Gardner Finding Home

A Windrush Story
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-914344-21-3
Verlag: Jacaranda Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

'A pioneering member of the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants who marked the symbolic beginning of a multicultural Britain.' - The Guardian RAF Veteran and Prince's Trust Awardee, Alford Dalrymple Gardner was one of the last living passengers to have travelled on the Empire Windrush. Now published in paperback, Finding Home is his stirring life story. On 22nd June 1948, the Empire Windrush sailed from Kingston, Jamaica, to harbour at Tilbury Docks. It carried 1,027 passengers and two stowaways, and more than two thirds of them were West Indies nationals. Alford Dalrymple Gardner was among them. Alford's story traverses both the uplifting highs and intolerant lows that West Indian migrants of his generation encountered upon travelling to Britain to forge out a life. From joining the British military during World War II to being forcibly deported back to Jamaica once it was won-only to come back to the UK when the government decided it needed him again-Alford witnessed milestone events of the 20th century that shaped the country he still lives in today. In the context of a supposedly 'post-Imperial' Britain where the lives of West Indian migrants hang precariously on the whims of the Home Office, Alford's heartening testimony is a celebration of those who endured hardships so that generations to come could call this place home. Today, Alford's portrait is a part of the Royal Collection Trust as commissioned by King Charles III in 2023, and he is a regular face and voice on the likes of The BBC, Channel 4, Sky News and more as his story continues to embody for all, the spirit of joyous resilience.

Born in 1926 in Kingston, Jamaica, Alford Gardner first came to England in 1944 to support the war effort, serving in the RAF. After a brief stay back in Jamaica, he decided to return to England to help to rebuild the country. He boarded the HMT Empire Windrush intending to build a life in the country he once called home. Despite a less than accommodating welcome back, he persisted and succeeded in forging a better life for his family. In his later years, Alford spent all his leisure time at the bingo hall. When not playing bingo, he would watch sports or spend time with his family. A much fuller sense of Alford's life is conveyed in his autobiography: Finding Home. Alford passed away in 2024 at the age of 98.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gardner, Alford Dalrymple

Gardner, Howard

Leseproben

Foreword

THE MEMOIR OF ALFORD DALRYMPLE GARDNER
A Jamaican Windrush Story
2023

Alford Dalrymple Gardner was among the passengers on MV which arrived at Tilbury Docks, Essex, England, on 22 June 1948, and it is because of this ship that he has become known nationally and internationally.

On Wednesday June 23, 1948, newspaper reported the arrival of the ship under the headline ‘Jamaicans Arrive to Seek Work’. The article said: ‘Of the 492 Jamaicans who arrived at Tilbury on Monday to seek work in this country, 236 were housed last night in Clapham South Deep Shelter. The remainder had friends to whom they could go and prospects of work. The men had arrived at Tilbury in the ex-troopship . Among them are singers, students, pianists, boxers, and a complete dance band. Thirty or forty had already volunteered to work as miners.’

The report was not entirely correct. According to the ship’s Passenger List there were 1027 passengers on board, of whom 539 gave Jamaica as their last place of permanent residence, so did 139 from Bermuda, 73 from Trinidad and 44 from British Guiana. Many others came from countries of the West Indies. Some of them served Britain in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during WWII and were either returning to their jobs in the UK or coming to seek employment. For the passengers of the in 1948, and the thousands who followed them, the British Nationality Act Parliament passed in July 1948 was an important factor, as it allowed them and others living in Commonwealth countries British citizenship and full rights of entry and settlement. The Nationality Bill was being discussed in both Houses of Parliament even as the ship sailed across the Atlantic to Britain during June 1948.

MV which brought passengers to Britain was once known as the , a passenger liner and a cruise ship launched in Germany in 1930. During WWII, the Germans used her as a troopship, but after the war she was taken by the British, renamed MV and became a troopship until March 1954, when she caught fire and sank in the Mediterranean Sea. The ship was said to have been named after the ‘River Windrush’ which begins in the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire. MV was the opportunity that hundreds of young Caribbean men, like Alford, awaited in 1948.

On board the ship, Alford met Samuel Beaver King, another former RAF serviceman, also age 22, who shared the same ideals and who looked forward to leading a new life in Britain. King included Alford’s name among dozens of others in his address book. They kept in touch over the years and in 1998, King brought together many of the passengers to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the ship’s 22 June 1948 arrival. Alford joined local celebrations in Leeds in June 2008 and contributed to a Windrush Foundation oral history project which recorded stories. It was in that year that I first met and interviewed Alford.

I am co-founder, with Samuel Beaver King, of Windrush Foundation, an organisation that became a charity in 1996 to keep alive the memories of the ship’s arrival and to commemorate Windrush Day annually on 22 June. The 50th anniversary celebrations were featured on British media, and many events were held including a Reception hosted by HRH Prince Charles at St James’s Palace in June 1998.

It is due to the that I have come to know Alford, a pioneering member of the Windrush generation. He is among those who helped to rebuild Britain after World War Two, and who laid the foundation in Britain for thousands of settlers from the Caribbean. The ship has a symbolic association with Caribbean settlement from 22 June 1948, but it also represents a generation of WWII West Indian ex-service personnel who remained in the UK just after May 1945.

There are no published or official figures for those who served, either as servicemen and women, or munition workers. They had contributed to the war effort either as volunteers in the armed forces or as technicians. The majority were demobbed and returned to the colonies. Before leaving the armed forces, West Indian servicemen and women were given opportunities to attend educational and technical courses that often lasted between six months and two years. Sponsored by the Colonial Office, they were known as rehabilitation courses. Some personnel studied to become engineers, farmers, carpenters, accountants, lawyers or pursue other skills. Covert attempts were made to pressurise them to return to their own colonies although all the ex-service personnel were British subjects and had the right to remain. An ex-serviceman who experienced coercion explained:

‘When my course ended, I wanted to stay in England to acquire further qualifications, but the colonial office did their best to dissuade me. They kept telling me: “Well you can’t stay here you must go back and help your own people, after all you did sign to stay for the duration of the present emergency,” and this and that. However when they saw I was adamant, particularly when I pointed out that I was a British subject, I was entitled to domicile in the UK and they couldn’t legally send me home, they desisted from further pressuring, so I stayed.’1

There were thousands of UK job vacancies in 1947, yet West Indian ex-servicemen continued to experience difficulties obtaining suitable work, mainly because of their ‘skin colour’. Ex-serviceman Robert N. Murray, in his 1996 book, discusses his colleague, Pasteur Irons’s hunt for work:

‘…being married with children I was desperate for work. I went for a job at one ironworks. I passed the test, tried everything but they turned me down. Then I went to another well-known company. They told me to wait while they interviewed all the ex-prisoners of war, the very people we left our homelands to fight against. It was then more than anytime I regretted staying in England, for nothing could be more humiliating than my early job-seeking experiences. Footslogging looking for jobs everyday became tedious and depressing. I sometimes became scared; scared not of people, but of being rejected and of my aggressive retaliation. But what could I do? I had to carry on, I dare not lose hope…’2

The Spring of 1947 saw the arrival, at Liverpool Docks, of the troopship SS , with 108 passengers, most of whom were West Indian ex-servicemen, and there were 10 stowaways on board. Labour members of Parliament who were in power at the time openly expressed their unhappiness about the settlers’ arrival. In December that year, the HMS landed with 150 West Indian ex-servicemen also among the passengers. WWII RAF serviceman Samuel Beaver King had been one of the passengers of the as it took British troops and exservicemen to Jamaica in November 1947. He was demobbed like thousands of other West Indian men and women who had served Britain during WWII.

After MV landed on 22 June 1948, her passengers disembarked, and those who had nowhere to stay were accommodated at Clapham South Deep Shelter, London, which had been an air-raid shelter for local people during WWII. Within a few days, the Mayor of Lambeth held a reception for them, and this was the only one they received. The passengers visited the local employment exchange in Brixton and soon found work, and many set up home in the borough.

Alford headed for Leeds after disembarking on the ship. His book discusses the problems he and others faced in their search for accommodation, employment, and other pursuits.

2018 was the 70th Windrush anniversary and it brought to light injustices suffered by thousands of Caribbean men and women in the UK. They were wrongly classified as illegal immigrants by the Home Office and were cut from access to any public services including health care. Also, the British government made working or renting accommodation without adequate paperwork impossible for them. The government’s ‘hostile environment’ prevented their visiting doctors for fear of amassing huge bills or being deported. It prevented undocumented immigrants from reporting crime to the police. It deterred undocumented migrants from reporting unsafe working conditions or exploitative employers. It reduced the options for renting a home and pushed people into poor quality accommodation.

Hostile environment policies also made doctors, landlords, teachers, and other public sector workers responsible for immigration checks. The situation came to a head when the British media in March 2018 exposed and labelled it the ‘Windrush scandal’, blaming the government for the desperate circumstances in which the people, who had the right to be in the UK, found themselves. The ‘Windrush generation’ became a media term for a tragedy in government policy that destroyed the lives of hundreds of British citizens from the Caribbean. Many of them have died after receiving government apologies after April 2018 and without receiving the compensation that the Home Office promised would be given speedily.

The ‘Windrush generation’ is a term first coined by Samuel Beaver King after his arrival on the ship on 22 June 1948. In 1996, King and Torrington created a registered charity that commemorated the ship’s arrival, celebrated 22 June as Windrush Day, and organised activities that celebrated the men and women who settled in...