Before going any further we should explain that ‘Why Are West Indians Here?’ is the name of a Birmingham-based project (WAWI) who have been doing good work for a number of years. You can visit their site here: https://www.whyarewestindians.co.uk/node/1
Bill Hern attended the Walter Tull remembrance event recently, an event that WAWI were instrumental in organising.
Actually, the question posed by the name of the project is one that we’ve been considering ourselves in the context of Windrush 70. The answer, of course, is that there is no single answer, people have been coming to the UK from the Caribbean for a whole host of reasons and for a very long time.
There is a lot of focus on the arrival of the Empire Windush in June 1948 and it has come to symbolise the start of a period of mass migtration that continued at least until the 1960s. But ‘symbolise’ is an important word in that sentence. The Windrush shouldn’t prevent us remembering people who came to the UK long before 1948.
Lionel Turpin, to name just one, came to England from British Guiana in time to enlist and serve in France during World War One. He lies in an unmarked grave in Leamington. His son, Randolph was to become a boxing world champion.
We don’t know when Eddie Parris came to the UK from his birthplace of Barbados but in 1909 he married a local girl and they lived together in Chepstow. Like Turpin, Eddie served his country during World War One and, also like Lionel, he fathered someone who went on to make a name for themselves in the world of sport (Eddie Parris Junior was Wales’ first Black international footballer).
But, returning to the Windrush, why did the people on board come to the UK and why did so many follow them in the next two decades?
One reason, certainly, was that there were few prospects in the Caribbean. It wasn’t just that Jamaica’s economy had been flattened, literally, by a devastating hurricane in 1944, the whole region was blighted by the dead hand of British imperialism. The young journalist, Peter Fryer, reporting on the arrival of the Windrush for the ‘Daily Worker’, wrote: ‘when I went on board I asked scores of men why they had come to Britain. Practically every one gave the same answer – unemployment and low wages “back home” and the prospect of a good job in Britain.’ [‘The Daily Worker’ 23rd June 1948]
Cy Grant, originally from British Guiana (who served with Bomber Command during the 2nd World War), commented on: ‘the unbroken flatness of the physical landscape, along with a pervading sense of colonial stagnation seemed to impose limits on my future horizons. I had to escape.’ [‘Caribbean Volunteers at War’ by Mark Johnson, page 2]
James Berry, a poet who arrived in October 1948 aboard the SS Orbita, had something similar to say: ‘what I needed was opportunity, in my village there was no opportunity. People were never going to make it.’ [‘Keep on Moving’ by Tony Sewell]
Others were clear they were only staying in UK long enough to earn some money before returning home to the Caribbean (or so they thought). Euton Christian, who had served in the RAF during the war, said of the first wave of migrants: ‘they expected to come here, to find a job, to find a home. And in about four or five years, they earn enough money to go back … they’re not coming here into this cold country to live indefinitely, a short period , get some money, go back home. But it never happened.’ [‘Windrush’ by Mike and Trevor Phillips, page 71]
As Stuart Hall, who came to England in 1951 to study at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, commented: ‘they began to put down roots very, very quickly, of course. And, you know, the more roots you put down, the harder they are to pull up. You don’t quite know when that tip over point arrives when you are on this side.’ [‘Windrush’ by Mike and Trevor Phillips, page 139]. I know that my own in-laws still spoke fondly of ‘returning home’ when I first met them in 1979, probably some twenty or so years after they came to England – it was just a dream and I think by then, with two children born here, they knew it.
For others perhaps it was just the universal wanderlust felt by young men (and women) everywhere: ‘one of the reasons for my desire to travel was that I didn’t want to be under my parents’ footsteps’ [Edwin Ho, British Guiana, quoted in ‘Keep on Moving’ by Tony Sewell]. The fact that he had been ‘about to get married and in a heavy night of gambling I lost all our savings of around 35,000 dollars’ may have given his departure aboard the Windrush an added urgency!
Others on board, a group of boxers brought to the UK by a promoter and various musicians, may have traveled because travel between fights or gigs was a natural part of the industry they worked in. In future work we intend to look at the boxers and musicians in more detail to see how their careers progressed and whether they put down roots in the UK.
Hopefully as the Windrush 70 project develops we will learn more of the pioneers’ motivation as well as what happened to them when they arrived – at least two, Allan Wilmot and Alford Gardner, are still alive and kicking (see our earlier post: ‘Two Windrush Pioneers – Still Going Strong After 70 Years’). They certainly seem happy with the decision to come.
