They came before the Windrush

Most people reading this will be well aware that the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury on 21st June 1948. A whole generation has been named after the Windrush but less well known is that other ships had arrived earlier. One such ship was the Almanzora which docked at Southampton on 21st December 1947. Among the 200 or so people who disembarked was Allan Charles Wilmot.

Seventy years to the day after disembarking, Allan Wilmot spoke at an event in Brixton: ‘They came before the Windrush’. Born in 1925 in Jamaica, Wilmot is now 92 but is still in very fine form and it was a privilege to hear him speak.

His book: ‘Now You Know’ may be hard to come by (I couldn’t find it on Amazon or ABE books) but, if you can get hold of a copy it is well worth reading and includes a number of lovely photographs. One, showing Wilmot in his Navy uniform in November 1941, shows a very young man who looks little more than a boy (at the event Wilmot said he had lied about his age as he was so keen to enlist).

Wilmot served in the Royal Navy on a minesweeper in the Caribbean. He described this as a ‘suicide mission’. It was alright during the daylight hours when you had a good chance of seeing the mines you were searching for, but at night… Later he joined the RAF and was based at RAF Calshot, near Southampton where he was involved in Air-Sea rescue work.

So, when the Almanzora docked,  Wilmot was returning to a country he had already visited and served during the war. He found the welcome far less hospitable than it had been when he was in uniform. Finding accommodation was difficult (landlords were openly hostile: ‘no Irish, no coloureds, no dogs’) and sometimes he resorted to catching the last tube train at night and sleeping on it until the morning. Employment opportunities were also limited and he did his share of dish washing before securing work in a book shop and subsequently with the Post Office.

Wilmot was also able to carve out a successful career as a musician, principally with a group called The Southlanders. You may think you don’t know any of their songs but, if you are of a certain age, you may recall their novelty hit that featured Wilmot growling ‘I am a mole and I live in a hole’! Allan spoke enthusiastically about the many showbiz personalities he had met during his career, from Bob Hope to Shirley Bassey and Sammy Davis Jnr.

OK, so you couldn’t be at the event, but you can see an interview with Allan  Charles Wilmot here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9-Fbz7Qed8

It’s the next best thing to seeing him in person.