This is not in the news, strictly speaking, but we’ve talked about it in class, so it makes it relevant for us to learn more about it.

22nd June 2018 will mark 70 years since HMT Empire Windrush arrived in the UK with the first wave of Caribbean migrants

2018 marks 70 years since HMT empire Windrush docked in the Essex town of Tilbury, carrying 492 Caribbean passengers. Encouraged by a newspaper advertisement offering cheap transport, hundreds of Jamaicans made the trip to the country they had fought for in the Second World War, in the hope of finding work. The UK faced a labor shortage following the devastation wrought by the war and the passing of the British Nationality Act in 1948 give Caribbean and other Commonwealth people’s British citizenship and full rights of entry and settlement. The images of West Indians disembarking the Windrush have come to symbolize the beginning of British multiculturalism, with those who arrived in the UK in the late 1940s often referred to as the Windrush Generation. This wave of newcomers faced social and economic exclusion upon arrival and were regularly denied private employment and accommodation on the basis of race. Over the following years, the Caribbean community often faced a racial prejudice and violence and during the 1960s and 1970s, the government passed new legislation to impose stricter immigration controls. The 1971 Immigration Act restricted primary immigration to the UK but allowed Commonwealth citizens already in the country indefinite leave to remain. However, the Home Office did not issue paperwork confirming the status of those who arrived before 1971, leaving a number of the Windrush generation in 2018 facing the prospect of deportation from the country they have called home for decades.