Windrush Day will always be a bittersweet anniversary That so many overcome impossible obstructions and terrible injustices shows their resilience, not this country’s benevolence 📨 Read y_alibhai's latest newsletter
Windrush Day, on 22 June, honours the first arrivals from the Caribbean on that day in 1948
This is In Conversation with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week,Anti-immigration politicians and Britons habitually proclaim that Britain has always generously welcomed refugees and migrants. It’s a lie. A deliberate, nauseating lie. Immigrants of colour and Jewish heritage have been put through the fires for venturing to these isles for centuries.
Queen Elizabeth I, a sponsor of buccaneers and seadogs like Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake and slaver John Hawkins, was so disturbed by the presence of black people brought into her land that she issued an edict: ” … there are of late diver Blackmores brought into this realme, of which kinds of people there are already here to manie… Her Majesty’s pleasure therefore ys that those kinde of people should be sent forth of the lande”.
You see in this the antecedent to Theresa May’s hostile environment. The “Blackmores”, small in number, servants of white money-makers, disregarded the order, stayed on. In 1764, theclaimed almost 20,000 black people were settled in London. They melded into the population. Some racists could be their descendants.and asylum carried on: outsiders were needed but not wanted, never good enough, never accepted as people of these isles, useful but needing to be constantly rebuffed and excluded.
So on to that June day when the Empire Windrush landed and 493 passengers, who had paid £28 and 10 shillings for the one-way fare to move to the United Kingdom to work arrived. Several were former servicemen, volunteers who had fought with the allies. They were needed – to rebuild the country and construct the welfare state – but not wanted.The government delayed the docking and considered rerouting the ship to East Africa. But they were British subjects and had right of entry.
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