Empire Windrush Arrival (1948): Caribbean Migration to Britain

HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury on the River Thames in June 1948, and on 22 June its passengers stepped ashore, among them more than 800 people from the Caribbean. They were not the first Caribbean migrants to post-war Britain, but the ship’s arrival, filmed and reported by the press, became the symbol of a migration that changed British society. The people who came over the following decades are known as the Windrush generation.

Background: empire, war and work

Caribbean colonies such as Jamaica, Trinidad and British Guiana had long ties to Britain. During the Second World War thousands of Caribbean men and women volunteered for British forces, many serving in the Royal Air Force or working in British factories and forestry. After demobilisation many returned home to islands suffering unemployment, low wages and, in Jamaica, the after-effects of a severe hurricane in 1944.

Britain, meanwhile, faced acute labour shortages as it rebuilt after the war, particularly in transport, health care and heavy industry. Caribbean people were British subjects and had the right to enter and live in the United Kingdom. The British Nationality Act 1948, which received royal assent on 30 July 1948, confirmed this by creating the status of Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies.

The voyage

The Empire Windrush had been built in Germany in 1930 as the passenger liner Monte Rosa. It was used for cruises and later by the German military during the war, then taken over by Britain in 1945 and renamed in 1947 as a troopship.

In 1948 the ship was returning from Australia to Britain and called at Kingston, Jamaica, sailing from there on 24 May. Shipping advertisements offered spare places for £28 10s in the cheapest accommodation, a large sum at the time. Many passengers were ex-servicemen; others were skilled workers, students and adventurers. The ship also stopped at Trinidad, Tampico in Mexico, Havana and Bermuda, and took on 66 Polish displaced persons in Mexico.

One passenger was a stowaway, a dressmaker named Evelyn Wauchope; fellow passengers raised money to pay her fare. On board, the Trinidadian calypsonian Lord Kitchener composed “London Is the Place for Me”, which he sang for a Pathé newsreel camera on arrival.

Arrival and early reception

The ship’s coming caused concern in government. On 22 June 1948 eleven Labour MPs wrote to Prime Minister Clement Attlee urging controls on “coloured” immigration. Attlee replied that the migrants were British subjects with every right to come, while officials privately hoped the numbers would remain small.

Those without accommodation were housed temporarily in a deep-level air-raid shelter beneath Clapham Common in south London. The nearest labour exchange was in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, and many of the new arrivals found lodgings and work nearby, laying the foundations of Brixton’s Caribbean community. Within weeks most had found jobs.

The newcomers took a wide range of work. Some joined the railways, the Post Office or factories; others found jobs in building, engineering and nursing, and several returned to the Royal Air Force. Many had trade skills or qualifications that British employers did not recognise, and took lower-paid jobs than they had held at home. Most expected to stay only a few years, save money and return, but the majority settled permanently and sent for their families.

The Windrush generation

Migration from the Caribbean rose sharply during the 1950s, encouraged by recruitment drives by London Transport, the British Hotels and Restaurants Association and the new National Health Service. Arrivals peaked in the early 1960s, before the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 introduced controls. The total who came between 1948 and 1971 is commonly estimated at around half a million.

Life was often hard. Many faced a “colour bar” in housing and pubs, with notices refusing lodgings to Black tenants, and discrimination at work. Tensions erupted in the Notting Hill race riots of 1958, when white mobs attacked West Indian residents. Caribbean Londoners responded with community organisations, campaigns and cultural events, including the gatherings that grew into the Notting Hill Carnival.

The Immigration Act 1971, which came into force on 1 January 1973, gave those already settled in Britain the right to remain indefinitely. Many, however, were never issued documents to prove it.

Over these decades Caribbean migrants and their children made a deep mark on British life. They worked as nurses, bus drivers, railway staff and factory workers, and established churches, businesses and newspapers. Caribbean musicians brought calypso, ska and later reggae to British audiences. Campaigners such as the Trinidadian journalist Claudia Jones, founder of the West Indian Gazette in 1958, fought discrimination, and the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 helped prepare the way for Britain’s first Race Relations Act in 1965.

Key people

• Sam King (1926–2016), a Jamaican RAF veteran who travelled on the Windrush, later co-founded the Windrush Foundation and became the first Black mayor of Southwark in 1983.
• Lord Kitchener (Aldwyn Roberts) (1922–2000), Trinidadian calypso singer whose songs chronicled Caribbean life in Britain.
• Clement Attlee (1883–1967), Labour prime minister, who resisted calls to stop the migration.

The Windrush scandal

From 2012 the Home Office adopted a policy aimed at creating a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants, requiring employers, landlords, banks and health services to check people’s immigration status. Long-settled members of the Windrush generation, who had arrived legally but often lacked paperwork, found themselves unable to prove their right to be in the country.

Reports in 2017 and 2018 revealed that people who had lived in Britain for decades had lost jobs, been refused medical treatment, been detained, or been removed to countries they had left as children. The government later identified dozens of people who may have been wrongly deported. In April 2018 Prime Minister Theresa May apologised to Caribbean leaders, and Home Secretary Amber Rudd resigned on 29 April 2018 after the controversy over removal targets.

A compensation scheme opened in 2019. The independent Windrush Lessons Learned Review by Wendy Williams, published in March 2020, found that the Home Office had shown “ignorance and thoughtlessness” on race and had failed the people affected.

Myths and facts

Myth: The Windrush brought the first Black people to Britain. Black people had lived in Britain for centuries. Two other ships, the Ormonde and the Almanzora, had brought Caribbean migrants in 1947.

Myth: Exactly 492 Jamaicans arrived on the ship. That number came from early reports. The passenger list shows 802 people from across the Caribbean, along with other passengers.

Timeline

• 1948, 24 May: The Empire Windrush leaves Kingston, Jamaica.
• 1948, 21 June: The ship docks at Tilbury.
• 1948, 22 June: Passengers disembark; eleven MPs write to Attlee.
• 1948, 30 July: The British Nationality Act receives royal assent.
• 1954, 28–29 March: The Empire Windrush catches fire and sinks in the Mediterranean.
• 1962: The Commonwealth Immigrants Act introduces controls.
• 1973, 1 January: The Immigration Act 1971 comes into force.
• 2018, April: The Windrush scandal leads to a government apology and a ministerial resignation.

Why it matters

The Windrush’s arrival is remembered as the start of modern multicultural Britain. Caribbean migrants helped staff the NHS, run public transport and rebuild post-war cities, and shaped British music, food and politics. The scandal seventy years later showed how fragile their recognition remained, and since 2018 22 June has been marked as Windrush Day.