Who are the “Windrush generation”?
Those arriving in the UK between 1948 and 1971 from Caribbean countries have been labelled the Windrush generation.
This is a reference to the ship MV Empire Windrush, which arrived at Tilbury Docks, Essex, on 22 June 1948, bringing workers from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and other islands, as a response to post-war labour shortages in the UK.
The ship carried 492 passengers – many of them children.
It is unclear how many people belong to the Windrush generation, since many of those who arrived as children travelled on parents’ passports and never applied for travel documents – but they are thought to be in their thousands.
There are now 500,000 people resident in the UK who were born in a Commonwealth country and arrived before 1971 – including the Windrush arrivals – according to estimates by Oxford University’s Migration Observatory.
The generation’s end
The influx ended with the 1971 Immigration Act, when Commonwealth citizens already living in the UK were given indefinite leave to remain.
After this, a British passport-holder born overseas could only settle in the UK if they firstly had a work permit and, secondly, could prove that a parent or grandparent had been born in the UK.
Where are they now?
Many of the arrivals became manual workers, cleaners, drivers and nurses – and some broke new ground in representing black Britons in society.
The Jamaican-British campaigner Sam Beaver King, who died in 2016 aged 90, arrived at Tilbury Docks in his 20s before finding work as a postman.
He later became the first black Mayor of Southwark in London.
The Labour MP David Lammy, whose parents arrived in the UK from Guyana, describes himself as a “proud son of the Windrush”.