The 75th Windrush Anniversary According To A Child Of The Pioneers

The episode of Diary of a Lawyer discusses the 75th anniversary of the Windrush generation, a group of mainly Caribbean men and women who arrived in the UK in 1948. The episode highlights the challenges they faced, including housing and employment discrimination, but also their resilience and contributions to the country. The speaker emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and celebrating the Windrush generation's impact on British culture, economy, and society. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Diary of a Lawyer, and in case you have missed it, it's around the time of the 75th anniversary of the Windrush generation, a generation of men and women who around 75 years ago set foot on these isles in a little harbour or town called Tilbury in a ship called the Windrush, hence the name the Windrush. Almost 75 years later, that generation of men and women, mainly from the Caribbean, transformed the United Kingdom in many, many ways across many spectrums, whether it's economy, national system, transport, culture, food, and generally the diversity of this country has been immeasurably important, and such is the measure of whether the king, to his credit, embraced attendant services, there's a gallery, and was involved and invited and made people and touched flesh for people relative to descendants of that generation. But I think among the many articles that I have been reading around this anniversary, and it's fitting that this episode is about these folks and their generation, but among the many articles is one that is by Hugh Moore, who describes himself as associated with the relatives or the parents of that generation, and he writes a moving article in the Guardian, I think it's on the 22nd of June 2023, and the title is They Survived and Threw Out in a Hostile Britain and That's Why We Revere the Windrush Pioneers, and he goes on to say that docking 75 years ago, they had no idea of the difficulties ahead, he claims the country meant nothing easy, and their achievements should be saluted. So I'm going to try to cover as much as what he says, or as close to his own version as possible, and he says that looking at the picture, there's a picture at the Tilbury Docks on HMT Empire Windrush, 22nd June 1948, of mainly young men impeccably dressed in suits and hats and ties, and says, look at it, again the picture taken 70 years ago at Tilbury Docks, look at those people as they pose for the historic photocross, look at their faces, wearied from a month of travel, etched with joy, hope, bewilderment, and knocking, stage legs just out of sight, full-bodied. He says of the descendants of the Windrush generation, they get to look at those faces every day in the pictures of their own families, that they hang on the walls and in their front rooms. They have the same posed smiles, the demeanor of all adventurers who smile at the outset of an uncertain journey. There were around 4902 of them, and they knew they had to embrace that account for themselves. Their attire was pin-sharp, whatever could be said of them on arrival, it was not to be that they were slovenly. They knew enough to show that they came in peace. Some sang an exuded bonhomie for past news, but others interviewed in the day, so to echo the self-effacement and deprecation they saw as essentially English. He goes on to say that they made the best of it, but they didn't know much at all, that they would have to land much quicker in turbulent decades ahead. He points out the questions that they faced. Where would they live? Around 236 of the men would be passed to the half-light of an underground shelter, an underclocking common in South London. It was dark, a bit damp and cramped, as they had transferred from a ship to the innards of a submarine, but it was English dry land and proximity to labour exchange brimming with forceful work off of the springboard that allowed many to rent rooms and buy homes in nearby Brixton, making it the unofficial black capital of Britain and Europe. In time they would migrate to other big cities where work was available, Birmingham, Manchester, where dog and construction work could be found, and on to Leeds and Nottingham as well. But smiling on the dog, how could they have known about the No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs signs to come? The exploitative landlords, the fact that Pitt Blackmun, known as the West of them, widely reviled, and rightly so, as king of slum landlords, would become a go-to guy because he at least was willing to let them live in his quiet accommodation, albeit at an extortionate cost. They were a passionate exploiter of saviours. They took what they could get. They didn't know what lay ahead, and they prevailed. They rented rooms, worked hard and saved cash. My uncle, his uncle, a contractor, who was a bit of a wheeler-dealer in his days, helped guys find rooms, bought some houses, rented out more rooms. His dad, who arrived in 1953, stayed in one of the parts of the Caribbean to UK Underground Railroad until he moved into his own place, and thanks to the carpentry jobs, bought his own. It describes how things moved on very fast, and according to the Imperial Museum, when the first USGIs arrived in Britain in 1942, there were thought to be between 8,000 and 10,000 black people in Britain, scattered mainly around the many ports. But by 1958, as families grew, relatives left behind in the Caribbean were sent for, and others, like his own father, came by sea and air to try their luck. 126,000 had arrived. They helped each other. His dad ran Padna, the unofficial serving scheme where a group of people throw money in the port, and at the end of the week, one of them received the total for their own use, saved capital for a house full of furniture. People would knock on the door and hand to me, barely seeing their contribution to pass on when dad came home from work. And when all the money was in, one of them would come back to collect it all, and banks are smiling about their acquisition of the full loan, or the bill that could finally be paid. Sniffy, distrustful banks wanted an option, so they trusted each other. They came for employment. But what did they know about what would happen at work? Jobs were available, and they were ready to craft, but their faces would fit one day and join the next. There was no employment or discrimination on the buses until the 1960s. A colour bar pertained on Bristol's buses, or the trains, or at Ford, or on the viewing site. Not until 1968 did the Arrest Relations Act become enacted, and so he goes on to describe the various problems they faced, which include housing, employment, and among other things. But he says that the prey prevailed with a bit of help. The no-blacks, no-Irish say the signs, and for those so targeted, it led to camaraderie. And two decades later, when his father retired in traction, having fallen or scaffolding into a yet waterless pool, he was visiting the hospital, and Tom Norton was there. Everything was new for the first day for them. Most thought a free British schooling system, staffed by teachers highly respected in the Caribbean, would be the list of their worries. As to those in London in 1967, 400% of their children diverted to ESM schools, was almost double in the mainstream schools, 15%. And prevailing on education remained an objective today, which is shown in the statistics on racial disparities within the colour system. But back then it took many forms. Saturday Supplementary Schools in draughty halls and churches, campaigns by black teachers and activists, and left-leaning institutions exposing the discrimination that they faced. And so it goes on. So first was housing, then there's employment, then education. And they had to be very inventive to circumnavigate the disadvantage. The campaigns were also micro and macro. They used black teachers and others. He says that his mother armed with a bi-body, foot cameras with children under foot, placed a door lock sitting directly outside the Director of Education's private office. When his sister was allocated a less school than merited, the Director hunkered down for who was yet to be challenged by a female immigrant. But she had staff to aid and raised more patience than him, and a deal of indignation. By day's end, their allocation was changed. It took customers to prevail. Wow. He goes on to say that, how could they ever know that until the docks, that the prejudices of those who regretted their presence here would be conveyed by this process of law and order, meaning the stop and search and the bankruptcy act, which provided the legal framework focusing on them. He then turns to his childhood, when he one day retires from playing football on Locke Street, to see basically the outcomes of being targeted as black people. And he says that he sees in the Aragu pictures, bright people, smart people, tough people, adaptable people, people who didn't know what awaited them, but largely did what they intended to do when they bought their tickets. They made a better life for themselves and those of us who followed. And he sees a journey at its end, and through the years, that made this a better country. Their sweat and that of their descendants helped build the infrastructure, physical and social, the creativity and refuses of politics, the industry, the arts and the sport. He concludes that they faced challenges, and today we see their descendants face challenges, and a country that has still come to terms with its ambivalence. He says, consider the Windrush matter, the dealing and then the subsequent management of that. The fact that, and many, many other issues around that. But he concludes that for today, take a moment, look at the picture, look at them, then look at Britain, who knew that that picture, that those people would change Britain. And that's the Windrush, a ship that sailed from the Caribbean in 1948, 22nd June 1948, and docked at the Tilbury Docks in England in that time. And so, long live the Windrush generation, and we thank you for everything you've done, for all of us, in every way, in terms of culture, economic improvement, infrastructure, national health system, music, art, politics, and social issues. Thank you, and thank you. Bye. Thanks for listening. We'll speak again. Bye.