By Audrey Dewjee
The stories of the Windrush generation were once little known but, following the Windrush Scandal, the general public is now more aware of what happened to people who arrived from the Caribbean between the end of World War Two and the coming into force of the Immigration Act 1971. The arrivals’ experience was one of struggle – against racism in many quarters such as housing, education, employment, policing and from neighbours – and eventual success, as families settled and thrived despite the odds.
However, for at least one group of arrivals in the early days after the war, the experience was very different. Although not completely free from difficulties, some of the young men who arrived in Leeds found helping hands and a welcome to their new home.
Their story began to emerge when I interviewed Alford Gardner, a pioneer who had served in the RAF, gone back to Jamaica and then returned on the Empire Windrush and settled in Leeds. When I interviewed Allan Dawkins to record the story of his father, Charlie, who had served in the RAF and then decided to stay in Britain after the war, I learned a bit more.
Allan, who had already done a good deal of research into his father’s story, showed me the electoral list for 20 Clarendon Place, Leeds, for March 1950. Other houses in the street were occupied by 2 to 5 individuals; on the list for number 20 were twenty names. At first, I thought this was a perfect illustration of the familiar Windrush-era story of new arrivals having to live in overcrowded, substandard accommodation because of local white hostility, however, nothing could be further from the truth.
I discovered that Alford and Charlie had both lived for a time at number 20 and, surprisingly, after marrying local girls both had managed to buy their own homes very shortly afterwards. This seemed to be in marked contrast to the usual Windrush narrative of great difficulty in finding good housing, so I decided to investigate further – and what a story unfolded!
In the summer of 1948 a number of young West Indian men were busy seeking accommodation in Leeds and they were finding it a very hard task.
Alford Gardner and his brother Gladstone had been demobbed from the RAF and had returned home to Jamaica. Finding suitable employment impossible to get in Jamaica, where suddenly several thousand skilled men had returned after service in Britain, they decided to take a chance and return to the “Mother Country” on the Empire Windrush. They thought it would be easy to find jobs as so much reconstruction was necessary after the war, and they weren’t unduly worried about finding somewhere to live.
The ship docked at Tilbury on 22nd June. Alford and Gladstone, together with a pal named Warren Lawson and a man they had made friends with on the Windrush, made their way to Leeds where they had friends – most probably girlfriends. Alford was familiar with Leeds having spent six months there on a vocational course while still in the RAF, at that time living in Greenbanks Hostel in Horsforth. On their arrival in Leeds, the men caught the bus to Greenbanks where Alford felt sure they would easily find rooms. However, when they applied for admission, they were refused. The warden explained that although he knew Alford and he had been a satisfactory resident when he previously stayed there, he was unable to accept them. A later intake of West Indian men had caused so much trouble at the hostel that the police had instructed the management not to take any more.
Alford takes up the story: “When we were turned away from the hostel, we still had our suitcases with us. The four of us went back into Leeds, to the railway station. A white man told us where another ex-airman, Johnny Johnson, lived. I left the other three lads at the station and went to see Johnny. He knew some people nearby and he took us to this woman whose son had just gone back to sea. She said we could have his room, but it wouldn’t be permanent. So four of us shared the one room.”
The men were really lucky to get it because not only was accommodation in very short supply, but a recent incident was fuelling fears and racist sentiments in Leeds.
On Monday 21st June, just before their arrival, there was a headline in the local paper, the Yorkshire Evening Post, which read: “KNIFE USED: Five Jamaicans charged in Leeds”. There had been a “considerable melee” between five West Indians and a group of white men, after the white men had made insulting remarks to the West Indians’ white girlfriends. Two of the white men, Thomas Carthy and Dennis Broomfield, had ended up in Leeds Infirmary where Carthy had to be admitted as an in-patient. It took until 1st October for the case to come to trial at the Quarter Sessions and, despite the newspaper pointing out that the defendants were all ex-airmen and “all men of previous good character,” in the interim it caused difficulties for other West Indians in the city.
The case of the five defendants is interesting. Although there was evidence of police brutality, the judge in the case seemed to have been sympathetic to the accused. Defending counsel (J. R. Lyons), on one of the days during the trial, alleged that during the adjournment for lunch, racial discrimination had been practiced in the bridewell [police station]. One of the accused, Herbert Alexander (Johnny) Johnson, held his head, which was bleeding, and Mr. Lyons alleged that Johnson had been struck. The newspaper report continued, “A note was then handed to the Assistant Recorder…by one the warders. The matter was not discussed further and the hearing continued.”
Two days later, the Yorkshire Evening Post recorded the verdict in the case:
SUMMING-UP the trial of five Jamaicans charged at Leeds Quarter Sessions with causing grievous bodily harm to two Englishmen, Mr. J. Stanley Snowden (Assistant Recorder) said there had been a good deal said in the case about the fact that the accused were not born in this country.
“You will pay none the less attention to the evidence they have given because of that,” he told the jury. He continued: “In our courts testimony of a witness is not judged according to colour of skin but according to his general reputation as a man.
“You must not on any account dream that the evidence of a man not born in this country is of less value than that of a white man,” Mr. Snowden said.
Speaking of the accused he said that the jury had to treat every one of them as a man of hitherto exemplary character.
All five Jamaicans were found not guilty of causing grievous bodily harm to Thomas Carthy and Dennis Broomfield. Each was found guilty of assault and was bound over for 12 months.
Yorkshire Evening Post
After initial difficulties Alford and his friends all found work within a fairly short time, but long-term accommodation proved a more difficult matter. Another young airman who went to Leeds on his return to Britain was Primrose Ezekiel Blackwood, known as Basil, and it was through him that the rest of the group found accommodation at 20 Clarendon Place.
Basil, aged 23, had arrived in Liverpool on 2nd October, 1948 on the SS Orbita. He named 56 Woodsley Road, Leeds 3, as his proposed address in the UK and electrician as his occupation. According to Alford, it was Basil who met John Murray-Robertson – perhaps in a pub, although John (also known as Robbie) did not drink – and they had become very good friends. When John learned that a group of ex-servicemen was having great difficulty in finding somewhere to live, he and his wife Sarah bought 20 Clarendon Place, set up a boarding house business, employed a cook, and offered them accommodation. Today the house is part of the campus of the University of Leeds. It is used as student accommodation and comprises eight bedrooms, three bathrooms and three kitchens.
Despite the size of the house, 20 residents would have been something of a squeeze, but Alford Gardner says that several of the men on the electoral list did not live in the house. Besides Alford himself, residents included his brother Gladstone, Charlie Dawkins, Warren Lawson, Roy Marcus, Clarence “Sully” Sullivan, Vince Stewart, Lloyd “Tommy” Tomlinson, George Hyman and Primrose “Basil” Blackwood, though they didn’t all live there at the same time, as people came and went.
It seems the non-residents used the house as a meeting place and as a mailing address until they sorted out permanent residences for themselves. Alford says that John Murray-Robinson was quite a strict landlord. He told his tenants, “don’t bring any women”. But gradually he relented and allowed their girlfriends to call in.
One of the young ladies who called was Basil’s girlfriend Lilian. The pair met in 1948 at the Mecca dance hall in Leeds and started going out with each other One day she had to take a message to Basil. She knew he lived in Clarendon Place, but not the number, so she asked a passer-by. [Apparently the address was well-known in the neighbourhood as the house where the “darkies” lived.]
Lilian said that the front garden was immaculate and she leaned her bike against the hedge and rang the bell. Alford was looking out of the window so she asked him if Basil was in. He said Basil lived at the back of the house and he would go and see if he was there. He was and came to the door with a clean duster in his hand. He had been polishing the table in his room. The hall was clean and tidy, which impressed Lilian and when Basil took her to the room he shared with a friend, that also was immaculate. The beds were made and turned down just as they would be in hospital. Everything was very clean and tidy. The room had a settee, a wardrobe, a magnificent inlaid table (which Basil had been polishing), twin beds and a fireplace. A door led off to a separate kitchen which was for their exclusive use, with outside steps down to the back garden which was also well-kept. It sounds as if their accommodation was at least as good as, and possibly better than, that of many of their fellow citizens at the time.
Charlie Dawkins also made his way to Leeds after the war. Having just been demobbed from the RAF on 4th June, he made the decision that the best way to support his mother, back home in Jamaica, was to stay and find work in England. There was the added attraction in Leeds of a certain young lady by the name of Joyce Gledhill, whom he had also met at the Mecca dance hall, at the end of the previous year. Very soon Alford, Charlie, Basil and many of the others were ready to get married and find houses for their wives and families. This is where the next benefactor stepped in to assist them.
Herbert Alexander “Johnny” Johnson (right) and Charlie Dawkins (left) with a group of friends in Leeds (Courtesy Dawkins family)
I was surprised when I learned from Allan that his father had bought a house with another ex-airman, Hugh Young, who was known as “Tokyo,” for which each had paid £500. That was a lot of money to have saved in the early 1950s. Alford Gardner also bought a house around the same time. At first I wondered if there had been some kind of “pardner” scheme in Leeds to help them but Alford said there wasn’t. He said that a solicitor helped them. In an oral interview for the Essex Record Office, Alford explained that this man decided that his firm would get houses for West Indians, so they started buying houses and doing them up.[1] At first it seems, these were houses for rent, but later they were for sale. Alford and four others bought their first house together thanks to this solicitor who Alford described as “a lovely man who wanted to help West Indians”. By the time three of the five men had married, they were ready to move on to individual homes. Alford described how “that man really helped each of us to buy our own house. The house was bought in my name; all I had to do was go down to his office every week and pay. I just had to buy furniture and move in. I can remember him going to inspect the house – he was a big man, six foot odd – going in the house and jumping up and saying ‘solid, solid’. He was a saint – a man that should have been knighted.”
Lilian Blackwood confirmed that she and Basil had also bought their first home and several subsequent ones through this solicitor, whose name was Charles Henry Charlesworth, and she also praised him highly. Fellow Black History researcher, Bill Hern, helped me discover more about him.
At National Council of Housing and Town Planning conferences held in the summer of 1958 at Hammersmith Town Hall and Malvern, Mr. Charlesworth presented papers in which he outlined the problems as he saw them. He said that local authorities were not making sufficient use of their powers to give financial help to housing societies renting accommodation to newcomers, white and coloured, who took up work in their towns. Every additional worker who could raise production in a labour shortage area had a right to satisfactory health and housing conditions, but many were struggling to make a home in one or two miserable rooms in England’s great industrial cities because they could not find better accommodation. He added: “There is an overwhelming need in the present state of world affairs to offer hospitality and friendship to the stranger in our midst.” He informed his listeners that the housing association with which he was associated in Leeds had acquired 65 houses and converted them into 87 dwellings and that the operation was on a non-profit-making basis.[2]
In fact Mr. Charlesworth had actually founded two housing associations, the first in 1950 because he wanted to tackle homelessness which had risen in the years following World War Two. Apparently he had been impressed with the co-operative housing movement in Sweden and based Leeds Tenants Housing Society on this model. The second was Aggrey Housing Limited which was formed in 1955 and named after the Ghanaian educationist Dr J. E. K. Aggrey (1875-1927).
In just over one year of operation, Aggrey Housing Limited purchased 16 houses and converted them into homes for 40 families – 15 West Indian, 14 African, 1 Indian and 10 Europeans.[3] It was the country’s first dedicated housing provider for Black and Minority Ethnic communities, aiming to support the integration of newcomers to Leeds which it did through the Aggrey Society of which Mr. Charlesworth was joint honorary secretary along with Thomas Bilizeria (Mac) McCarthy, another ex-airman. Hubert Glendore (Glen) English, one of the joint chairmen, had also served in the RAF.
Charles Henry Charlesworth died in Perth, Western Australia, in May 1992.
Yet a third benefactor set out to help the West Indians settle in Leeds. This was Dr. George William Brown, the co-owner of a large woollen mill in Huddersfield. Dr. Brown was an African American who came to Britain in the early 1930s to study for his PhD at the London School of Economics. By the time he arrived here he already had three degrees from three different American universities. At the LSE he met Elsie Kaye, a fellow student, whose father owned Kings Mill. The couple fell in love and married and when Elsie’s father died he left the mill to the two of them. They ran it successfully until their deaths in the late 1970s.
On his arrival in London, George Brown took an interest in Black community affairs. In April 1935, he and P. Cecil Lewis were sent to Cardiff by The League of Coloured Peoples to investigate the problems of Black seamen who were being classified as aliens despite having proof of their British nationality. The report submitted by Brown and Lewis not only resulted in a large number of seamen having their British nationality restored, but it also threw light on the appalling racism suffered by Cardiff’s Black community.
Dr. Brown’s solidarity with Black Britons continued into the 1950s. He bought a house in Chapeltown, Leeds, which became a hostel for West Indians, many of them men who had served in the RAF during the war. He also tried to set up a lodge of the Elks, an American fraternal order with which he had been connected in Ohio, along with a Leeds businessman, Mr. W. A. Waldenberg. According to Alford Gardner this venture didn’t succeed in the end. Alford says that he was always too busy to join the Elks, but he remembers Dr. Brown clearly as being very nice and quiet and always giving advice to the newcomers to help them fit in and stay out of trouble. He organized visits to his factory, perhaps with the intention of offering work to some of the men.
At Kings Mill, Dr. and Mrs. Brown employed a multi-racial workforce, so if anyone from Leeds had accepted a job, they should have felt at home. An article in Ebony in June 1968 gave this description of the mill’s employees:
Touring Kings Mill Ltd. is a bit like touring the United Nations in New York. In addition to English workers, there are Poles, Yugoslavs, Ukrainians, Czechs (most of these are World War II refugees) and a large number of West Indians from Trinidad, St. Lucia, Grenada, Barbados and Jamaica. Adding to the historic mill’s international atmosphere, are turbaned Sikhs and immigrants from Pakistan. To keep good workers, the Browns pay wages above hourly rates set by the British Government.
It wasn’t only philanthropists who welcomed the men to Leeds. They soon stole the hearts of local women. One of their main attractions was that they were very good dancers – unlike many of the local lads who had little enjoyment in dancing and only went to dances to meet the girls. There were several dance halls in Leeds, but the Mecca seems to have been the one where many inter-racial romances began.
Most of the men settled into marriages which lasted a lifetime. One by one, their weddings took place over the next few years – Glen English and Rita tied the knot in 1947, Johnny Johnson and Barbara in 1949; Mac McCarthy and Margaret in 1950; Tokyo and Margaret, Basil and Lilian, and Charlie and Joyce all in 1951; Alford and Norma in 1953 and Warren Lawson and Mary in 1954. There were several others.
Alford and his friends founded the Caribbean Cricket Club which became the centre of the social life for this little community, along with frequent parties in people’s homes and activities such as seaside trips and Christmas parties which were organized for the children. The wives formed close lifelong friendships and these families, through their children and grandchildren, have left a lasting and positive legacy in the city of Leeds.
[1] Essex Record Office – Interview with Alford Gardner, recorded 10 February, 2018 (SA 69/1/3/1) https://soundcloud.com/essex-record-office/alford-gardner-10-feb-2018
[2] See Hammersmith & Shepherds Bush Gazette, Friday 6 June, 1958, p.7; Birmingham Daily Post, Friday 4 July, 1958, p.3.
[3] Paul Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics, Cambridge University Press, 1986/1990, p.184.