Making Windrush Day a nationwide occasion is a wonderful proposal
A Occasions of London editorial.
Yesterday marked the 74th anniversary of HMT Empire Windrush arriving at Tilbury docks on the finish of its historic voyage from Kingston, Jamaica. Round 800 passengers from numerous Caribbean islands disembarked to start a brand new life in what some nonetheless known as “the mom nation”. As two of these passengers, Alford Gardner and John Richards, each 96, helped the Duke of Cambridge unveil a statue at Waterloo station celebrating the Windrush era, a message from the Queen hailed “the profound contribution” to British life revamped the a long time by these brave pioneers. Nicely stated, Your Majesty.
In 1948, when the primary Caribbean immigrants arrived, many to take up jobs within the newly created Nationwide Well being Service, there have been maybe 20,000 black folks dwelling within the UK. There are actually near 2 million British residents who determine as black. Within the month that the Windrush arrived, some MPs complained about extreme immigration. The formidable, neatly dressed, optimistic younger males within the newsreels, having been invited to make the journey, then needed to overcome discrimination in employment, housing and the felony justice system. A few of their descendants face the identical prejudices.
Many Windrush residents had been wrongly deported, whereas others confronted bureaucratic mistreatment. That shameful episode, to which the duke referred in his remarks on the unveiling, illustrated the necessity for better schooling on the origins of Britain’s multicultural society. To that finish, our letters web page yesterday carried an attraction from scores of outstanding black Britons to make subsequent yr’s seventy fifth anniversary a nationwide occasion. “This isn’t solely black historical past,” the letter says, “it’s British historical past. It must be one thing everyone knows and commemorate.” Fairly so. June 22, 2023 must be marked as a big date within the calendar.