Windrush: 75th Anniversary

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, the history of Afro-Caribbeans in modern Britain begins with the arrival of the “Empire Windrush” on 21 June 1948, which brought hundreds of passengers from the Caribbean to meet the labour shortage. They had been here before; what was new with the “Empire Windrush” was that they had arrived in this form, at this point in history and at this particular destination.

What has been their contribution during the 75 years they have been here? It is immense and best understood at three levels. The first level is what I would call moral and spiritual. They have forced us to recognise our racism. When we met them, we talked about human dignity but showed little of it in our behaviour. They forced us—sometimes patiently, sometimes through struggle—to recognise their fellow humanity. In so doing, they have allowed us to raise our level of moral consciousness and raised us as a people. One people’s ability to raise the moral level of another is a great contribution for that community to make.

The second level of their contribution is very considerable. It is that they kept us going as a society. There were lots of areas where we desperately needed their labour and that labour was available, from the NHS to transport, music, drama, sports and athletics. Mention an area and you see the beginning of a new energy, which activates not only them but a lot of the British people and begins to show the emergence of new traditions and new kinds of dance and music.

The third important thing that the Windrush generation did was to be readily available for any kind of work that British society expected of them.

I end by suggesting that the Windrush generation’s contribution would have been much greater than it has been so far if only they had not been subjected to what I generally call institutionalised racism. That is a concept that some people seem to resist but I want to push it because it is absolutely valid. One comes to it if one asks a simple question. Nobody seems to practise racism, yet still it happens. I do not see anyone discriminating against me, but the reality is that I am discriminated against. How do we explain this gap between my personal experience and what is happening? It is caused by the concept of institutionalised racism. Therefore, when one talks about institutionalised racism, the important thing is not to ask, “Who did it?”. It is like a man starving to death. You ask, “Who did it?” when nobody did it. Does it mean that it is of no concern? No. The question to ask is not who did it, but how did it happen? What were the processes in our society that allowed this to happen? What could we have done? I therefore suggest that institutionalised racism is an important concept.