Windrush: 75th Anniversary

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, in the context of this debate, on which I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, I highlight one of the asks of Show Racism the Red Card, of which I am proud to be the vice-president and a trustee. The Government should ensure that black history features explicitly in England’s curriculum. It already happens in Wales.

Of course, lots of schools engage fully with Black History Month in October but may not focus on the role played by our black communities in England at any other time; neither do they explicitly address the origins of racism. Given what we all know about the treatment of the Windrush generation, this anniversary would be an appropriate time to bring the Windrush and so many other aspects of black history and black experience explicitly into England’s national curriculum.

We often say that the curriculum should be a mirror and a window—a mirror so that pupils and students can see themselves reflected in what is presented, but also a window so that they can see beyond the classroom. Many black children do not see themselves reflected. There are now many excellent books, including the one by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, but the Runnymede Trust says that only 1% of GCSE students read a book by an author of colour. In this 75th anniversary, perhaps the Government can encourage all schools to teach about the Windrush, focusing not just on the arrival of the ship but on why Britain encouraged migration from the Caribbean, the hostile way in which people who were encouraged to come were often received, and their treatment decades later, for which compensation is still awaited.

At Show Racism the Red Card, the education team, working with current and former footballers, including Trinidad’s Shaka Hislop, talk to children about what racism is and how we can work to eradicate it. Much good work is done in many schools but, alas, not in all. A Windrush stamp and a 50p coin are exceedingly worth while, but a proper place in England’s school curriculum for the breadth of black experience would be a lasting and fitting commemoration of and for the Windrush generation.