Beyond the Windrush
This project has been one of the most informative, intriguing
and remarkable project that I myself and we at 7E Youth Academy
have ever been involved in. Our task
was to investigate the Black
presence within Britain
before the so called “Windrush period”. HMS Windrush was a British passenger
and troop” ship which in its own right had a remarkable history. The ship had
actually been a German World War II passenger, was captured by the British and
then used a passenger and troop ship.
On June the 22nd 1948 the HMS Windrush landed at
Tilbury docks carrying 493 passengers including 430 plus Jamaican Men
(Phillips. M and Phillips. T 1999) and 60 Polish women who had remarkably
wandered through Siberia , India and Australasia and somehow had embarked
the ship in Mexico .
In the modern British collective psyche this arrival of 430 Caribbean citizens
was the beginning of multicultural Britain and the Black presence
within the country but this is not actually so.
There have been Black communities within Europe
for hundreds if not thousands of years. The challenge of this project was to
investigate the black presence within Britain , not as Black heritage but
as the real British heritage – for a mixed group of young people, elders from
different communities to learn about British Heritage together as a group. We
felt that it was important that this project was not seen as a “Black” project
but as a British project to investigate the facts, contributions, culture and
heritage that been affected by the Black presence within Britain over the ages.
This is not history for Black Britons for all British people because we
firmly believe that awareness of the contributions of Black people to British
society throughout the ages will benefit all communities and culture within Britain .
So in fact this project was going “Beyond the Windrush” into the near and far
distant past to discuss Britain ’s
multicultural heritage.
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HMS Windrush |
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Windrsuh arrivals |
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Windrush arrivals 2 |
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Passengers of the HMS Windrush
What we discovered during the project
This project became bigger and bigger
the more we did research. We set out with the objective of covering a
conclusive history the Black presence within
We discovered a number of things during this project:
1. There
have been Black people in Brittan throughout the ages from the Roman period
right the way through to modern era. There soldiers, artisans, traders,
musicians, servants, sportsmen, dancers, politicians, medics, and even
community activists in almost every age of British history.
2. People
such as William Coleridge Taylor, Ira Aldridge, Marcus Garvey, and Mary Seacole
were Black people who were active, respected and influential within British
society regardless of racial heritage and contributed to the development of
British society.
3. The enormous
contribution of Black soldiers from the Caribbean and Africa during the World
War I and II effort cannot be understated and the contribution of Caribbean
states. Indeed Marika Sherwood pointed out at the Discover Black History
Seminar that “people don’t know that the
‘Trinidad was one of the Empire’s few significant producers of oil – the largest producer in 1938… As a result of the demand the island’s revenue increased by over 100% during the war.’
4. There is
a thirst from all people to learn about the Black British presence. On our
trips to the
5. There is
so much more research, processing and dissemination of information to be done
in this area. The knowledge base is vat and the society is very unaware of the
information. I myself who have a BA in Religion and studied at Masters Level in
Community Cohesion was surprised by the all the information we learned on the
educational visits, during the workshops and the presentations during the
seminars. It was our objective to produce something conclusive but what we
discovered was the project would need to run for longer and be much more in-depth
to achieve this plus there is a lot more research to be done.
What was done during this project?
1. We visited
the Black cultural archives in
2. We delivered
a number of workshops where we discussed the information we gained at the visits
and related to information we could find in books and online materials.
3. We
invited a group of young people and elders to produce an exhibition coordinated
by Pauline Bailey in different workshops about the Black presence in Brittan. Materials
used included wood, metal paints and paper.
4. We
organised a seminar and invited the public for free and we had Dr Marika
Sherwood and Dr Robin Walker to come and make presentations which were
brilliant. Then we had performances by local poets, rappers and singers around
the theme of Black history. The seminar was a roaring success and we had 375
youth, elders and people from different communities attend.
5. We have
created a Beyond the Windrush page on our website to decimate the information
to the wider public.
6. We have
uploaded footage from the seminar to encourage and facilitate further learning.
This is an independent review of
the event which was done by a blogger and visitor to our event on the 31st
of August at the Drum Birmingham. http://truestoryreview.wordpress.com/discoverblackhistory/
All in all this project been a
massive success for our organisation, we have involved youngsters and elders to
learn together, we have discovered revealing facts about British heritage
together, produced and exhibition, held a seminar and had fantastic turnout. We
are very proud of this project and we hope to build on the foundations of this
project in the future and to once again share our process of research and
findings with the wider community.
I would like to thank Heritage Lottery for supporting us in this project. Keith Christopher Smith
Images from Beyond Windrush Exhibition
An outline of the history of peoples of African
origin/descent in
Marika Sherwood
In the latter half of the 18th century the
population of England and Wales was calculated to be about 8 million; it was
estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 were people of African origins or
descent, but no basis was given for this calculation. It is the earliest estimate of the size of
the Black population of
When and how had these people of
African origins (or descent) arrived in
The first picture we have of an
African is in the Abbreviated Domesday
Book, dated 1241.[i]
We do not know who he was, or how many Africans were living or visiting here
then.
From the 16th century,
we have many records. For example, there were Africans in the service of James
IV of Scotland (ruled 1488 - 1513); John Blanke was a Black trumpeter serving
Henry VII and later Henry VIII; in 1501 Catherine of Aragon, coming to be
married to Henry VIII, landed in England with a number of African attendants;
Elizabeth I of England (ruled 1558-1603) employed Africans; and when William of
Orange arrived to take over the throne in 1688, he had 200 Africans among his
troops. The first mention of Africans in parish records (that is, records of
births, deaths and marriages kept by the Church of England for the government)
is in the 1590s. These records also show many marriages between Blacks and
Whites. Africans, described as ‘Moor’, ‘Blackamoor’, ‘negro’, ‘black’ and
‘Ethiopian’, appear in these records throughout the whole of
Whether slavery was legal in
As far as we know at the moment,
Africans came as domestic slaves/servants, brought by their owners/ employers;
as soldiers and as seamen, both on merchant and Royal Navy vessels; a few came
as students and merchants, and there were one or two ambassadors. Before the 20th century we have
records of a light-house keeper, a town council’s employment agent, a newspaper
editor and a coal-merchant; of shopkeepers, musicians, civil servants,
clergymen, divers, writers, teachers, and political leaders and activists. By
the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century we
had Indian Members of Parliament and African-descent county/town councillors
and town mayors.
Campaigners against the trade in
enslaved Africans and against slavery visited
Various regiments in the British
Army recruited local Black men from the 18th to the middle of the 19th
century. In the 19th century
More traders and students arrived, some of whom, on
qualifying, decided to practise (mainly as doctors and lawyers) in the
We do not know the size of the Black
population in
Black organisations began to be formed in most cities. Some
were purely local, others became nation-wide organisations, such as the African
Progress Union (1918-1925). A large campaign was mounted against the Italian
invasion of Abyssinia (
After World War
II, there was a great labour shortage in
.
Marika Sherwood
Books
on the history of Black peoples in
Borough of Sandwell, West Africa, West Indies,
Ian Grosvenor, Rita McLean and Sian Roberts (eds), Making Connections, Birmingham City
Council and
SCAWDI, History
Detectives, 2010
SCAWDI, A Day in the Life: A Black Heritage Trail of
the
There is much material held at the archives section
of the Birmingham City Library.
Beyond the Windrush group research |
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