TALKING ABOUT THIS GENERATION

TALKING ABOUT THIS GENERATION

By Steve Murphy

This year we mark the 75th anniversary of both the MV Empire Windrush arriving in Britain and the founding of the NHS.

In June 1948, the same year the National Health Service (NHS) was created, the passenger liner and cruise ship ‘Empire Windrush’ arrived at the port of Tilbury, on the River Thames, carrying hundreds of people from the Caribbean. In the years that followed, tens of thousands of people – men, women and children, encouraged, at first, by the British Nationality Act –answered Britain’s call to come to a nation short of workers and vital skills to help to build our country’s struggling economy and fledgling health service; they left their homes and crossed an ocean to start new lives here.

Indeed, many of the so called Windrush Generation would join the newly founded NHS – in fact it’s been estimated that between 1948 and 1972 the health service recruited around 100,000 nurses of Caribbean origin. Their vital legacy lives on as Health Education England’s chief executive, Dr Navina Evans, pointed out earlier this year, commenting that: “The Windrush Generation has been fundamental to the NHS since its founding, having been invited from commonwealth countries, especially in the Caribbean, to help fill labour shortages in the UK from 1948 to 1973. Ever since, they have formed an essential part of our workforce and communities.”

Dr Evans’ sentiments are echoed by Karen Bonner, a chief NHS nurse in Buckinghamshire whose parents travelled from Jamaica and Barbados, in the 50s and 60s; writing in her blog that, “It has often been said that

the NHS could not function without its black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) staff, and this is undoubtedly true. Today, the NHS is the biggest employer of people from a BAME background in Europe – 20.7 per cent of the NHS workforce which represents over 200 nationalities. Many are doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, domestics, caterers and porters. The Windrush Generation helped to build the National Health Service and I stand on the shoulders of those nurses who came before me.”

Windrush child Garrick Prayogg reflects –page 12.

It has often been said that the NHS could not function without its black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) staff.