![]() ![]() They were shocked when they were met with hostility instead. Caribbean arrivals had been told that they’d be welcomed as heroes. What was this Britain?īut this wasn’t the only surprise. Imagine their surprise, then, when they first saw a white man sweeping the street. The only white people many Caribbean subjects had seen before coming to England were members of the imperial elite. Out in the colonies, whiteness had been a sign of power and wealth. They quickly realized that stories they’d been told about the mother country weren’t true.īritain, for one thing, was full of poor white people. The key message here is: Caribbeans arriving in Britain were met with a racist backlash.īetween the late 1940s and 1960s, around half a million Caribbeans arrived in Britain, among them Akala’s grandparents. ![]() They saw themselves as equal citizens who had come to help rebuild the war-shattered “mother country.” But that wasn’t how white Britain saw them. This was the “Windrush generation,” a reference to the name of the ship that brought many Caribbeans to Britain. With the encouragement of the government, Caribbean subjects bearing British passports began landing at Tilbury, a port near London. This gave anyone born in a British colony the right to settle in Britain. In 1948, it passed the British Nationality Act. To get back on its feet, it needed workers.ĭespite its wartime losses, Britain still possessed a vast empire. ![]() At the end of the Second World War, Britain was exhausted, indebted, and in physical ruins. ![]()
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