Story of the Windrush Boat 1948             

After the war the government began thinking about recruiting workers from the Caribbean to cope with the shortage of labour in some British industries. In 1948, an advertisement appeared in a Jamaican newspaper.  When the ship departed on 24th May, all 300 places were taken. An extra 192 men made the voyage on the deck. Many had served with the Allied Forces in the war. Some wished to rejoin the armed services. Others hoped for better career prospects in Britain, since there was high unemployment at home.  The ship landed at Tilbury docks on 21st June 1948.



 

It was a big problem finding them somewhere to live. As a short-term measure, the Colonial Office was forced to house 230 Windrush settlers in a deep air raid shelter in Clapham Common. The nearest labour exchange to the shelter was Brixton. As a result, many of the settlers set up home there, making it one of Britain's first Caribbean communities. 

 

 

Black Caribbeans were generally shut out of higher-paid jobs, especially those that were heavily unionised. However, the public sector offered them reasonably well-paid work, for example in hospitals, the General Post Office, London Transport and the railways.

 

 

Approximately 16,000 men from the West Indies volunteered to fight for Britain in the First World War, and over 10,000 servicemen and women answered the call of the ‘Mother Country’ during the Second World War. Thousands more served as merchant seamen. From War to Windrush explores how, despite facing discrimination during their service, many former Black West Indian servicemen and women and civilian war workers returned to settle in Britain after the Second World War.