How the Windrush settlers made south London their home

Windrush Day is celebrated on June 22, a day on which people of Caribbean heritage commemorate the 75th anniversary of the arrival of MV Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks in Essex.

It was on this day in 1948 when 500 Caribbean men and women who had travelled on the Empire Windrush settled in the United Kingdom. They were not all Jamaicans, but from the many other British Caribbean colonies like Trinidad, British Guiana, Barbados, Bermuda and others. There were also 66 Polish migrants (WWII refugees) and people of other ethnic groups on board.

Many of the migrants who landed on June 22, 1948, had nowhere to live and so the Colonial Office was there to help through Baron Baker, a WWII RAF serviceman from Jamaica. He took on the responsibility of arranging accommodation at the Clapham South Deep Shelter, London.

He said to Major Keith, of the Colonial Office, “ The Air Raid Shelter had been used to house Italians and German prisoners of war, and even myself, when I came to London sometimes and could not find accommodation. So why not open it for the people on the Windrush? However, he told me to get in touch with Joan Vicars (later Dame Joan Vicars), and I also got in touch with Fenner Brockway and Marcus Lipton (MP for Brixton) at the time.

“We had a long discussion about the situation. Finally I told Major Keith on June 22 1948, that I was going on board the Windrush that night. I added that if a telegram were not sent to me to say the shelter was open, then I would tell the passengers on the ship that none of them should disembark until I got assurance.

“I went on board that night, and about an hour afterwards I received the telegram. So it was not until the last moment that a decision was made to open the shelter. That night, the shelter housed 236 Windrush settlers. The decision to open it was important in the making of Brixton as a multi-racial community. The shelter was about a mile from the centre of Brixton and most of the settlers found lodgings in the Borough. Some of them also settled in Wandsworth, Southwark and Lewisham.”

Baron was asked how he felt about contributing to this: “ It is a nice feeling, because when I came you could travel (all) over London and there was no black person to be seen. To find one I had to go to Aldgate East. But today, every corner I go to, I can see four and five black people. It makes me feel that what I’ve done in the past, and am now doing, has not been a waste of time,” ( 40 Winters On, published by The Voice/Lambeth Council: 1988).

Baron Baker played an important role in helping to make the south London boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham a multicultural enclave in which to live.

ICONIC SYMBOL

But this was not the first time that people of African heritage were migrating to this country. For example, about 250 years ago, a young man, known then as Gustavus Vassa, decided to make Britain his home. In 1766 he had bought his freedom from enslaver Robert King on the island of Montserrat for £40. Vassa was his slave name which was given to him by a Royal Navy captain, Michael Henry Pascal.

With Captain Pascal, Vassa served Britain in the Seven Years’ War against France (1756-1763). Vassa served on the same ship that took General James Wolfe and his men in battle against French troops in Quebec in 1759. Later, under his African name, Olaudah Equiano, Vassa wrote a bestselling book called The Interesting Narrative, which was first published in 1789 and which went into eight other editions until 1794. He became an explorer, businessman, and an abolitionist.

His book, The Interesting Narrative, was published in three other European languages: Dutch (1790), German (1792) and Russian (1794), and there was also a New York (USA) edition (1791). The book is about his life and times in Africa, the Caribbean, North America and Britain.

Olaudah Equiano was a contemporary of Ignatius Sancho, an African, who lived as a boy in Greenwich from the 1730s and later became a butler of the Duke and Duchess of Montagu. He late became a shopkeeper and lived with his family in a property just where the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is located in Whitehall, London.

He composed music, and was friend to many figures on the literature and arts scene, including the actor David Garrick. He was said to have been among the first Africans in Britain to have voted in a British election during the 1770s. He also wrote a large number of letters which were collected and published in 1782, two years after his death. Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait of Sancho was done in 1768 while Montagu family members were in Bath.

Both the stories of Equiano and Sancho are included in AQA and OCR textbooks for history GCSE level (national curriculum) from 2018.

Those are just two of the thousands of African people who lived and worked in Britain hundreds of years ago, and whose contributions to the country made it a better place in which to live. Windrush Day, June 22, commemorates the lives and contributions of a new post-war generation of Caribbean people who, like Equiano and Sancho, arrived and made the UK their home.

The inclusion of the arrival of the Empire Windrush in the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony cemented Windrush as arguably the most iconic symbol of migration and highlighting the dawn of multicultural Britain to date. Also, Windrush stories are included in AQA and OCR textbooks for history GCSE level (national curriculum) from 2018.