took place because black people, fed up of their experiences of discrimination and brutality from police and civilians, took to the streets. These included the Brixton riots and New Cross Fire riots in 1981, and the Broadwater Farm riots in 1985.

I am told that they were also surprised how the British people were dressed and they were not expecting to see poor working class British people. The British people settled in the Caribbean had held themselves in high status. It was said that in the early days British people would empty their potties by throwing waste through their windows onto the streets of London. It was the colonial people who had found the British to be ‘uncivilised’.

I am told that black people resorted to setting up their own banking system called The Pardoner. It was this system which helped many of them to be able to rent rooms and then go on to buy their own houses in the 1950s through to the 1980s as they were used to owning their own homes in the West Indies.

“The Windrush people were young, ambitious and proud people. They were fashionable, their garments colourful”

By the 1980s, many people of that generation became homeowners and landlords in their own right. It had been the only means of survival, and of being reunited with families who wished to join them from the Caribbean. I remember as a child living with one of my aunties, with my parents and siblings, in just one room. It was a house in multiple-occupation. In the 1970s, my parents bought their own house. 

I observed racism within the education system as black children were often expelled from school for various and inexplicable reasons. A common reason was their hairstyles which were perceived as unacceptable by their white teachers. Black children were labelled as being underachieving or removed from mainstream schools. Many were placed in special needs schools, branded ‘educationally subnormal’, and often left with little or no education. 

The racism was so bad that black people were frequently verbally attacked, beaten up, and even killed. Employers were often guilty of withholding or refusing to pay their black employees’ wages.

This led to the Jamaicans physically fighting back. A popular African historical narrative was that the unruly slaves during the slave trade were taken to Jamaica. Jamaicans were known as fighters who would rarely turn the other cheek.”