Re-discovering ‘Windrush history’

‘Windrush’ is a household name in 21st century Britain. It has its own commemorative day in the national calendar: June 22nd, although not a public holiday, as hoped for by Patrick Vernon and other campaigners since 2010. Patrick, a leading figure in public health and public history in Britain, was building on the pioneering work of Sam King and Arthur Torrington in the 1990s, and had hoped that the day would be set up in time for the 2012 Olympics. By the time the Windrush Day was created in 2018, the name Windrush had been tarnished with harsh words like ‘scandal’ and ‘betrayal’. Windrush Day seemed a belated gesture by a beleaguered government trying to make amends for an anti-immigration policy that had left the ‘Windrush Generation’ abandoned by those who had welcomed them fifty years before. In writing our textbook for the new Pearson ‘Migrants in Britain’ GCSE course, we knew that both the promise of 1948 and the later betrayal would feature strongly.

Mike and Trevor Phillips’ ‘Windrush’ book of 1998, published for the 50-year anniversary of the Windrush voyage, had accompanied a four-part BBC television series celebrating what they called ‘the irresistible rise of multi-racial Britain’. Their optimism was to be confounded by the ‘hostile environment policy’ of the 2010s. The latter is often seen as a point of change or even a ‘turning-point’ in government attitudes to immigration. In the classroom, we had sometimes used a ‘scales of justice’ diagram to illustrate government policy on immigration, with the 1948 Nationality Act on one side showing a welcoming attitude to immigrants. The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act was then the first of the restrictions on immigration, apparently forced on the government by the racist reactions of English people in the 1958 riots. The task of writing these assumptions into the textbook seemed straightforward and speedy, perhaps half a day’s work. However, research revealed quite a different story; ‘change’ morphed into ‘continuity’; and the speed of writing slowed.

The original West Indian immigrants on board the ‘Empire Windrush’ had not been ‘invited by the government to help re-build Britain after the war’. Indeed some of the wary passengers were expecting a British naval vessel to appear in the Channel to steer the ship elsewhere, probably east Africa. The government had certainly considered that option. They had never wanted non-white people from the British Empire to take advantage of their British citizenship options and return to the ‘mother country’, despite their valiant war-service a few years before. Re-building the national stock of people and resources was seen as a white European project, as declared in the debate on the Polish Resettlement Act of 1947. Whitehall had done its best to secure the co-operation of imperial and commonwealth governments in limiting the distribution of British passports to their native peoples. Most had complied, but the colonial rulers in the West Indies saw migration to Britain as the only option remaining for some of their people in economic crisis. They kept issuing British passports. The frustrated civil servants sent negative propaganda to the Caribbean to try to deter migrants, including films of recent dire English winters; but still they came.

For most of the 1950s the government explored ways of restricting further non-white immigration to Britain. When the 1958 riots occurred, they actually had to stall those plans, so they would not be seen as responding to violence! When the 1962 Act finally came, it looked different to the supposed open policy of 1948, but the reality was that the official thinking about immigration hadn’t really changed. It was the overt nature of official limits that was new. # The restrictions were tightened in the following years, until in 1971, two years short of the Windrush’s ‘silver jubilee’ (never celebrated as such), the government’s ‘patrial’ clause said that British citizenship was only available to Commonwealth citizens if one grandparent had been born in Britain.  #The triumphs of multi-racial Britain of the late 20th century had to be secured by the resolute commitment of generations of Black and Asian people to help change attitudes and contribute to British life. As Sam King said in the Phillips’ book: “They (the government) did not want us. And what is important for us to tell the nation, and especially the young people, we survive.”

Abdul Mohamud & Robin Whitburn (Justice to History)

Between them, Abdul and Robin have over 50 years' teaching experience. Abdul is currently a Subject Leader of History and Robin is a Subject Tutor for PGCE History. As Justice to History they have written widely on History education, including the following Hodder Education textbooks:

AQA GCSE History: Migration, empires and the people (published 2016)
Hodder GCSE History for Pearson Edexcel: Migrants in Britain, c800–present and Notting Hill c1948–c1970 (published 2022)
A new focus on... Black Lives in Britain, c.1500–2000 for KS3 History (publishing 2023)