Windrush: 70th Anniversary

Debate between Damien Moore and Nigel Adams

Thursday 14th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Nigel Adams)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a great privilege to be at the Dispatch Box for the second time in front of your good self. I thank and commend the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for securing this fantastic but vital debate. It has been incredibly powerful, and I congratulate all right hon. and hon. Members on sharing stories and memories of their families and those of their constituents. We have had passionate, brilliant and moving contributions not just from the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood, but from my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and the hon. Members for Glenrothes (Peter Grant), for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) and for Brent Central (Dawn Butler). We also heard, yet again, an incredible speech from the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). I hope to be able to address some of the points raised in the time that is left.

Seventy years ago, in 1948, Britain had just emerged from an exhausting, destructive but victorious second world war. The country was making key decisions about its future direction, its prosperity and its position in the world. We rose to the challenge in that year by creating the national health service and by hosting the global community at the London Olympic games.

[Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)]

I had the opportunity to learn about the Windrush generation at university. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should give children in schools the opportunity to learn about the contribution that that generation made to this country in getting Britain back up off her knees after the second world war?

[Nigel Adams]

That is a very fair point. It is incumbent on schools and on teachers to ensure that the Windrush generation is included in the curriculum, because children could learn an awful lot as a result.

As has been discussed today, another seminal and momentous occasion took place as the United Kingdom welcomed the HMT Empire Windrush at the port of Tilbury on 21 June 1948, and what followed the day after has been subsequently and regularly debated in this House. While it should be recognised that black British history does not start with the Windrush, the arrival of 492 West Indians, many of them ex-servicemen and women, has become synonymous with the first wave of mass migration and the beginning of modem British multicultural society. Those people include Alfred Gardner, who lives up the road from me in Leeds. I understand that he is still going strong at the great age of 92, and I am sure that the whole House sends Alfred its best wishes.

Many from the Windrush generation left their homes to answer the call to come to a strange, foreign and cold land in order to help rebuild the mother country. The welcome for many from that community, and many other communities that followed, was mixed at best. I would not do this debate justice if I did not mention and recognise the struggle to adjust and to put down roots, with many arrivals receiving a hostile reception. A well-documented phrase present outside many houses at the time was “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. As a white man brought up here, it is difficult for me to understand how terrible the Windrush generation would have felt as they walked the streets of London and other cities looking for accommodation. Many people have stories about that and other appalling discriminatory times in the UK. The unique challenges for acceptance, integration and recognition were most noticeable in the Notting Hill riots of 1958, the Race Relations Act 1965 and the Scarman and Macpherson reports, to name but a few, and this struggle has come to symbolise part of the story.