Last week I received an urgent message from my great niece in London. When did I first arrive in the UK? Her six-year-old daughter Amira was invited to the unveiling of a monument to the Windrush generation and she needed a short brief on her family connection.
I quickly wrote back that there was none since I did not arrive in the UK on the famous MV Empire Windrush in 1948 that brought a capacity load of unemployed Caribbean men, mainly Jamaicans, some with their families, to Britain to work in the post-war recovery effort. That was all before I was born and, in my estimation, none of our family qualified technically, at least, to that economic or social classification. In fact, I was not the first of my mother’s family to travel to the UK, which I did in the late 1960s as a youngster. They had been moving between TT and from whence their ancestors came for decades. And, I did not regard myself as an immigrant, since I sought education, not work. But time and circumstances would change how all dark-skinned Caribbean people were described by others.
My great niece's message took me back. When I arrived, the attitude to race was benevolent, at least, in my apparently isolated operating sphere, because there had been nationwide race riots in 1919, in 1958 in Notting Hill and Nottingham, and in the 1960s in the Midlands and elsewhere, plus, the signs on rental property that said “No Blacks, No dogs, No Irish” were legendary. Yet, I experienced no racism, not anywhere I went. I was never discouraged or turned away from any pursuit, incredible as that may sound, rather, I was encouraged and given extraordinary opportunities to make my way, which I did, in spite of flaunting my Trinidadianess.
From the 1940s to the 1960s the influx of Indian, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and West Indian immigrants grew exponentially, causing a backlash especially in areas where English people were experiencing economic hardship. Race and immigration became bitter social and political issues, peaking when in 1968 a leading Conservative MP made an alarming speech, predicting “rivers of blood” in British streets. Victimisation grew and parliamentarians passed a series of immigration laws that largely ended immigration, till in 1972 General Idi Amin of Uganda expelled all Indians for “milking” the country. Thousands of them, with British passports, added to the already large numbers of black and brown faces that had become too familiar on British streets. Riots erupted throughout the 1980s.
The Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, largely non-English speakers, fared badly while the Indians, especially the well-educated Ugandans, many of whom later returned to their prosperous homeland, floated to the top and began to organise. Caribbean intellectuals, unionists and other activists who had been at work since the 1950s as the numbers swelled and the violence burbled, formed pressure groups. They lobbied for and achieved anti-discrimination legislation. Anti-racism quangos and organisations at all levels arose. In academia race became an area of
