This year marks the 75th anniversary of the arrival to the UK of the ‘Windrush generation’. In the aftermath of the Second World War, thousands of citizens from the Caribbean countries were recruited to positions within the newly created NHS, in public transport, and in other industries, such as the production of coal, steel, iron, and food, as members of the British Commonwealth. Their right to work in the UK as British subjects was further confirmed by the British Nationality Act of 1948, which from January 1st 1949 created an equal status between British subjects born in Britain and those born within the UK’s colonies, as ‘citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies’, as well as for those who naturalised.
HMT Windrush
The Windrush generation are so called because of the HMT Empire Windrush, one of the first ships to arrive in 1948 at Tilbury Docks in Essex. On board were 1,027 passengers (and two stowaways), of whom 800 came from the Caribbean, the majority of them from Jamaica. Footage of their arrival is available from a Pathé news reel available on YouTube at https://youtu.be/ QDH4IBeZF-M. Following the vessel’s arrival, thousands more continued to travel to Britain by air and by sea, until new British Government procedures introduced in the early 1970s effectively ended Caribbean immigration.
The Windrush Scandal
As British subjects, no documents were required upon arrival to prove their right to work, which later led to the political crisis in 2017 known as the ‘Windrush Scandal’, as a consequence of a more recent British Government’s ‘Hostile Environment’ policy, introduced in 2012. Despite many experiencing
