I lost both of my paternal grandparents in the space of a year and a half, between 2019 and early 2021. With their passing, I lost my direct links to the Windrush generation, and the unrecorded stories and family histories they carried with them. As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the first arrivals from the Caribbean in 1948, I am conscious of the scale of potential loss as more of the pioneers of this generation reach the end of their lives, and the void that creates for descendants like me.
Where does all this loss leave us? The generations that came after Windrush, those of us with a foot in both camps, born in Britain but brought up with fading memories of sun-drenched islands, half-told stories from our elders and a sense of dual identity hanging somewhere between the two.
For my generation – millennials – our parents, now in their 50s and 60s, were born here, too, or brought over when they were very young. Many of them have never been back. And now their parents are dying. Without them, the ones who made the brave journey towards a promised better life, there is a sense of something becoming untethered. It’s a link that we cannot afford to lose.
For me, the most pertinent question is one of responsibility. Is it on us to ensure that the legacies of the Windrush generation endure and move forward? And how can we do this with authenticity and honesty, even as those direct connections to the past diminish? There are times when I feel this individual responsibility keenly. I worry about a lack of tangible knowledge to pass on to future generations. So, I have learned to cook Jamaican food, dug through my dad’s record collection in search of clues, visited Jamaica for the first time in my 30s, and made contact with more distant relatives on that side of my family. I have found so much joy in these unearthed cultural connections and shared stories, but I still wonder if they are enough.
This quest feels particularly challenging because of the deep fractures in my dad’s family. It was never an option for me to sit at my grandmother’s feet and ask her for stories of home while she braided my hair. My dad was put into the care system when he was just a baby, and his parents never brought him home. They existed only in the peripheries of his life, and subsequently had minimal involvement in the lives of their grandchildren. My grandparents were both in their 80s by the time they passed, and they were practically strangers to me. I have maybe two or three hazy memories of them. I only know their faces from photos.
I am not alone in grappling with a disjointed family history. So many families of Caribbean descent have been splintered due to the deep, intergenerational impacts of the hostile environment that made life unduly difficult for the migrants who arrived in the 50s, and still affects the prospects and quality of life of their descendants. There was also the prevalence of children being left behind while their parents settled in the UK, the “barrel children” who were sent for at a later date, or never sent for at all. And there is the ongoing Windrush scandal, which tore families apart with threats of deportation and the harrowing experiences of people being barred from returning home after a holiday abroad. Some were even deported to countries they had not visited since early childhood.
While I relish the opportunity for celebration that comes with Windrush Day, it is not lost on me that the very people being celebrated are still suffering at the hands of the state. The British government has recently been accused of “failing its citizens” due to the “belittling and horrible” process of the Windrush compensation scheme, set up in 2018 by the Home Office. The scheme has been marred by delays and controversies – in June last year, three in four claimants were still waiting for compensation.
With so much of our present and immediate history mired in unresolved hurt, and the fact that there has been precious little accountability, it can feel hard to look forward. There is still so much injustice to be reckoned with and rectified.
Perhaps then, the responsibility to the Windrush generation and their legacy should be collective, rather than individual. It was a shock to me to realise that, despite there being approximately 2,500 museums in Britain, there is no permanent building base that exclusively presents the stories of Windrush pioneers or their descendants. This is a crucial place to start. Dr Les Johnson is the founder and chair of a campaign to build a National Windrush Museum, and his work – alongside the newly formed Next Gen development council – is pushing back against the historical erasure of Windrush from Britain’s collective memory.
The immense contributions of the Windrush generation – including my grandparents – have not only shaped the fabric of British society but will have a radical impact on Britain’s future, with the legacies of their revolutionary spirit. It is crucial that these stories aren’t lost.
On an individual level, I feel it is my responsibility to create a life for myself and future generations that celebrates this spirit, embedding their histories into a new identity of Black Britishness. This feels like the most authentic way to keep these narratives from disappearing.
Natalie Morris is the author of Mixed/Other: Explorations of Multiraciality in Modern Britain
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