Pride Of Britain: A Windrush Special celebrates 75-years

At the recent Conservative Party conference, Home Secretary Suella Braverman claimed a “hurricane of mass migration” was heading for the UK.

Supporters agreed with her stark assessment, while critics likened her comments to Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech.

Immigration has always been a thorny subject, even when nations have struggled with acute labour shortages and cried out for people to come to their shores. The UK’s post-Second World War years are a perfect example.

The high casualty rates meant filling vacant jobs up and down the land was difficult, at a time when those from former Commonwealth countries and parts of the British Empire were looking to our shores for a better life.

In 1947, two ships docked at Liverpool and Southampton, carrying 441 passengers from the West Indies between them.

The arrivals went largely unnoticed and in 1948, the British Nationality Act afforded citizenship to all people living in the UK and its colonies, as well as the right of entry and settlement in the UK.

That summer, the Empire Windrush docked at the port of Tilbury, near London, carrying 802 migrants who had seen an advert in a Jamaican newspaper offering cheap transport on the ship. They were met with a media frenzy.

Footage from the era of people walking down the Empire Windrush gangplank marks the birth of multiculturalism in the UK. However, despite there being plenty of jobs available in the UK, African-Caribbean immigrants were often made to feel unwelcome, while clashes over housing, which was still in short supply, broke out.

Fascist and anti-immigration groups quickly sprang up; a hostile environment that historian Winston James later suggested helped create a shared Caribbean identity among immigrants, who came from a variety of island and class backgrounds.

In 1962, the UK enacted the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, restricting the entry of immigrants, and by 1972, only holders of work permits, or people with parents or grandparents born in the United Kingdom, could gain entry.

The move effectively ended Caribbean immigration.

Nevertheless, a new generation of Britons with African-Caribbean heritage came into being, contributing to and enriching British society in many, many fields.

But it wasn’t the end of the Windrush generation’s story.

In 2018, some British subjects who had arrived in the UK before 1973 were wrongly detained, denied legal rights and threatened with deportation. At least 83 people were also wrongly deported from the UK by the Home Office. An estimated five per cent of victims were compensated.

Thankfully, this special documentary, created in partnership with Pride of Britain, is looking at more positive aspects of the story while celebrating 75 years since the Windrush’s arrival. Here, The Prince of Wales, Sir Trevor McDonald, Mel B, Alesha Dixon and Judi Love meet those who embarked on new lives in Britain.

They listen to their real-life stories, including some of the many challenges they have faced and the goals they have achieved.

Each contributor will be invited to the Pride of Britain Awards, to represent the Windrush Generation on stage, and receive a special Award on the entire group’s behalf.