The Windrush Generation - Caribbeans in Britain (Handout)

Seminar: Fiction and Media in Multiracial Britain
October 26 th , 2005
Stephany Arib-Mundt, Nele Klingner,
The Windrush Generation – Caribbeans in Britain
History:
- “SS Empire Windrush“ sailed away from Jamaica and arrived in June 22, 1948 and
brought the first group of 492 immigrants to Tilbury near London
- the term “Windrush Generation“ became synonym for the post-war immigration
wave from the Caribbeans – beginning of multiracial Britain
- ship had been used for troop transports and as a hospital ship during WW II
- British government turned to the countries of Empire and Commonwealth Countries
after WW II, encouraged mass immigration to help with post-war reconstruction
- passengers attracted by better chances in the “mother country“, wanted to start a
new life, a number of them had been soldiers during war, returned to join the Royal
Air Force
- no immigration restrictions in the British Empire at that time
- plenty of work in the UK but housing was a huge problem
- clashes with the established white community
- 1950s: riots in London, Nottingham and Birmingham
- government restricted immigration: in 1972, only holders of working permissions or
people with parents or grandparents in the UK could gain entry
- Caribbeans in the UK were excluded from social and economic life around them
- they began to adjust the institutions they brought with them like the churches, and to
participate in institutions to which they had access: trade unions, professional and
staff associations
Today:
- British Afro-Caribbean community regarded as most integrated non-white ethnic
group in the UK
- UK: marriages between people from the West Indies and white people eight times
more common than in the USA
- high unemployment rate, high levels of child poverty
Black British Literature:
First wave:
- looking back at their origins, preoccupied with the challenges of Britain (lack of
housing, discrimination, hostility)
- George Lamming: „The Emigrants“ (1954); Samuel Selvon „Lonely Londoners“
(1957)
- London: centre of the literary scene, many writers came to get published and win
respect of their literary tradition

- no direct personal involvement in political movements (they wrote poetry and
fiction, not political tracts)
- many intellectuals attracted by the economic opportunities of post-war Britain.
- „familiar strangers“: they knew British culture, landscape and manners. Their
imagination of the country was dominated by the works of Shakespeare, Blake,
Dickens or Austen
- Samuel Selvon in „Finding West Indian Identity in London“: „There was also a
feeling for the English Countryside and landscape which had possessed me from
schoolday reading of English poets. In the hot tropical atmosphere I dreamed of
green fields and rolling downs, of purling streams and daffodils and tulips, thatched
cottages and quiet pubs nestling in the valleys. And I wanted to see for myself the
leafless trees covered with snow as depicted on Christmas postcards“.
The 1960s:
- 1958: Notting Hill Riots
- Black British People began to look to the United States and the struggle for Civil
rights
- revolutionary and angry 1960s
- „Paid Servant“ (1962) by Edward Ricardo Braithwhaite, frustrated by his work as a
teacher and social worker
- established writers revisiting the Caribbean and the homelands of their ancestors,
paid attention to their state of „exile“
- Caribbean Arts Movement set up in 1966 by writers like Edward Kamau
Brathwhaite or the publisher John La Rose. They wanted to be promote new black
literature by writers from the metropolitan centres + countries of origin
- Caribbean Voices:
o since 1946, main platform for readings by West Indian writers and for
discussion of their works
o radio programme, 30 minutes
o helped to start the careers of George Lamming, Edward Kamau Brathwhaite,
V.S. Naipaul or Samuel Selvon
o was aimed at the West Indian audience in the West Indies - doubtful, whether
it made any significant impact on promoting Caribbean writing among a
British readership
o Newspapers and Magazines brought West Indian literature to the attention of
the British
The Angry New Generation:
- born or grown up in Britain, did not put up with the challenges of Britain in the
polite way their parents had done
- Linton Kwesi Johnson: expressed the frustrations about being born and brought up,
but not accepted in Britain through poetry and literature
- 1976: another riot at the Notting Hill Carnival, watershed in the development of
black British identity
- a search backwards began, for example to Rastafarianism

- new music scene evolved
- women writers: Buchi Emecheta wrote her autobiography „In the Ditch“ in 1972
- „old“ writers like Lamming, E.R. Braithwhaite or Samuel Selvon left the country
and began write from abroad (the Caribbeans, Canada or the USA)
- the young generation, like Caryl Phillips („Strange Fruit“, 1982) found a way to
express themselves through poetry and theatre
- black British writers today look back to their sources but are much more confident
about their own position in Britain
- In the 1980s Britain institutions opened up to black British people and supported
black institutions and artists
- Black Community writing groups: topics like gender and sexuality had been
discussed - questions of identity and freedom are still important topics
- today: broader varieties of genres and issues
Black British (BB) film making:
- 1960s onwards black Britons began to make their own films and tv-productions,
greater part of BB film productions produced since mid-1970s
- filmmaking is a sector in BB culture whose importance has been increasingly
recognised only since the 1980s
- most post-war Caribbean immigrants settled in urban areas (esp. London) →
screening of the capital as they experienced it
- treatment of London – the access permitted or denied to its space(s) – in Black
British film reflects the growing cultural empowerment of black people in Britain
- main features: making ´ethnic London` visible; self-construction / creation of
identity in host culture; suffered hardship (race-issue)
- metropolitan desire (which had grown before their arrival in Britain) faces great
disappointment after arrival: not being welcome, denial of access to the metropolis,
confinement in periphery
→ cinematic depictions of 1 st -generation migrants characterized by “characterless
streets and derelict houses clear of charismatic London sites” (source: TABB article)
→ reflection of dismal housing conditions the Caribbean immigrants had to face in
the 1950s and 1960s
- furthermore: characters are often confined to indoor-locations → “interior / exterior
dichotomy as a special metaphor for social distance and isolation” (source: TABB
article)
- another approach to elaborate the migrants’ self-construction in the struggle
between home and host culture often represented through 3 main features:
o creating symbolic spaces (symbolic for the relevant culture)
o using of ´double space` for the protagonist’s act of self-location
o emphasis on physical traversing of spaces (drifting between spaces, journeys,
searches)

Examples:
- “Flame In The Streets” (UK 1961)
o features mix of cultures: a white working-class family’s daughter
falls in love with a Jamaican
- landmark: “Pressure” (UK , 1975)
o first BB film ever that was produced by black filmmakers and
black director
o racism evident but assimilation and progress evident (living
standards as middle-class shop-owners)
o different attitudes between Windrush generation and post-
Windrush generation: parents – hopes/ endeavour vs. children –
disillusionment
- “Burning An Illusion” (UK 1981)
o highlights a hitherto unexplored world where nuances of black
Britishness are brought up → black restaurant, pictures/
photographs of black musicians and black celebrities
o treats social changes not only as cultural but also as generational
(1 st and 2 nd generation of immigrants)
o total assimilation to British culture as the only way forward to
young British blacks vs. first signs of self-consciousness/ black
Britishness)
- “The Final Passage” (UK Channel Four , 1996)
o Caryl Phillips’ 2-part-adaptation of his 1985 published novel
o 1 st time a British tv-drama had focused on the experiences of
Windrush generation since John Elliot´s “A Man from the
Sun”(UK , 1956)
Sources:
Blake, Anne, et al. (2001). England through Colonial Eyes in Twentieth-Century Fiction.
New York: Palgrave.
Bourne, Stephen (2001). Black in the British Frame. The Black Experience in British Film
and Television. London: Continuum International Publishing Group Academi
Dennis, Ferdinand & Naseem Khan (eds.) (2000). Voices of the Crossing: The impact of
Britain writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa. Serpent’s Tail: London.
Wambu, Onyeachi (1998). Black British Literature since Windrush.
www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/multicultural/literature_01.shtml (Oktober 19 th , 2005)
Phillips, Mike (1998). Windrush. The Passengers.
www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/multicultural/windrush_01.shtml (Oktober 19 th , 2005)
www.uni-tuebingen.de/tabb/articles/metropolis.html; (October 21 th, 2005)
www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/story/0,,1491330,00.html; (October 21 th, 2005)
www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/475471/; (October 21 th, 2005)
www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/480472/index.html; (October 21 th, 2005)
www.bfi.org.uk/; (October 21 th, 2005)
www.guardian.co.uk/arts/nottinghillcarnival2002/story/0,12331,773465,00.html; (October 21 th, 2005)
www.kamera.co.uk/reviews_extra/wondrous_oblivion.php; (October 21 th, 2005)
www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=130233; (October 21 th, 2005)
www.wikipedia.org; (Oktober 19 th , 2005)
www.bbc.co.uk/history; (Oktober 19 th , 2005)