My Children Will Always Carry the Legacy of Windrush...
My children will always carry the legacy of Windrush, but they and their peers are already redefining what that means in a new century. They aren’t so much chameleons, changing coats to suit the surroundings, as creatures whose coats of many hues allow those confident enough to do so to move around with greater ease than we could… Windrush is a cloak they wear as they choose, not the straitjacket it could be for my generation.” “Caribritish: me, my family and the legacy of Windrush.
- Hugh Muir, The Guardian, June 7th 2018
The Windrush legacy continues to be felt both in the Caribbean and in Britain some 70 years after the vessel landed. Descendants of the Windrush migrants continue to live in Britain contributing to British society and culture but increasingly find their sense of citizenship, security and identity – their very Britishness - threatened by remnants of political policy from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as new policies driven by ever-increasing nationalism within modern day Britain.
Meanwhile in the Caribbean, persons who have been to Britain as part of this great migration have returned home bringing valuable investment, knowledge and training or entrepreneurial activities home to the former colonies, but are still not quite at “home” with themselves.
The full impact of the Windrush period continues to be a rich discourse on post-colonial identities. What cannot be denied however, is the continued history of entanglement between former colony and colonial master, nor the impact of this movement which was so far reaching in both the coloniser and the colonised, leaving neither unscathed nor untouched by this great movement of people.
Recruits to London Transport. Courtesy of Barbados Government Information Services
I think you always need the double perspective. Before you say that you have to understand what it is like to come from that "other" place. How it feels to live in that closed world. How such ideas have kept people together in the face of all that has happened to them. But you also have to be true to your own culture of debate and you have to find some way to begin to translate between those two cultures. It is not easy, but it is necessary.
- Stuart Hall
Acknowledgements
European Union
EU LAC Museums Project
University of St. Andrews
The University of the West Indies
Barbados Museum & Historical Society
Historical Contents and Visual Materials
Barbados Government Information Services
British Broadcasting Corporation
British Library
Dr. Henderson Carter
Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation
Mr. Claude Graham
Mr. Neil Kenlock
London Transport Museum
Reading Museum
Mr. Syd Shelton
West India Committee
West Indies Federal Archives Center
Wisden
Preparatory Research
Mr. Dario Forte
Ms. Rosalie Mayers
Ms. Wendy Storey
Ms. Heather Wiltshire
Oral Histories
Mr. Roy Campbell
Rev. Buddy Larrier
Ms. Hedda Phillips-Boyce
Review and Editing
Ms. Lorna Abungu
Ms. Debra Barnes-Tabora
Dr. Mary Chamberlain
Dr. Suzanne Francis-Brown
Rev. Guy Hewitt
Dr. Lennox Honychurch
Dr. Tara Inniss-Gibbs
Dr. Sherene James-Williamson
Equipment Loan: Fresh Milk Arts Platform
Graphic Design: Mr. William Cummins
Production: SignUp Inc.
