Rate him or hate him - you can’t ignore him! Dotun Once shunned Windrush now remembered by our leaders

SEVENTY-FIVE WINTERS on and the legacy of that inaugural journey of post-war immigration that represents the modern settlement of Britain by Caribbean pioneers is all around us, in every one of us, and getting stronger every day.

You just can’t escape it. Everywhere you turn you’ll find Windrush. If not in the geography, then in the history, and the folklore, and the culture, and in your bones.

But we wouldn’t know it was Windrush if the Windrush flame had not been kept alive.

Someone had to do that. And make no mistake, Britain tried to forget about Windrush… and it almost succeeded.

TEN WINTERS ON from that historic arrival, Windrush is already a dirty word and the people it brought back over the Atlantic are regarded as a problem. ‘The colour problem’.

No politicians want to own that moment in June of ‘48 when the good ship docked in Tilbury. Certainly not the racist MP Enoch Powell, who stretched out the colonial hand of economic desperation that triggered the mass movement from the Caribbean to the socalled mother country in the first place.

The ‘colour problem’ he created manifests itself on the streets of, in particular, Notting Hill in West London. And what vestiges of pride the Windrush

First Generation left — about being the early settler pioneers — is gradually eroding. They don’t even know this is history.

TWENTY WINTERS ON noone is talking about Windrush. It is the Swinging Sixties for some but for many of us it’s the ‘bleeding’ Sixties, our ‘Once Upon a Time When We Were Coloured’ Sixties.

Local councils herd our par- ents into council estate ghettos, and then herd their children into failing schools, and then herd us into dead end jobs.

Britain is institutionally racist with successive immigration acts translating into a colour bar if not THE ‘colour bar’, a subtle form of apartheid. It was a time of survival and a time of asking, ‘why, oh why, oh why’?

Sometimes our parents couldn’t remember why they came to this country in the first place. And if they did, they couldn’t remember what possessed them. How were they to know it was history?

TWENTY-FIVE WINTERS ON and a new generation, a second generation, the Windrush generation. The irony is that we don’t even know it.

Most of us had never even heard of Windrush. We have no idea about its legacy and we’re not celebrating those founding fathers and mothers like the heroes they were/are. Certainly not on the TV and on the radio, and there is very little evidence of it in the newspapers.

Windrush is the story around the Sunday rice and peas dinner table, passed down, griot style, from generation to generation.

In 1973 we were ‘afros’ and afros were us — Afro-American, Afro West Indian, Afro-African. The bigger the ‘fro the bigger the militancy is the general rule of thumb, and the bigger the militancy the more you are likely to be reading your Black history without Windrush. Maybe we’re ashamed. Because whereas Black Americans were taken out of Africa in chains, we from the Caribbean and subsequently Africa came here of our own accord.

On ‘the good ship Windrush’. Maybe it’s more embarrassment than shame. Windrush was very rarely mentioned in the public discourse within (the Black community) and without.

And none of us, Black or white, wants to claim it. Not in this era of Black Power. And revolution.

FORTY WINTERS ON they’re still trying to hide it. A little booklet called Forty Winters On is published to mark the 1988 anniversary. It’s sponsored by The Voice newspaper, Lambeth Council (the borough of Brixton) and the South London Press. It features the memories of Britain’s post-war Caribbean immigrants. The foreword is by the great social historian Professor Stuart Hall, who famously quipped that “we are over here because they were over there”, and adds in this 40th anniversary of the Windrush souvenir: “Though the path

Windrush like Sam King plays a critical role in keeping Windrush alive and turning it into something to be celebrated.

FIFTY WINTERS ON it’s like man’s forgotten what Britain was like before Windrush. The ship brought colour to Britain.

Local councils herd our parents into council estate

And Then Heard Their Children Into Failing Schools

for Black men and women was uncertain, there were opportunities, life-chances — chances to be taken by those who were willing to gamble with the future because they had so much at stake and so little to lose.”

I am not exaggerating when I say that this little booklet of memories by some of those pioneers who were on the

Literally and metaphorically.

The last empire coronation in 1953 reflected this.

The revolution that the Windrush began saved Her late Majesty’s crowning from being too ‘terribly white’. It was ‘terribly white’ nevertheless, but at least it wasn’t completely ‘terribly white’, if you know what I mean.

SEVENTY-FIVE WINTERS

ON there will no doubt be some member of the royal family (maybe even the King himself) who comes out giving Windrush the high five. Because now everybody loves it, and dares not say a word against it.

Prime Ministers would sooner say I ain’t into this reparations thingy, than say I ain’t into this Windrush thingy.

But as we begin this quarter of a century (one generation) build-up to the Windrush centenary we should pay tribute to those who kept the flame alive in those coldest winters ever so that these founding fathers and mothers of modern Britain.

These magnificent 491 men and one woman will always be given the credit for being the building blocks upon which our multi-cultural and multi-faith sceptred isle is built. That’s what this new King should be saying. Or does he want Meghan to say it for him?