Bill Sykes' Newsletter
from America.
(September 2005)
An ex-Brit gives his views - (without
fear or favor) - of the American Scene
British immigrant history from World War Two
onwards.
After World War Two there was a
considerable shortage of unskilled labour in Great
Britain and when an advert appeared in the Jamaican
"Daily Gleaner" offering
passage to England on the troopship SS Empire Windrush
for the relatively small cost of 28.10 pounds Sterling
some of the people of Jamaica saw this as a chance
of a lifetime to emigrate to a better way of life.
On the 24th of May 1948 the Empire Windrush, which
was on its way from Australia to UK, left Kingston
Harbour, Jamaica, with 300 passengers below decks and
192 passengers on deck, a number of whom were British
ex-servicemen and women being repatriated home to Britain.
Due to some civil disturbances which broke out in Britain
at that time with respect to the recruitment of black
labour, there were suggestions that the ship should
not be allowed to dock in a British port, but finally
the Labour Government’s Colonial Secretary at
that time, Mr. Creech Jones, said that only settlers
who possessed British passports would be allowed to
land and then only for a limited time period of one
year!!!
The SS Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks on
the 22nd of June 1948, and 236 settlers from Jamaica
and Trinidad were allowed to land and provided with accommodation
at the Clapham Common deep shelter, which previously
had been used to house German and Italian prisoners of
war. As the shelter was less than a mile from the town
of Brixton many of the settlers found places to live
in that locality and so the great escape to Britain came
about.
 As there was still a vital need at that time for
as many as 11 million additional workers, (5% of the
British workforce), London Transport started in April
of 1956 to recruit more and more people from the West
Indies.
In 1986, British politician Enoch Powell who had very
controversial views on immigration spoke out against
Britain’s large scale acceptance of black
people as immigrants and predicted, "rivers of blood", if non-white
immigrants were not repatriated to their countries of origin. He then went
on to describe Britain’s role in absorbing so many foreign immigrants
as an act of "building one’s own funeral pyre".
The way that things have turned out, can one say that maybe Enoch Powell was
right after all?
We welcome feedback about any of the contents of these
newsletters. Please send all correspondence to bill_sykes@huddersfield1.co.uk
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