Windrush Generation: 75th Anniversary

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Friday 7th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour but also a challenge to follow such an inspirational speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. It is wonderful that a ship, which it is believed was named after a river in the Cotswolds, is now synonymous with a generation of mainly Caribbean people coming to the UK to make it their home. And what a celebration it has been over the last few years: £750,000 for community celebrations, the wonderful monument that many have spoken of in Waterloo station and the 10 beautiful portraits commissioned by His Majesty the King. Even walking home last night, one of those portraits, of Alford Gardner, was on the digital advertising hoarding as I passed by a bus stop.

I suppose I might be biased, as, although I was brought up in rural, then mono-racial Rutland, I have lived in Trinidad and Tobago. There was a food, a culture, a liming with friends and a freedom in expressing your worship of God that I still so deeply appreciate. However, the presence of my noble friend from the Home Office, alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, reminds us that this celebration has been tinged with sadness. Like many churches in the 1950s and 1960s, the Home Office has not always treated the Windrush generation justly or kindly.

There was of course a black community already in the UK. In fact, the first black-led church, Sumner Road Chapel, was established in Peckham in 1906, such were the numbers living here—but Windrush was of course mass migration, which would change the UK, I believe, for the better. I was also reminded recently by a British-Jamaican friend that the reason his parents moved here was because they believed that there were no opportunities for the family, especially the children, back in Jamaica. The way the British ruled Jamaica at that time—it was 14 years after Windrush that Jamaica won its independence—did not give some people confidence in the future for their children.

Of course, so many did make a great future for their children and grandchildren. Although early Windrush migrants faced harsher discrimination than today, sadly some discrimination still exists. The data from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report in 2021 outlined that there are still persistent issues, particularly in education:

“In terms of overall progression, Black Caribbean pupils are the least likely of the main ethnic groups to progress to the more elite high tariff universities by age 19. This progression rate of 5.2% is less than half the overall national figure of 10.9% of all pupils. … Of the main ethnic groups, the Black Caribbean group is the least likely to attend university after the White British group. … New evidence indicates that attainment is closely related to socio-economic status”—


a topic in the headlines at the moment.

“once this is controlled for, all major ethnic groups perform better than White British pupils except for Black Caribbean pupils”.

I would be grateful if the Minister could answer the question I have previously raised in your Lordships’ House, as to whether a specific Windrush scholarship for higher-tariff universities and also Windrush apprenticeships could be founded. Although there are many other issues that need to be addressed to deal with such educational disparities, this would be an important marker.

Of course, there is a tenacity within communities as, despite these educational disparities, and perhaps due to the length of the presence here in the UK as the first mass migration of the 20th century:

“young people from the Black Caribbean ethnic group … have a much lower unemployment rate than those from the Black African ethnic group, even though prejudice faced by both groups is likely to apply in equal measure”.

Along with other noble Lords, I think it is good to believe that the scheme is not going to close, but I also query what positive action is being taken by the Home Office to find the claimants, not only to improve the processes. I pay tribute to the work that civil servants have done in the face of much scrutiny. Perhaps I boldly say that the only uncontroversial fact of the scheme has been its co-chair, Bishop Derek Webley of the New Testament Church of God—which the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin mentioned—who has worked honourably on such a controversial project. I hope that all claimants will be found so the scheme can fade from our memory, as it is rather a cloud on an otherwise wonderful 75-year anniversary.

While we deeply celebrate the amazing people of the Windrush generation, for some there is a haunting of dislocation: dislocation from west Africa; dislocation from the Caribbean; and a dislocation while living in the UK. We are only now beginning to understand the generational impacts for human communities of the severing of ties to land, communities, culture and language. The generational effects of trauma for indigenous people and survivors of the Holocaust might actually, according to research, even be carried in the DNA. We are all the richer and more blessed for the UK Windrush generation, but let us never forget the cost and the suffering over many centuries.