FOOD FOR THOUGHT!

From the West India Docks to Tilbury. How times have changed!

The West India Docks were built in 1799 to ease the burgeoning trade on the London Docks. Who would have envisaged that 150 years later, people who were once classified as assets, and had represented a significant part of the British economy for more than 300 years, would be invited to come to live and work in Britain. Now celebrated as the Windrush Generation, the arrival of the first wave of migrants at Tilbury Docks on 22nd June 1948 signified a turning point, changing the face of Britain forever. Today The Bank of England has acknowledged its highly significant role in facilitating the slave trade - including the fact that they also owned plantations in the West Indies.

Did you know?

Once slavery was entirely abolished, so great were the compensatory payouts that were made through a series of complex structures, that the government had to take a loan to cover the debt. The loan took nearly 200 years to repay and was finally settled in 2015.