Windrush Pioneer: An Interview with Dame Jocelyn Barrow OBE by patric k v e r non Dame Jocelyn Barrow has had a long distinguished career covering 59 years in Britain with her tremendous achievements and her long term commitment and passion for race and gender equality, education and promoting the heritage of the Caribbean community. Early Days in the Caribbean
She was born in Trinidad on the 15th of April in 1929 of mixed race heritage, her father was from Barbados (grandparents were Scottish and French). Dame Jocelyn was the eldest out of fourteen siblings with only six still alive. As the matriarch along with her education and training this has shaped her to be feisty, maverick and astute which eventually held in good stead as a lifelong campaigner for race equality and social injustice. Dame Jocelyn went to St Joseph Covenant School and at the age of sixteen became one of the early members of the People National Movement working with the late Dr Eric William who became the first Prime Minster of Trinidad. She completed her training as a teacher but was still involved in politics and supporting the development of the West Indian Federation and her political party.
Windrush Generation
After working for several years she decided to move to Britain to complete her postgraduate teaching qualification at the Institute of Education. On the 1st of September 1959 she moved to London and thus became part of the Windrush Generation migration to Britain. When the West Indies Federation was dissolved in 1962 she was disappointed in a similar way to her current feelings about Brexit that nations were not working together for the common good. One of her mantra… ‘You can achieve more if we work collectively’. This is what Dame Jocelyn believed that Britain did with its Empire through colonisation using all the 34 BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2018
talent and resources of its former colonies for the good of Britain. Thus she found it disappointing that people are not aware of this history and thus failed to understand why the Windrush Generation were here along with other parts of the Commonwealth. She talked in great detailed about the level of racism that she and others experienced in the 1950/60s in terms of jobs, housing and then the emotional and physical abuse. Although a lot of Caribbean people were educated and skilled they were treated at the bottom of the pile. Whilst she was studying for her postgraduate qualification in teaching she got involved in a project called ‘Each One Teach One’ in helping children of Caribbean heritage to do their homework and to provide advice to parents on the education system. She said white teachers did not know how to support the learning of the pupils and that parents were ignorant of the education system as they assumed the teachers had the best interest at heart like teachers in the Caribbean. However, instead the children were being left behind and also classed as educationally subnormal. A few years later Jocelyn was involved in another initiative called the ‘Caribbean Communication Project’ which was aimed at improving literacy for Caribbean adults based on the national literacy programme called ‘On The Move’.
Fighting for Race Equality and Against the Colour Bar
Dame Jocelyn’s life changed when she and a number of activists arrange a roundtable
meeting with Martin Luther King in December 1964. He did a stop over to London as he was going to Norway to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize. King shared his strategies and tactics around non-violence and holding the government to account around on race discrimination under Jim Crow in America. This meeting inspired Jocelyn and other activists to establish in 1965 Campaign against Racial Discrimination (CARD) with the main focus to establish race relations legislation against the colour bar and racism against African, Caribbean and Asian people in Britain. Dame Jocelyn became a founding member and General Secretary and later Vice Chair of the organisation. She was involved right up to 1970. CARD had a national committee with Anthony Lester, David Pitt, C. L. R. James, Dipak Nandy and Hamza Alavi. The organisation also had local branches around the country. Dame Jocelyn reflects on the hard work and campaigning particularly around the period between 1965 and 1970 in lobbying for the two Race Relation Acts with additional work of helping individuals to exercise their rights for racism discrimination claims. The 1965 Act had no real power as it did not look at employment or housing which was the biggest areas of discrimination. Thus the organisation working in partnership with The Observer newspaper undertook an employment survey one to capture the level of discrimination. A follow up survey was done for London Transport which provided further evidence of systematic racism in the labour market. The lobbying and evidence was critical to
