Memories of my father

Leonora Innocent recalls the Windrush story of her father, Alexander Broodie

ON MY wedding day in 1987, my father said ‘put God first’ and then emphasised the importance of remembering your children.

I did not fully understand the relevance of what he said until his Windrush story slowly unravelled over subsequent years, revealing the sacrifices that he had made for his children.

This brought me to wonder: ‘Where would I be if he didn’t take that journey in 1955?’

Alexander Uriah Broodie was born on January 12, 1925 in Freetown, Antigua, the only child of Jimmy Adams and Ina Broodie.

Back home he was known as Uriah Adams. At the tender age of one, his mother took him to St Kitts for a better life, but my father could never forget his birthplace in Antigua as he was sent back every year to stay with his uncle Obe to remember his heritage and stay connected with his family there.

By the time Alexander was a young man, the talk around the Caribbean islands was about the chance of going to Britain. My father told us that politicians from England came over to St Kitts inviting West Indians to help rebuild ‘the Motherland’ after the devastation suffered during the Second World War.

They said that England could not do it without our help to restore the country destroyed during the war to its former glory.

There was not a lot of opportunity for work in St Kitts. “Times were tough,” my father would say.

His close friend Aaron was the one who said “let’s go to England” and so when my father finally made the journey, he said it was “like going on a blind date, blindfolded in the land of nowhere”.

News got back to my father that a friend of his named Procup, who lived close by in St Kitts, had a brother who was already living in Cardiff. It was then he knew he was coming to Cardiff as he had friends here.

My father worked as a fisherman and was also a very good diver. He earned five shillings a week and would give money to his mother. She provided him with clothes and food and saved money for him in a tin.

My father was able to pay his way to go to south Wales. When he went down to book his passage, his friend didn’t have his money to pay the fare at that time. My father, having a great sense of humour, said to Aaron “you mean to say you was the one who said ‘lets go to Britain” and you haven’t even got a copper! How you gonna get there, you can‘t swim it!”

My father wasn’t going anywhere without Aaron so he put down half each deposit for them and Aaron paid the other half later on.

My father set sail aboard the SS Auriga destined for Southampton docks on September 20, 1955.

Upon arrival in England, he was amazed by all the smoking chimneys on the houses, thinking these must be factories so there would be plenty of work!

To his surprise, they were for the coal fires to keep the houses warm — he had never witnessed anything like this back home!

He made his way to Cardiff, and found lodgings in Tiger Bay, a room in a shared house with other West Indians. He would have to put a penny in the gas metre for hot water and then ‘everyone would come running down the stairs to fill their kettle up until the penny done!’

One thing my father was not prepared for was the British weather. He said he got up one snowy morning and went to turn on the tap and no water came out.

The pipes had frozen and icicles were blocking the tap. ‘Oooh, it was so cold’, and he was now having second thoughts, doubting the wisdom of coming to such a cold country, and thought about returning back home.

He managed to find work in a factory. It wasn’t an easy job: he had to carry heavy iron bars on his shoulders and then put them in a furnace, but he loved the heat there, so he felt at home! These jobs were the ones that he said the white people wouldn’t want as they couldn’t stand the heat and hard labour.

I remember my father having to work three different shifts, 2 till 10, then 6 till 2 and 10 till 6. He earned £8 a month, paying £1 for rent, £1 for food, and £1 for what he called his ‘pocket money’.

Every month he put £5 aside so he could send for my mother to join him. He also had nine

West Indies to send for but as he said he had to find somewhere to put them first. Rather than renting, in 1960 he purchased a house at 27 Cranbrook Street ing me about a ‘partner hand’ where say four or more people would all put in money each week from their wages into a central pot. One person would have all the money one week, then the next person the following week and so on. This was one way the Windrush generation helped each other to get through hard times to send for family and friends and to buy property. children back home to think about. In 1956, my mother also came to Wales, finding work as an auxiliary nurse, which meant they could save even more.

1960s my parents were able to send for their children two by two.

My father was a very proud man. I will always remember him saying ‘father have, mother have and blessed are the child that has his own’.

He was very pleased with what he had accomplished by trying to keep his family together, and providing a better future for us all.

My father was worried as he still had children left in the in the Cathays area of Cardiff at a cost of 14 shillings a month. He also had three extra mouths to feed: Margaret, Selwyn and myself (the baby of the family!), we were born in Cardiff. Now my father had 12 children, and throughout the

My father’s mother played a big part in the community in St Kitts, paving the way for many other people to come to the UK by lending them money which would be recycled over and over by those who found work and then sent it for the next person to borrow.

I remember my father tell-

The stories don’t stop there. Fifty-three years after Alex arrived in Cardiff, in 2008, two boys met at Plymouth University for the first time. Unbeknown to them, they were two grandchildren of two childhood friends, Alexander and Aaron who had sailed to Britain together 1955, paving the way for their grandchildren to graduate on the same stage together.

One of them was my son. Who would have dreamt that could have happened? As my father used to say, ‘Providence, guided my hand’.

In 2010, I remember my father receiving a phone call out of the blue from someone in Scotland with the same surname trying to trace their long lost relative.

He told them it can’t be him, as he was only a Broodie due to his grandfather having his slave master’s name. That’s what they used to do in slavery days, he said; the children would carry the name of the slave master.

My father had a big sense