For those who aren't aware, while they didn't need visas, there was paperwork on file such as landing cards that people filled out when they arrived at customs and immigration. This would have proven that they came over legally at the time. Conveniently, the Home Office destroyed these landing cards at some point very recently (last 10 to 15 years I think). I can't imagine why?
This is the danger of destroying paperwork originals during a "digitization" project . Some idiot bureaucrats are always going to get everything wrong and demand that citizens provide non-existing receipts of stuff . Currently locked in a battle with tax people demanding proof of compliance with made up unstated criteria under the constraint that any test we might pay for is by definition partisan and therefore invalid .
You will have to forgive my ignorant, non-British mind for this, but isn't record keeping one of the strong points of countries like the UK? I am aware that there are centuries-old documents that may not necessarily be available to the public but are still held in trust for the government and public. How in the name of all that is good did someone order the destruction of historical documents?
My wife's granddad was windrush generation, we got a letter telling him he was getting deported, but it was too late - he had already passed! Shows how indiscriminately they've been sending out those deportation notices.
My parents were Wind rush generation. They rarely talk about the racist reception they got upon immigrating. As an adult I finally pressed my godfather to talk about it. .My parents were so brave and resolute.
I’m from the uk, and I’d love to thank your parents, and every other person from the Windrush Generation (and anyone else who helped like they did). I’m so sorry they had to go through what they did, if it wasn’t for their hard work and sacrifices, we wouldn’t have any where near what we do today. They deserve so much more respect and a huge deal of compensation- whether to them or their remaining families. Sending lots of love to you and your family x x
Thanks for the explanation! I keep hearing about it on the news but they always seem to assume you know the basics already and so I had trouble understanding the stories. This was really helpful!
I’d highly recommend looking into this. There are some great documentaries that tell the story and the stories of individual people. It’s heartbreaking at times to hear about their experiences.
@@user-dh6bj2me5pThere are many, many injustices in the UK alone. As individuals, we can't possibly delve into all of them. Some people read about windrush, some people fight climate change, some people read up on autistic struggles around the world, some people struggle with their own traumas... You know a lot about some things, OP presumably knows a lot about other things.
@@user-dh6bj2me5pWe all have ignorance on some topics of injustice. If we all focused on the same injustices, we would be doing a tremendous disservice to all of the lesser-known injustices both on a local and a global scale. Windrush experts have their uses (assuming they actually use their knowledge to help in some way...), other experts have theirs.
@@user-dh6bj2me5p We are inundated with more information every year than our ancestors encountered in their entire lives. We must parse, triage, and prioritize what we delve deeper into every minute of every day. Furthermore, research is a skill. Value it in yourself, and don’t shame others. Shame is not a motivator, in any case. In general, shame is only useful in prohibiting behavior and making the shamer feel superior. Encourage curiosity, but spread information, not shame.
I live in Toronto, Canada, and our main art gallery (the AGO) has a temporary exhibit on until the end of March 2024 featuring art by the Windrush exhibit. Anyone in Toronto should visit it. I've been twice and it is just fantastic.
Thank you for talking about this! My grandparents didnt arrive on the ship, they came by plane but still are considered windrush generation! The celebrations for the 75th anniversary of Windrush were so lovely last year, I hope I get to see the 100th!
👍👍 this is exactly the kind of history we should be remembering in my opinion, learning how to treat people properly, prevent harm and how to keep your government honest.
@@harunocaleon5786 1) the Windrush generation constituted over 500,000 people. 2) They weren't "immigrants", they were British citizens. 3) There were educated professionals 4) only an uneducated buffoon would believe Britain was rebuilt by 1948
@@CiCodiCadno I'm not repeating this anymore than people like you repeat this myth. You believe insane bullshit, you're not different from afrocentrists who think they built Egypt or flat earthers
It's amazing how little we hear about how migrants helped after the wars. Australia was in a very similat boat to England after WWII, without the influx of people we'd have never recovered. It's such a shame this sort of thing isn't spoken about more. It is fantastic that this monument was built. Shame on the Home Office for not treating these people with the respect that they deserve.
@@ladylabyrinth6345 Do you realise how few Indigenous Australians actually lived within the areas where the migrants came to? It's true what happened here and what still happens here to our First Australians is awful, the fact that the no-vote won is an indictment on Australia, but the fact is even if all the Indigenous Australians moved to major cities it would have taken a lot longer for Australia to recover without the influx of migrants and refugees from WWII. The Windrush generation was essentially a conquering nation inviting those it conquered back to its nation to do the heavy lifting. It's not all that different to what happened here in Australia but without the racism toward the influx of people.
The stories of these men and women are incredibly moving and often difficult to listen to but listen we must ❤ Their eagerness to help when help was required is incredibly humbling. The treatment that they received upon arrival was disgusting and heartbreaking to hear. This monument is wonderful. Much more education around these events is needed so that this will never happen again. We asked them for help and they came. They left their lives and their families because they wanted to do their bit. To help in any way they could. Thank you to the Windrush Generation and to their families and relatives both in the UK and overseas. Thank you for sharing this information 👍🏽 🙂🐿🌈❤️
Interesting because when we were in Sydney 10 years ago we visited the maritime museum and learned about the efforts there to get people from the UK to migrate Down Under at about the same time. Several famous Scottish-Australian musicians families took up the opportunity to go like Colin Hay and most of AC/DC. Colin tells the story during his live set about how they left Scotland on a cold, dank, rainy day, sailed for weeks and came into Melbourne on a cold, dank, rainy day, “Did we turn back round somewhere?”😂
I always think it was crazy that there was so much British emigration out to Australia at the same time as the Wind Rush immigration in to the country. That so many people wanted to leave didn’t bode well for the people coming in, did it!? The Wind Rush scandal is truly shameful though. It makes me so angry. Those people uprooted themselves from everything they knew to come and help Britain and instead of receiving gratitude they got treated like shit. It just adds insult to injury that Britain seems determined to keep that treatment up.
Most people from the Caribbean traditionally emigrated to the USA, Cuba, Panama for work. It was nearer. The windrush people were mainly ex serviceman, who had previously been stationed in the British isles from Scotland, Wales to England boost the war effort. They were called empire troops. After the war Britain needed to rebuild after the devastating blitz. Many of the specifically Caribbean ex servicemen returned to start a new life in Britain.
wasn’t there a scandal around children in care in the UK being sent to Australia because they wanted more white folks, a social worker in Nottingham called it out if I remember the story correctly.
@@judyb4155My parents came to the UK in 1960. My now elderly neighbour who went to live in Australia went in the 1970s. At the time she went Australia weren't letting in non-white people. She managed to come back to the UK when her then husband screwed her over and was penniless.
I just heard of this via a very different source-about the Gibbons twins-but didn’t connect it to the 2010s flights. It’s incredible that politicians try to ship out descendants of people who came to their country. America does it with dreamers, but in this case I feel like I heard more stories about folks who didn’t even speak the language in countries they’d be deported to, and when it’s an entire continent it just feels so much more frightening in the abstract.
That’s really neat!! As an outside American, it’s been confusing for me since I was a kid how there were people from colonies that identified so strongly as British when - from my perspective - it was obvious that England was racist AF. But it makes sense if they were raised to believe they were British and that it didn’t matter if they were different. Until getting to the “homeland” anyway. But even before and during WW2, there were women from the commonwealth fighting to be allowed to serve in the auxiliary forces or as nurses, like Queen Liz did.
I have to say the statement "England was racist AF" is a bit rich coming from an American. There was no segregation here, no Jim Crow laws, no lynching. During WW2 British people were outraged at the way black American servicemen were treated by their own leaders. Also, stigmatising an entire country and its people as racist is a bit, y'know, racist...
It was called the "hostile environment". The government decided that any one British would have a passport or driving license to prove it. However if you came to the UK to work in the NHS, public transport, post office, council or factory you didn't need ID. You also couldn't afford to travel abroad or drive as the majority of the jobs were poorly paid so you didn't have a passport or driving licence. The children of these adults came on their parents documents. If these documents were submitted to the Home Office for any reason once they decided to computerise their systems, the Home Office kept them. My parents who arrived during that time were advised by someone to ensure everyone of their children had their own passport. So even though I was born nearly 2 decades after they arrived in the UK, I had a full British passport as a young child. I never travelled anywhere on it. However many other people they knew who came in the 50s and 60s couldn't afford to do this and also trusted the British government.
I try very hard to remember that the way governments behave doesn't always represent the popular attitude. But I do have to work hard to believe that. If enough of us cared enough to base our votes on how the government treats other people, we'd have a very different government
As someone whose father was part of that Windrush generation, racism was rife when I was a child in the 1970s. That's why I liked the comedy "Love thy neighbour". The racist always ended up worst off. Sadly people are offended by that show now. Jenny, it wasn't just people from the West Indies. They came from across the Commonwealth. And the Windrush scandal happened because we scrapped ID cards.
People today seem unable to grasp that "Love Thy Neighbour" and "Til Death Us Do Part" were anti-racist shows, where the racist character was the butt of the joke.
I was very shocked when I learned about that. They were British citizens after all. Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech was horrifying, and yet, it would not be completely out of the question to hear a right winger today saying the same thing.
Oh! Is that what the show Three Little Birds is about? I kept seeing ads for it before RUclips videos and it seemed like a part of British 20th century history that I (an American) had never once heard of before. It’s such a shame to hear that the country screwed over that generation in the 2010’s.
I have a question that I am hoping you may know the answer too, if King Charles III abdicates in favour of his son, do you think he will be present at the coronation. As former king Edward VIII set the precedent that a former king shall not be present for a new monarchs coronation
Tory government: "Here's a little statue to say I'm sorry 😢" People: "yeah that's great but can we also get some reform to stop the current racism you're still doing?" Tory Government: "abso-fucking-lutely not how dare you, racism is our favourite pass time 🤬"
Even worse no one came through Waterloo station where the statue is placed. If you trace the railway line that runs from Tilbury Docks to London, it doesn't end at Waterloo.
There's a great podcast about it in on 'The rest is history' (from December 2023) featuring historian, broadcaster and author Sir Mark Trevor Phillips OBE (who wrote a book on the Windrush). It debunks some of the myths about the first people to come from the Carribbean (eg he argues it was not because people were asked to, at least not initially, but that it was a spontaneous thing for the adventurous and that they were coming not necessarily to settle but because they could, it was their right to do so) and puts it in its historical context. It's fascinating and well worth listening to.
That's why my dad came. He wanted to come for an adventure. I have friends and acquaintances from different former British colonies in London and the SE. No one's parents and/or grandparents who came to Britain has the same story. There are also people whose parents/grandparents came to live in Britain from other former European colonies and again their families have interesting stories.
They were deporting them in 2010 but long before that in the 1990s they were stopping people who were British who came before 1971 but not traveling on a full British passport from coming back in. A family friend from Ghana was not allowed in in the mid-1990s. She died abroad. Another friend mother from India was warned to travel on a British passport in the 00s. The British boxer Audley Harrison dad was warned about this.
@@mikeymullins5305 Shaving your head is easy! There was an original generation of skinheads associated with the ruder end of ska culture, then a post-punk generation associated with the less rude Two-Tone movement, and unfortunately a far-right version associated with the National Front etc.
Between Brexit and the home office in general the country is going down the chamber pot. The borders NEED to be open, we need more visitors to this country and they need to be allowed to work and contribute to our multi-cultural Multi-skilled society with the right to pay tax and contribute financially to the economy through fair distribution of taxes for work done. I spent a decade in various security roles and came in contact with many people who were here from overseas from all walks of life. Sure 1 or 2 were here illegally and committing crime, and maybe a few more were here commiting crimes on legally obtained visas, but the vast number (99+) were perfectly honest and decent people. Because of a small number of people the wrong policies are being made and actions being taken. The behaviour of a small but vocal minority are driving government to do all of the wrong things. The attitudes we have about people from overseas is improving but we are a long way from where we should be and the government policies do not reflect the policies of the general population, and it's slowing our cultural development. Personally, the Home Office needs to be shut down, and started from scratch, all of the controls of the police isolated from everything else and the controls over visitors handed over to a different department within the Home Office and decisions can't be actioned until passed on to an unbiased auditing and vetting department first.
Most illegals tend to come for work and try to keep a low as possible profile, knowing that a parking ticket or a fight in the pub might get them noticed and deported. Except for their actual illegal status, they are less criminal than the natives.
Thank you for tackling this sticky wicket..exactly! They didn't need papers because they were British citizens already! This is what 'appens if you fancy yourself an Empire and claim half the world as your (overseas) territories
The more a lie is told the more believable it becomes , prior to 1948 , Barbados had around 25% unemployment ,Jamaica also had high unemployment and to make things worse, with high birth rate the population was going up around 50 k a year, many living in appalling conditions . in 1948, there were no adverts asking for Caribbean's to join the NHS or London Transport, they responded to an advert in a paper from a shipping company that had cheap seats available on HMS Windrush ,and simply turned up in Britain for a better life, Years later , it was the Barbadian government who approached London transport to see if there was any work.
How shameful people were treated so badly on arrival having been invited, and then even worse treatment after years of living working and contributing to this country 😢
Who invited them sorry ? It certainly wasn't the people of Britain. When were we asked if we wanted these people to come here ? We didn't want them and there is nothing wrong or racist about that. What exactly has that "great" generation done for the UK ? Apart from make the UK more "diverse", which just means more crime and less white people, what have they done for the UK ?
Being a daft yank, I never heard of this. It's a tragedy that this could happen in the end of the 20th and even now in the 21st century. But worse that it happened to the elders. We're supposed to universally care for our elders. I'm glad they are getting commemorated so they will be remembered. Hopefully that might reduce the chance of something like it happening again to a minority group and/or to elders in the future.
Sometimes people will refer to "minorities"as a sociological shorthand for political minorities (those, like women, who are negatively affected by lack of proportional political power, to make a long explanation short).
@@C.L.Hintonyou must be a lecturer in sociology to state the bleeding obvious whereas I studied maths and am just a pendant for the accuracy of numerical values.
@@C.L.HintonI've never looked at it this way. I would say they are marginalised, but you are right that in real terms the marginalised are treated like minorities regardless of their numbers.
@@C.L.Hintonwow you must be a lecturer in sociology to state the bleeding obvious. But as a humble pedantic practitioner of mathematics I am only interested in numerical accuracy.
@@harunocaleon5786 because what else is it when you are contradicting even the government, and even historical news items made at the time that say they were asked, or invited to come here to support the labour shortage, the only reason I can imagine you do so out of a bigoted mind, especially when you add your opinion that they didn't contribute anything 'significative'. For a start they clearly added some culture to our sorry lives, they all worked, much harder than the white people they worked with, obviously because of the racism at the time meant you worked harder to prove yourself and not be fired for non-existent reasons. And lets not forget that they were all already residents of the british empire, members of colonies that we were still using them for slave labour for a very very long time after it was outlawed in the UK itself. EG they were traded for between our colonies as if nothing had changed. To suggest a whole population of people didn't contribute anything is a low insult, that doesn't ring true when you hear the music they brought with them, the art and design, and they all came here working right away because the shortage of workers meant there was only a very small number of non-working people at the time, meaning environments like factories struggled to meet demands for orders, costing the economy significantly. So, unless you can provide provable, citable facts, STFU, because right now the evidence I see makes you look like someone who is sharing an untrue rhetoric to fit a bigoted narrative.
Yeah I love it when a British person refers to somebody as a citizen know you're a subject of royalty you're not a citizen with rights I'm a citizen with rights in the United States. Fascinating how politically correct you can lay this out so these guys are citizens without rights one and they weren't encouraged to exercise their right to move they were allowed to move because they thought they would have a better life than as soon as they got there and passed up the mess you left from the second world war you started screwing them again. If you're a citizen of some place then you can travel at freely like us but even that isn't allowed do you remember when the queen of Jamaica died and there were a lot of black people that appeared to be kind of callous about that old sow. Seems like they were subjects that were called citizens and they couldn't go to London or anything like that so it gets kind of tiresome when you actually make this out to be anything but a dictatorship. Solo citizens got sold a bunch of b******* by the royalties and then they got to London and got treated terribly.who would have thought that someone could go to London and be treated poorly.
We're going to treat these people who built our nation back up poorly and then virtue signal with a statue! Yeah, I've got no patience for moral grandstanding assholes. If they really cared about these people, they would treat them right. The whole concept of the statue being erected while the people whose image was used in the statue are being mistreated infuriates me.
To all of those people who talk about immigrants and how they are not the "right" people, whether from the former colonies, Africa, South America, Asia - just put the word Jew there instead. Sounds different doesn't it?
The owner of the Windrush had cargo space and filled it up by selling tickets to the locals before departing to the UK. Those that bought a ticket to get here where uninvited and unwelcome.
You say they encouraged people from the colonies to come to the UK, try reading "Unravelling the Windrush myth: the confidential government communications that reveal authorities did not want Caribbean migrants to come to Britain" and you'll find it was a bit more complicated than that.
Even though people call this "black history". Which is WAY too much of a broad and encompassing term and honestly causes WAY too much unnecessary political strife. In this case it's more West Indian History relating to British History to be more precise and more than anything. There were also Indians who came from Guyana, a former British colony till 1966, who came here as well. My grandparents being among them. We're basically Indo-Carribbean.
It is a statue portraying 3 black immigrants, being used to relrrsent historical event. That is super rare. That is why it is discussed on Black History.
I can't believe such an enthusiastic retelling of the Windrush lie. No-one was invited. Britain was re-building quite nicely, and polite, respectable immigrants, my family included, have always found Britain to be hospitable. The Windrush monument is an insult to the people who really rebuilt Britain.
Are we still not talking about the history of Africa that saw millions of Africans selling their brother and sister Africans into slavery? Oh still taboo? My bad.
The idea that the "Windrush generation" were asked to come to the UK to help "rebuild" after the war is a complete myth that's been made up in the last few years as part of current identity politics. It's also a myth that all these people faced terrible racism all the time, and that no one wanted to employ them or rent them a home - if that were true, none of them would have found jobs or places to live, would they? Of course there was some prejudice, but most British people are and were not racist. The UK is notable among European countries for the fact that no racist or extreme nationalist political parties have ever won a single seat in Parliament. Primary immigration ended in 1971 - the "drawbridge was pulled up" - because the colonies those people came from had become independent in the 1950s and 60s, so why should their people now have an automatic right to live in the UK? The deportation scandal a few years ago was a disgrace, though. To give some context for non-British readers, under the 1971 legislation people from Commonwealth countries (former colonies) who were living in the UK at that time were given an automatic right to live here permanently, and as they already had the right to vote in UK elections many never bothered formally becoming British citizens, but many years later a poorly-designed system for checking people's immigration status resulted in people being expected to prove they had lived in the UK continuously since before 1972, and being asked to produce employment records going back over 50 years and such like, with some people being deported when they couldn't prove their entitlement to be here. This was compounded by officials lying to ministers about what was happening when people complained. It wasn't some racist conspiracy to deport black people - who had and still have a legal right to live here - but a colossal administrative screw-up.
Sources for these being "myths"? I've actually been to the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations centre and read documented accounts of the first hand experiences of those that came to the UK. What kind of person dismisses all that pain and suffering and brushes that off as "myths" and "identity politics"...? Someone that also believe Britain wasn't and isn't racist, right? (Despite its history of colonising "lesser" countries. Why didn't the UK colonise Europe, eh?) As expected. So on point for racist Brits who think being *called* racist is worse than actually being racist.
Whenever an offended "most people are not racist!" or "nobody suffered racism EVERY DAY" surfaces, it becomes clear no argument will work. One can't argue with someone who so proudly fights windmills. For them, conceding to reason would feel like being robbed of one's family honor.
You also left out all of the unemployed people that were in great Britain at that time. Why did you do that? And how ringing in the wind rush, people created more unemployment! The law that it’s jobs nobody wants to do is a big lie. We know it. A lot of people know this already. This barely is just another game played by the gl*balist el*tist that I’ve always existed. Kind of like what they do in the US today. The goal is to keep things out of balance, and keep people in poverty talk about all the multi millionaires in multibillionaires in Africa now, do that. Talk about the open slave trade in Africa that exists, now do that.
@@CiCodiCadno "Conspiracy theorist" OP is the one talking about how 1000 rebuilt an entire country (despite the fact that said country was already rebuilt when they arrived and they weren't invited)
@@harunocaleon5786 Do you understand what a turn of phrase is? It doesn't mean they literally rebuilt Britain - they were a part of rebuilding. If you want to pretend Britain was a shining beacon of economic and medical stability before Windrush, that's on you. Also "weren't invited"? Lol. Lmao, even
For those who aren't aware, while they didn't need visas, there was paperwork on file such as landing cards that people filled out when they arrived at customs and immigration. This would have proven that they came over legally at the time. Conveniently, the Home Office destroyed these landing cards at some point very recently (last 10 to 15 years I think). I can't imagine why?
Seems to coincide with the Tory government’s. Sickening unbelievably wrong and abusive.
It's probably the same reason Brexit was popular.
This is the danger of destroying paperwork originals during a "digitization" project . Some idiot bureaucrats are always going to get everything wrong and demand that citizens provide non-existing receipts of stuff . Currently locked in a battle with tax people demanding proof of compliance with made up unstated criteria under the constraint that any test we might pay for is by definition partisan and therefore invalid .
They basically torched most documents from that time period, which resulted in my father also losing his permanent residency.
You will have to forgive my ignorant, non-British mind for this, but isn't record keeping one of the strong points of countries like the UK? I am aware that there are centuries-old documents that may not necessarily be available to the public but are still held in trust for the government and public. How in the name of all that is good did someone order the destruction of historical documents?
My wife's granddad was windrush generation, we got a letter telling him he was getting deported, but it was too late - he had already passed! Shows how indiscriminately they've been sending out those deportation notices.
Truly grotesque. That must have been awful to get in the mail. 😔
@@kagitsune"you are welcome to dig him up yourself, if you want to deport him"
@@LeifNelandDk 😂 I would have told them his current address e.g. Plot 124, Dodsley Pl, Montagu Rd, London N9 0HU
My parents were Wind rush generation. They rarely talk about the racist reception they got upon immigrating. As an adult I finally pressed my godfather to talk about it. .My parents were so brave and resolute.
I’m from the uk, and I’d love to thank your parents, and every other person from the Windrush Generation (and anyone else who helped like they did). I’m so sorry they had to go through what they did, if it wasn’t for their hard work and sacrifices, we wouldn’t have any where near what we do today. They deserve so much more respect and a huge deal of compensation- whether to them or their remaining families. Sending lots of love to you and your family x x
My grandparents are also windrush and they way they worked and added so much to society this country was lucky to have them.
Thanks for the explanation! I keep hearing about it on the news but they always seem to assume you know the basics already and so I had trouble understanding the stories. This was really helpful!
I’d highly recommend looking into this.
There are some great documentaries that tell the story and the stories of individual people.
It’s heartbreaking at times to hear about their experiences.
@@user-dh6bj2me5pThere are many, many injustices in the UK alone. As individuals, we can't possibly delve into all of them. Some people read about windrush, some people fight climate change, some people read up on autistic struggles around the world, some people struggle with their own traumas... You know a lot about some things, OP presumably knows a lot about other things.
@@user-dh6bj2me5p I'll be honest - laziness.
If the news reports confused me I must have just assumed the whole thing was over my head.
@@user-dh6bj2me5pWe all have ignorance on some topics of injustice. If we all focused on the same injustices, we would be doing a tremendous disservice to all of the lesser-known injustices both on a local and a global scale. Windrush experts have their uses (assuming they actually use their knowledge to help in some way...), other experts have theirs.
@@user-dh6bj2me5p We are inundated with more information every year than our ancestors encountered in their entire lives. We must parse, triage, and prioritize what we delve deeper into every minute of every day. Furthermore, research is a skill. Value it in yourself, and don’t shame others. Shame is not a motivator, in any case. In general, shame is only useful in prohibiting behavior and making the shamer feel superior. Encourage curiosity, but spread information, not shame.
I live in Toronto, Canada, and our main art gallery (the AGO) has a temporary exhibit on until the end of March 2024 featuring art by the Windrush exhibit. Anyone in Toronto should visit it. I've been twice and it is just fantastic.
This is a great suggestion, thank you!!
Thank you for talking about this! My grandparents didnt arrive on the ship, they came by plane but still are considered windrush generation! The celebrations for the 75th anniversary of Windrush were so lovely last year, I hope I get to see the 100th!
👍👍 this is exactly the kind of history we should be remembering in my opinion, learning how to treat people properly, prevent harm and how to keep your government honest.
It's a beautiful monument. The Windrush generation were a huge factor in rebuilding post-War Britain, and establishing the NHS
Britain was already rebuilt when they arrived. The idea that a few hundred immigrants with no education rebuilt an entire country is insane
@@harunocaleon5786 1) the Windrush generation constituted over 500,000 people.
2) They weren't "immigrants", they were British citizens.
3) There were educated professionals
4) only an uneducated buffoon would believe Britain was rebuilt by 1948
@@harunocaleon5786 you're going from comment to comment just to say this over and over again in different words. Have you considered therapy?
@@CiCodiCadno I'm not repeating this anymore than people like you repeat this myth.
You believe insane bullshit, you're not different from afrocentrists who think they built Egypt or flat earthers
@@harunocaleon5786 If England didn't need them, then why did we invite them??? We'll wait:
It's amazing how little we hear about how migrants helped after the wars. Australia was in a very similat boat to England after WWII, without the influx of people we'd have never recovered. It's such a shame this sort of thing isn't spoken about more. It is fantastic that this monument was built. Shame on the Home Office for not treating these people with the respect that they deserve.
@@ladylabyrinth6345 Do you realise how few Indigenous Australians actually lived within the areas where the migrants came to? It's true what happened here and what still happens here to our First Australians is awful, the fact that the no-vote won is an indictment on Australia, but the fact is even if all the Indigenous Australians moved to major cities it would have taken a lot longer for Australia to recover without the influx of migrants and refugees from WWII. The Windrush generation was essentially a conquering nation inviting those it conquered back to its nation to do the heavy lifting. It's not all that different to what happened here in Australia but without the racism toward the influx of people.
The windrush generation didn't contribute at all on the rebuilding of the UK
@@harunocaleon5786 🤦♂
Lynval Golding gives his first hand account of this on the Specials track B.L.M. from the album Encore, which I highly recommend.
The stories of these men and women are incredibly moving and often difficult to listen to but listen we must ❤
Their eagerness to help when help was required is incredibly humbling.
The treatment that they received upon arrival was disgusting and heartbreaking to hear.
This monument is wonderful.
Much more education around these events is needed so that this will never happen again.
We asked them for help and they came.
They left their lives and their families because they wanted to do their bit. To help in any way they could.
Thank you to the Windrush Generation and to their families and relatives both in the UK and overseas.
Thank you for sharing this information 👍🏽
🙂🐿🌈❤️
Learned about them from The Repair Shop. They've come in with radios that their parents and grandparents treasured, and their stories are so hard.
Interesting because when we were in Sydney 10 years ago we visited the maritime museum and learned about the efforts there to get people from the UK to migrate Down Under at about the same time. Several famous Scottish-Australian musicians families took up the opportunity to go like Colin Hay and most of AC/DC. Colin tells the story during his live set about how they left Scotland on a cold, dank, rainy day, sailed for weeks and came into Melbourne on a cold, dank, rainy day, “Did we turn back round somewhere?”😂
I always think it was crazy that there was so much British emigration out to Australia at the same time as the Wind Rush immigration in to the country.
That so many people wanted to leave didn’t bode well for the people coming in, did it!?
The Wind Rush scandal is truly shameful though. It makes me so angry. Those people uprooted themselves from everything they knew to come and help Britain and instead of receiving gratitude they got treated like shit.
It just adds insult to injury that Britain seems determined to keep that treatment up.
Most people from the Caribbean traditionally emigrated to the USA, Cuba, Panama for work. It was nearer. The windrush people were mainly ex serviceman, who had previously been stationed in the British isles from Scotland, Wales to England boost the war effort. They were called empire troops.
After the war Britain needed to rebuild after the devastating blitz. Many of the specifically Caribbean ex servicemen returned to start a new life in Britain.
wasn’t there a scandal around children in care in the UK being sent to Australia because they wanted more white folks, a social worker in Nottingham called it out if I remember the story correctly.
@@judyb4155My parents came to the UK in 1960. My now elderly neighbour who went to live in Australia went in the 1970s. At the time she went Australia weren't letting in non-white people. She managed to come back to the UK when her then husband screwed her over and was penniless.
@@Stand663The people I know whose parents and grandparents came to the UK from the Carribbean were not ex-servicemen.
Thank you for this. I have heard of the Windrush Generation, but only had the vaguest idea about it. You explained it really well.
And then they were unceremoniously deported
This one is long overdue ❤
Learned about this from a nice little exhibit they had at the London Transport Museum. A lot of the windrush generation became transit workers.
So they tried to collect their pensions and got deportation instead?
Yes.
We're definitely going to need more of these, to pay for all our pensions. And better start treating them right
I just heard of this via a very different source-about the Gibbons twins-but didn’t connect it to the 2010s flights. It’s incredible that politicians try to ship out descendants of people who came to their country. America does it with dreamers, but in this case I feel like I heard more stories about folks who didn’t even speak the language in countries they’d be deported to, and when it’s an entire continent it just feels so much more frightening in the abstract.
That’s really neat!! As an outside American, it’s been confusing for me since I was a kid how there were people from colonies that identified so strongly as British when - from my perspective - it was obvious that England was racist AF. But it makes sense if they were raised to believe they were British and that it didn’t matter if they were different. Until getting to the “homeland” anyway. But even before and during WW2, there were women from the commonwealth fighting to be allowed to serve in the auxiliary forces or as nurses, like Queen Liz did.
I have to say the statement "England was racist AF" is a bit rich coming from an American. There was no segregation here, no Jim Crow laws, no lynching. During WW2 British people were outraged at the way black American servicemen were treated by their own leaders.
Also, stigmatising an entire country and its people as racist is a bit, y'know, racist...
@@colinslant oh no totally, totally not saying America isn’t racist! But I’ve always seen it as something we inherited from England lol
@@OhSkyeLanta Well that's a nice way to blame someone else for your actions, isn't it?
girly they can both be racist, and you being so defensive is a little suspect, hm?@@colinslant
@@joshsl3169 Objecting to my entire country being defamed as "racist AF" is "a little suspect"? Screw you.
And people say there is nothing wrong with the world.
Literally who is saying that
What kind of mindless heartless bureaucrat would deport a bunch of elderly people who'd lived there for over half a century?
It was called the "hostile environment".
The government decided that any one British would have a passport or driving license to prove it. However if you came to the UK to work in the NHS, public transport, post office, council or factory you didn't need ID. You also couldn't afford to travel abroad or drive as the majority of the jobs were poorly paid so you didn't have a passport or driving licence.
The children of these adults came on their parents documents. If these documents were submitted to the Home Office for any reason once they decided to computerise their systems, the Home Office kept them.
My parents who arrived during that time were advised by someone to ensure everyone of their children had their own passport. So even though I was born nearly 2 decades after they arrived in the UK, I had a full British passport as a young child. I never travelled anywhere on it.
However many other people they knew who came in the 50s and 60s couldn't afford to do this and also trusted the British government.
Tories.
@@MsPeabody1231 lesson: never trust the British government 😞
Deported? Oof. That's beyond cold. Which PM was that under? Cameron?
Shocking that shouldve happened to them after all they went through. 😢😢😢
Got my wisdom teeth out yesterday and am enjoying your videos while recovering. Love myself some historical facts.
I wasn't aware of the specifics of that era, but it is a story that needs to be told.
I try very hard to remember that the way governments behave doesn't always represent the popular attitude. But I do have to work hard to believe that. If enough of us cared enough to base our votes on how the government treats other people, we'd have a very different government
As someone whose father was part of that Windrush generation, racism was rife when I was a child in the 1970s. That's why I liked the comedy "Love thy neighbour". The racist always ended up worst off. Sadly people are offended by that show now.
Jenny, it wasn't just people from the West Indies. They came from across the Commonwealth. And the Windrush scandal happened because we scrapped ID cards.
People today seem unable to grasp that "Love Thy Neighbour" and "Til Death Us Do Part" were anti-racist shows, where the racist character was the butt of the joke.
You scared me in your last video when you joked about it being the final.
Wow. That brought up a lot of different emotions. Well done
US citizen here. Glad/sad that we’re not the only country with shameful treatment of citizens.
I was very shocked when I learned about that. They were British citizens after all. Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech was horrifying, and yet, it would not be completely out of the question to hear a right winger today saying the same thing.
I had never heard of this and now i need to know more
Wow. ❤❤❤❤ thank you for sharing!
Oh! Is that what the show Three Little Birds is about? I kept seeing ads for it before RUclips videos and it seemed like a part of British 20th century history that I (an American) had never once heard of before. It’s such a shame to hear that the country screwed over that generation in the 2010’s.
I have a question that I am hoping you may know the answer too, if King Charles III abdicates in favour of his son, do you think he will be present at the coronation. As former king Edward VIII set the precedent that a former king shall not be present for a new monarchs coronation
Tory government: "Here's a little statue to say I'm sorry 😢"
People: "yeah that's great but can we also get some reform to stop the current racism you're still doing?"
Tory Government: "abso-fucking-lutely not how dare you, racism is our favourite pass time 🤬"
Even worse no one came through Waterloo station where the statue is placed. If you trace the railway line that runs from Tilbury Docks to London, it doesn't end at Waterloo.
Thank you so much.
Why is it that people often go out of their way to be dicks to each other?
There's a great podcast about it in on 'The rest is history' (from December 2023) featuring historian, broadcaster and author Sir Mark Trevor Phillips OBE (who wrote a book on the Windrush). It debunks some of the myths about the first people to come from the Carribbean (eg he argues it was not because people were asked to, at least not initially, but that it was a spontaneous thing for the adventurous and that they were coming not necessarily to settle but because they could, it was their right to do so) and puts it in its historical context. It's fascinating and well worth listening to.
Thanks. I will check that out.
That's why my dad came. He wanted to come for an adventure. I have friends and acquaintances from different former British colonies in London and the SE. No one's parents and/or grandparents who came to Britain has the same story. There are also people whose parents/grandparents came to live in Britain from other former European colonies and again their families have interesting stories.
Call the Midwife has a Jamaican Nurse. That arrived without papers. Now it makes sense why she is a character.
Just wanted to say, I just ❤ your channel.
Cheers from Srilanka
Thank you
Thank you.
It wasnt just the war. People emmigrated in bigger numbers than they arrive until the 80s.
Were they deporting people in the 2010s or did the news break in the 2010, but they had deported them a long time before?
Deporting them in 2010 when the Conservatives got into power
They were deporting them in 2010 but long before that in the 1990s they were stopping people who were British who came before 1971 but not traveling on a full British passport from coming back in.
A family friend from Ghana was not allowed in in the mid-1990s. She died abroad. Another friend mother from India was warned to travel on a British passport in the 00s. The British boxer Audley Harrison dad was warned about this.
@@Ater_Draco So some of these poor people had lived in the UK for like 50+ years and they still deported them?!?!
@pcbassoon3892 yes. It was a disgusting act of right wing thuggery by the Tory government.
And they brought us Ska leading to skinhead culture 🥰
Don't know much about ska but I don't think it created skin heads.... That's a pretty early punk offshoot I think
@@mikeymullins5305 Shaving your head is easy! There was an original generation of skinheads associated with the ruder end of ska culture, then a post-punk generation associated with the less rude Two-Tone movement, and unfortunately a far-right version associated with the National Front etc.
I think the perfect name for the long shorts would be 'Mediums' since they aren't as long as full videos but still longer than shorts
Good to know
It was a strange time when unions like TGWU were against apartheid South Africa but I favour of a colour bar in Bristol.
It's about time they commemorated british black history.
It's disgraceful how these UK citizens have been treated!
Between Brexit and the home office in general the country is going down the chamber pot.
The borders NEED to be open, we need more visitors to this country and they need to be allowed to work and contribute to our multi-cultural Multi-skilled society with the right to pay tax and contribute financially to the economy through fair distribution of taxes for work done.
I spent a decade in various security roles and came in contact with many people who were here from overseas from all walks of life. Sure 1 or 2 were here illegally and committing crime, and maybe a few more were here commiting crimes on legally obtained visas, but the vast number (99+) were perfectly honest and decent people. Because of a small number of people the wrong policies are being made and actions being taken. The behaviour of a small but vocal minority are driving government to do all of the wrong things. The attitudes we have about people from overseas is improving but we are a long way from where we should be and the government policies do not reflect the policies of the general population, and it's slowing our cultural development.
Personally, the Home Office needs to be shut down, and started from scratch, all of the controls of the police isolated from everything else and the controls over visitors handed over to a different department within the Home Office and decisions can't be actioned until passed on to an unbiased auditing and vetting department first.
Most illegals tend to come for work and try to keep a low as possible profile, knowing that a parking ticket or a fight in the pub might get them noticed and deported. Except for their actual illegal status, they are less criminal than the natives.
You are a psychopath.
You're insane
So sad to hear about the racism they endured. 😢 Thank you for your insights into history.
If thousands of British people suddenly moved to Morocco, do you think that they would be subjected to racism ? Exactly. Sit down and shut up.
Notting Hill carnival.
Such a good thing it is.......
Thank you for tackling this sticky wicket..exactly! They didn't need papers because they were British citizens already! This is what 'appens if you fancy yourself an Empire and claim half the world as your (overseas) territories
very interesting stuff i didnt know
The beginning of the end...
The end of what?
The more a lie is told the more believable it becomes , prior to 1948 , Barbados had around 25% unemployment ,Jamaica also had high unemployment and to make things worse, with high birth rate the population was going up around 50 k a year, many living in appalling conditions .
in 1948, there were no adverts asking for Caribbean's to join the NHS or London Transport, they responded to an advert in a paper from a shipping company that had cheap seats available on HMS Windrush ,and simply turned up in Britain for a better life,
Years later , it was the Barbadian government who approached London transport to see if there was any work.
Now, who does still wonder about brexit...
Lets open all borders
gd, it's easy to see how this is America's parent
How shameful people were treated so badly on arrival having been invited, and then even worse treatment after years of living working and contributing to this country 😢
Who invited them sorry ? It certainly wasn't the people of Britain. When were we asked if we wanted these people to come here ? We didn't want them and there is nothing wrong or racist about that. What exactly has that "great" generation done for the UK ? Apart from make the UK more "diverse", which just means more crime and less white people, what have they done for the UK ?
They weren't invited, the ship that brought them just picked them on their way to the UK.
The UK was already rebuilt when they arrived.
heard on a podcast about how the deportation happened cause someone threw away their cards at the home office terrible story
Humans,
Are so manipulating.
There seems to be no end to the dastardly deeds,
Yet there is a claim of religious fervor
Being a daft yank, I never heard of this. It's a tragedy that this could happen in the end of the 20th and even now in the 21st century. But worse that it happened to the elders. We're supposed to universally care for our elders. I'm glad they are getting commemorated so they will be remembered. Hopefully that might reduce the chance of something like it happening again to a minority group and/or to elders in the future.
Kudos on your information on the history of the minorities of London. (Even though women aren't a minority!!!)
Sometimes people will refer to "minorities"as a sociological shorthand for political minorities (those, like women, who are negatively affected by lack of proportional political power, to make a long explanation short).
@@C.L.Hintonyou must be a lecturer in sociology to state the bleeding obvious whereas I studied maths and am just a pendant for the accuracy of numerical values.
@@C.L.HintonI've never looked at it this way. I would say they are marginalised, but you are right that in real terms the marginalised are treated like minorities regardless of their numbers.
@@C.L.Hintonwow you must be a lecturer in sociology to state the bleeding obvious. But as a humble pedantic practitioner of mathematics I am only interested in numerical accuracy.
@@derekcouzens9483
I hope you are good at Math.
Because you suck at being ironic.
They weren't invited and they didn't contribute to anything significative.
Leaving your bigotry infested opinions all over this aren't you.
@@dennis8196 How is debunking historical revisionism "bigotry"?
@@harunocaleon5786 because what else is it when you are contradicting even the government, and even historical news items made at the time that say they were asked, or invited to come here to support the labour shortage, the only reason I can imagine you do so out of a bigoted mind, especially when you add your opinion that they didn't contribute anything 'significative'. For a start they clearly added some culture to our sorry lives, they all worked, much harder than the white people they worked with, obviously because of the racism at the time meant you worked harder to prove yourself and not be fired for non-existent reasons.
And lets not forget that they were all already residents of the british empire, members of colonies that we were still using them for slave labour for a very very long time after it was outlawed in the UK itself. EG they were traded for between our colonies as if nothing had changed.
To suggest a whole population of people didn't contribute anything is a low insult, that doesn't ring true when you hear the music they brought with them, the art and design, and they all came here working right away because the shortage of workers meant there was only a very small number of non-working people at the time, meaning environments like factories struggled to meet demands for orders, costing the economy significantly.
So, unless you can provide provable, citable facts, STFU, because right now the evidence I see makes you look like someone who is sharing an untrue rhetoric to fit a bigoted narrative.
Yeah I love it when a British person refers to somebody as a citizen know you're a subject of royalty you're not a citizen with rights I'm a citizen with rights in the United States. Fascinating how politically correct you can lay this out so these guys are citizens without rights one and they weren't encouraged to exercise their right to move they were allowed to move because they thought they would have a better life than as soon as they got there and passed up the mess you left from the second world war you started screwing them again. If you're a citizen of some place then you can travel at freely like us but even that isn't allowed do you remember when the queen of Jamaica died and there were a lot of black people that appeared to be kind of callous about that old sow. Seems like they were subjects that were called citizens and they couldn't go to London or anything like that so it gets kind of tiresome when you actually make this out to be anything but a dictatorship. Solo citizens got sold a bunch of b******* by the royalties and then they got to London and got treated terribly.who would have thought that someone could go to London and be treated poorly.
Why's it at Waterloo?
@CallieMasters5000 Because that's where the boat train from Southampton arrived.
We're going to treat these people who built our nation back up poorly and then virtue signal with a statue!
Yeah, I've got no patience for moral grandstanding assholes. If they really cared about these people, they would treat them right. The whole concept of the statue being erected while the people whose image was used in the statue are being mistreated infuriates me.
Were you filming this in a library?
Your voice sounded like you wanted to remain quiet 😂
To all of those people who talk about immigrants and how they are not the "right" people, whether from the former colonies, Africa, South America, Asia - just put the word Jew there instead.
Sounds different doesn't it?
Just like slavery
The Notting Hill carnival good? Did you not see the footage of last year? If I lived there I would move.
The owner of the Windrush had cargo space and filled it up by selling tickets to the locals before departing to the UK. Those that bought a ticket to get here where uninvited and unwelcome.
You say they encouraged people from the colonies to come to the UK, try reading "Unravelling the Windrush myth: the confidential government communications that reveal authorities did not want Caribbean migrants to come to Britain" and you'll find it was a bit more complicated than that.
Same as watching the so called ""documentary"" europa the last battle
Disgraceful. So the "empire" was meant to use the dark people only at a distance? That is even worse.
Even though people call this "black history". Which is WAY too much of a broad and encompassing term and honestly causes WAY too much unnecessary political strife. In this case it's more West Indian History relating to British History to be more precise and more than anything. There were also Indians who came from Guyana, a former British colony till 1966, who came here as well. My grandparents being among them. We're basically Indo-Carribbean.
It is a statue portraying 3 black immigrants, being used to relrrsent historical event.
That is super rare.
That is why it is discussed on Black History.
I can't believe such an enthusiastic retelling of the Windrush lie.
No-one was invited. Britain was re-building quite nicely, and polite, respectable immigrants, my family included, have always found Britain to be hospitable.
The Windrush monument is an insult to the people who really rebuilt Britain.
Are we still not talking about the history of Africa that saw millions of Africans selling their brother and sister Africans into slavery? Oh still taboo? My bad.
a) That has nothing to do with the OP and b) Africa is a continent, not a country.
The idea that the "Windrush generation" were asked to come to the UK to help "rebuild" after the war is a complete myth that's been made up in the last few years as part of current identity politics. It's also a myth that all these people faced terrible racism all the time, and that no one wanted to employ them or rent them a home - if that were true, none of them would have found jobs or places to live, would they? Of course there was some prejudice, but most British people are and were not racist. The UK is notable among European countries for the fact that no racist or extreme nationalist political parties have ever won a single seat in Parliament.
Primary immigration ended in 1971 - the "drawbridge was pulled up" - because the colonies those people came from had become independent in the 1950s and 60s, so why should their people now have an automatic right to live in the UK?
The deportation scandal a few years ago was a disgrace, though. To give some context for non-British readers, under the 1971 legislation people from Commonwealth countries (former colonies) who were living in the UK at that time were given an automatic right to live here permanently, and as they already had the right to vote in UK elections many never bothered formally becoming British citizens, but many years later a poorly-designed system for checking people's immigration status resulted in people being expected to prove they had lived in the UK continuously since before 1972, and being asked to produce employment records going back over 50 years and such like, with some people being deported when they couldn't prove their entitlement to be here. This was compounded by officials lying to ministers about what was happening when people complained. It wasn't some racist conspiracy to deport black people - who had and still have a legal right to live here - but a colossal administrative screw-up.
There are plenty of extreme nationalist in the Tory party.
Sources for these being "myths"? I've actually been to the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations centre and read documented accounts of the first hand experiences of those that came to the UK. What kind of person dismisses all that pain and suffering and brushes that off as "myths" and "identity politics"...? Someone that also believe Britain wasn't and isn't racist, right? (Despite its history of colonising "lesser" countries. Why didn't the UK colonise Europe, eh?) As expected. So on point for racist Brits who think being *called* racist is worse than actually being racist.
Whenever an offended "most people are not racist!" or "nobody suffered racism EVERY DAY" surfaces, it becomes clear no argument will work.
One can't argue with someone who so proudly fights windmills. For them, conceding to reason would feel like being robbed of one's family honor.
@@edisonlima4647 Well that's a good excuse for you just asserting you're right, isn't it?
@@Bookstar28 Sources for them being true? You don't get to just assert things and demand others disprove them or they're true because you say so.
What a load of rubbish.
You also left out all of the unemployed people that were in great Britain at that time. Why did you do that?
And how ringing in the wind rush, people created more unemployment!
The law that it’s jobs nobody wants to do is a big lie. We know it. A lot of people know this already.
This barely is just another game played by the gl*balist el*tist that I’ve always existed.
Kind of like what they do in the US today. The goal is to keep things out of balance, and keep people in poverty talk about all the multi millionaires in multibillionaires in Africa now, do that. Talk about the open slave trade in Africa that exists, now do that.
Oh my god dude if you're gonna whine about "globalist elites" stop being a coward and just say jewish people, you're not that subtle mate.
So... You're a racist conspiracy theorist. Got it.
@@CiCodiCadno "Conspiracy theorist"
OP is the one talking about how 1000 rebuilt an entire country (despite the fact that said country was already rebuilt when they arrived and they weren't invited)
@@harunocaleon5786 Do you understand what a turn of phrase is? It doesn't mean they literally rebuilt Britain - they were a part of rebuilding. If you want to pretend Britain was a shining beacon of economic and medical stability before Windrush, that's on you.
Also "weren't invited"? Lol. Lmao, even
@@CiCodiCadno So, it's just symbolic to uplift their egos? The UK was drowning in its own homogeneity until the miracle non-whites arrived?
We were never asked
whose "we"?
is this the royal we? asked about what?
We weren't asked if we wanted a monarchy?
They weren't asked if they wanted to be colonised by Brits either.