I arrived in this country in 1965 on a boat from Georgetown, Guyana, via Trinidad to a cold and wet Southampton with my mother and baby sister, and many other citizens from the Caribbean. My parents did what was expected – worked in the NHS. It is now 75 years since the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, and still the people from the Caribbean who were not of African heritage, such as descendants of Indian indentured workers, get little coverage in the Windrush story.
It is time for academics and commentators to address the issue of the ethnic/national origins of the people who came to the UK from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 60s, and tell the whole story of who the Windrush generation really were. Not everyone was from Jamaica, but from several countries and islands.
West Indians (both of African and Indian descent – just look at the cricket team) collectively have contributed positively both culturally and politically to the development of modern Britain, and they should all be credited, wherever they were from.
Dr Ray Bachan
Brighton, East Sussex
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