Welcome, to a final comment about Windrush, at least until next year.
Why Has Windrush 75 got so much attention?
In early 1998 there was a letter in The Times from Arthur Torrington, an old friend from Evangelical Race Relations Group days, pointing out (as I remember) that in their list of coming events and anniversaries for that year the paper made no mention that it was the 50th anniversary of the arrival of SS Windrush, and that he was part of a group working to mark the event. I wrote to Arthur to encourage him, and possibly as a consequence, was invited to an event at St James Palace with Prince Charles. I also sent an article to the Church Times about the anniversary. I didn’t have time to make the few changes they wanted so instead had it published in the Church of England Newspaper. At a much wider level, Mike & Trevor Phillips’ book ‘Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain’ and the accompanying television series drew attention, but by and large Windrush 50 was of niche interest rather than an event of national significance.
By contrast Windrush 75 has seen a torrent of responses: full newspaper coverage, television programmes, church services, Reports, such as that by British Future reviewed in last week’s blog. That Report also has an extensive listing of nation-wide celebrations and events. Perhaps also it is no coincidence that books, such as those by Linton Kwesi Johnson (reviewed in the blog two weeks ago) and Tomiwa Owolade (review forthcoming), have come out around this time. Overall then, the contrast between the muted coverage of Windrush 50 and the high profile response to Windrush 75 has been significant and interestling. So why has the bandwagon started rolling now?
Here are my suggestions to explain the phenomena.
Higher African Caribbean profile – an opportunity to affirm.
The recent superb, brilliantly eloquent, generous hearted and thoughtful Dimbleby lecture by the actor David Harewood not only exemplified but also pointed out and celebrated the growing contribution of African Caribbean people to national life, especially in the arts and media. Their very important contribution in football (but, ominously, not in cricket) is obvious. Jude Bellingham, the son of a white ex-policeman father and black mother and now probably the world’s most coveted footballer, underlines the point: increasingly African-Caribbean people have become a natural part of the fabric of national life. But alongside the increasing flow of high-profile celebrities, is the more profound appreciation of the working contribution of black people, especially in health and transport to national life. (I have just come across a survey showing that the most stressful of occupations is not being CEO of a major company or a Premier League football manager but being a bus driver). Slow but real geographical diffusion and slowly increasing social mobility have made equal status inter-ethnic relationships more common, and heightened appreciation of the contributions of ‘ordinary’ African Caribbean people.
As a corollary, as surveys such as “Racism and Ethnic Inequality in a time of Crisis consistently indicate that 78% of African Caribbean people have a positive sense of belonging to this society (p 48). Despite the racism on the one side and hurt and anger on the other (stirred again by revelations this week of the Metropolitan Police’s incompetence and racism in finding the murderers of Stephen Lawrence) overall both parties are positive about the consequences of the Windrush arrivals.
A Shameful Past – an opportunity to expiate.
The phrase ‘Windrush’ only came into widespread usage because of the ‘Windrush scandal’, made public in 2018, with people who had been schooled, worked, married, become parents and grandparents in this country yet being deported (or threatened with), or losing a range of benefits and rights because of the Government’s ‘hostile environment’ policy. That the manifest injustices could be tolerated for so long and could impact so many people indicated an extraordinary level of institutional racism and cold-hearted unconcern for the rights of ordinary black people. It also served to both revivify and vindicate awareness of the direct racism that black people had suffered in the early days of settlement, and that such racism and injustice was by no means over.
Consequently, the national narrative has been at pains to catch up and make up for such shame. The Church of England’s General Synod in Feb 2020 passed a motion apologising for its own rejection and mistreatment of earlier migrants. Further the death of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests put before national attention the grievances felt by descendants of the ‘Windrush Generation’. Therefore, the attention lavished on Windrush 75 reflects in considerable part a sense of national guilt and a desire to make amends. We are anxious for the situation now to look good. Because of such events the situation has changed markedly not just over the last twenty-five years, but over the last five years. It was significant that in British Future’s survey of what should be the Government’s policies to reach ‘net zero racism’ by 2048, the black respondents emphasised fair chances in employment, the white respondents tougher rules on online hatred. White people want race relations to avoid unpleasantness, black people want them to be just. This has not been explicit. Perhaps a sense of ‘let’s just move on’ better expresses the national aspiration. Nonetheless the felt need to recognise and celebrate the arrival of SS Windrush testifies to the uneasiness of British consciousness and the need for some gesture to express our guilt and shame.
A sense of improvement – an opportunity to celebrate.
One major difference between 1998 and 2023 is the rapid increase of the minority ethnic proportion of the population. The 2000 Parekh Report on ‘The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain’ rightly warned against the over-simplification of seeing Britain as a ‘95:5’ society split between a white majority and bulked together ‘ethnic’ minority. Today the proportion of people from ethnic minorities has risen substantially – we could (unhelpfully) speak of an ‘80:20’ society. Though in this context it needs noting that African Caribbeans are the only ethnic minority that is not growing in Britain. Only 60% of children born to African Caribbean mothers have African Caribbean fathers. In that sense, the success of integration is also (as it has been for the Jews) a threat to the continuing strength of the minority.
Celebrating ‘Windrush’, then, can be seen as a coded way of celebration something much wider – a multi-ethnic society of which the first immigrants from the Caribbean were simply the forerunners of a wider, larger, more complex movement into a highly diverse society. So in the past twenty-five years ethnic diversity has not only increased but become more harmonious. People want to affirm the present situation. After a few initial wrinkles there developed a national consensus that footballers should take the knee – which indicated, in the international context, an assertion of the superior level of British race relations.
In what might be regarded an an overkill of positivity and desire to do the right thing, black people have become ubiquitous in television adverts, and not only given major roles in present day tv series but artificially written into unlikely appearances in period dramas. It is legitimate to see in such developments both goodwill but also, as indicated above, an uneasy pressure to atone for past guilt.
But even if such developments are window-dressing they do not completely misrepresent the product inside. My sense is of a much more relaxed atmosphere on the streets from previous decades, when tensions were much higher. The sense of progress having been made means ‘race’ is a less ‘difficult’ subject to discuss. There can still be a ‘feel bad’ tone to the debate, but now increasingly a ‘feel good’ tone is more prominent (or even at times a ‘feeling good about feeling bad’ tone, especially if reading of Reni Eddo-Lodge’s ‘Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race’!).
Who knows what ‘Windrush 100’ will be like? Hopefully the positive trajectory will have continued – even if it is being too optimistic to hope to be at a point where concern about ‘race’ has so diminished the centenary will just be a curio rather than a focus for concern.
I have good memories of the way our Baptist Church in Forest Gate (one of the few where the Windrush + generation had been welcomed in the 1960's and had come to be a majority) celebrated the 50th Anniversary. We cancleled the evening service and watched the TV coverage of the World Cup match between Jamaica and Argentina (with it's predictable result).
But yes, the 75th anniversary has much greater profile, for the reasons you mention, and the growing awareness of injustice through Black Lives Matter and associated movements and trends.