TREVOR O PHILLIPS:
n June 22, it will be exactly 70 summers since an iconic group stepped off the military transport ship, the Empire Windrush, at Tilbury Docks in London, to launch an adventure that would transform their own lives and the future of Britain. They were not to know they were also walking into the pages of history, the first recorded mass migration to this island. Their story would come, in many ways, to define what it means to be British. And, contrary to much that has recently been said and written about these men and women, the past three score years and ten have not proven that we are a nation of small-minded bigots. Quite the opposite. The Windrush story shows Britain to be a country which, in its embrace of people who share our values, can claim to be a model to a world roiled by ethnic and racial tensions.
Reflections on the importance of Windrush Day in a post Brexit Britain Trevor Phillips is Chair of Green Park
64 BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2018
Courageous That is why, along with the historian Patrick Vernon, my brother Michael and I are renewing the call we first made 20 years ago, for June 22 to be declared ‘Windrush Day’ in perpetuity.
Our book, written to mark the 50th anniversary in 1998, was entitled Windrush: The Irresistible Rise Of Multi-racial Britain. There were several reasons for this. Yes, we wanted to recognise the group of men and women of our parents’ generation who made this epochal journey.
But we also wanted to celebrate the character of the nation that, time and again, has proven ready to welcome, accommodate and integrate people prepared to play a part in making our country a better place. Indeed, when I had the original idea for the book (and a BBC TV series), I was inspired by the role of those early voyagers in defending Britain’s very existence. For the fact is that scores of the men on the Windrush had volunteered in 1940 to travel thousands of miles to fight in the Battle of Britain; many saw their comrades from the Caribbean die in combat. Of the 250 men who came from Trinidad to volunteer for the RAF, for example, one in five perished in action.
‘What made the Windrush voyagers so special was that they went looking for something better. They believed they would find it in England.’ The late Ulric Cross, a Trinidadian who would go on to become a High Court judge, flew 80 missions as an RAF navigator, crash-landing seven times. He was one of the lucky ones: of half-a-dozen classmates who joined up, he believes he was the only one to see out the war. Most of the 492 men and women who arrived on the Windrush have now run their race. Yet their footsteps still echo through our nation’s story, telling us much about ourselves as a people.
