Written for HIST 4C in Spring 2021

When the MV Windrush sailed across the North Atlantic in 1948, it carried hundreds of Jamaican immigrants to England’s shores. As they disembarked at Tilbury Docks, these immigrants had dreams of social and economic mobility in England. Many were servicemen who had fought for the ‘mother country’ in World War II, others were hoping to save money for their families back home, and some were recruited to fill labor shortages in state-run institutions like the NHS. The trip cost each of them £28.10s, the equivalent to three cows in Jamaica, which meant it required saving, selling valuables, or taking out loans to make it aboard. With enthusiasm, motivation, and patriotism, the Windrush Generation had all the ingredients for success in England, yet many found doors into English life tightly shut upon arrival. Andrea Levy, the daughter of Windrush generation immigrants, wrote her 2004 novel Small Island about the experiences of Jamaican immigrants in England. She based her novel on copious research and a lifetime living with immigrant parents. When Jamaican immigrants came to England, the pervasive racism, ingrained in the English since the racist campaigns of Imperialism, created obstacles to employment, racist abuse and shattered the notion of a loving ‘mother country.’

While the English were learning that the goal of their empire was to dominate the savage peoples of ‘Africa,’ Jamaican people were indoctrinated to believe that the goal of the empire was to take one small island under the wing of another, becoming one country with an ocean between them. As English and Jamaican realities collided in post-WWII Britain, the racial discrimination, although traumatic, bred resistance allowing Jamaicans to build their own communities and questions Britain’s tenets of equality.

On either side of the Atlantic, British and Jamaican people formed opinions about one another and their place in the empire. As inhabitants of a valuable British colony, Jamaican children learned from a young age about England. English life was idealized in colonial classrooms through tales of the empire. Andrea Levy uses the education of Hortense, a character based on her mother, to illustrate this. Hortense gloats: “my fairy cakes – with their yellow cream and spongy wings – were declared by the domestic-science teacher, Miss Plumtree, to be the best outside the tea-shops of southern England”. These schools created fanciful ideas of English domestic life and food. “Englishness” was rewarded in education. This unrealistic image made young Jamaican girls desire an English lifestyle. Jamaicans were led to believe they were just as valued as the children in London. Hortense’s friend Celeia fantasizes about English life, telling Hortense, “When I am older, Hortense, I will be leaving Jamaica and I will be going to live in England.’ This is when her voice became high-class and her nose point into the air… ‘Hortense, in England I will have a big house with a bell at the front door and I will ring the bell.’”. These young Jamaican girls are dreaming of English life and immigration. They imagine the elite life they learned about in school. The English, on the other hand, were learning about colonialism in a very different way. World’s Fairs became popular attractions in the late 1800s and were used by many European countries to display colonialism. In Small Island, Queenie visits one of these exhibits in her youth: “in a hut sitting on a dirt floor was a woman with skin as black as the ink that filled the inkwell in my school desk… ‘She can’t understand what I’m saying,’ Graham explained. ‘They’re not civilised. They only understand drums.’ The woman just carried on like she’d heard no one speak – pushing her stick through the tangle of threads”. These exhibits created human zoos where they displayed ‘primitive cultures’ and treated people like animals. Exhibitions reached thousands of people and influenced their sense of superiority by making them aware of their whiteness. These portrayed, inaccurately, African people and colonies as backward places. These two opinions rested on very different realities and set the scene for a clash as immigrants landed in the British Isles.

When the worlds of Jamaicans and Londoners collided, each became aware of the perception of their race and their differences, creating an environment filled with racist discrimination against the immigrants, which shattered the idealized ‘mother country’ idea. A Pamphlet made for Jamaican Immigrants coming to England instructed them to be good rule-abiding citizens and not make a fuss about English behavior. It said, “keep the door open for those who come after you” by representing all Jamaican immigrants well when dealing with landlords who may be racist. These directions were not an adequate warning for the intensely racist society they were about to encounter. It illustrates how black people felt pressure to prove racist stereotypes wrong; sadly, many white people were beyond convincing. In an interview, two women who immigrated from the Caribbean in the early 1950s “experienced a range of discriminatory attitudes and behaviour, and were often restricted to undertaking some of the most menial tasks during training” they said, “‘We were told to clean lockers and the beds, we were made to go and clean the wheelchairs and the commodes…we did a lot of menial jobs’”. Their experience was common among Caribbean immigrants who often had to work jobs they were overqualified for. Experiencing this kind of racism was not what many immigrants expected from the England they had learned about in school and had seemed so willing to have them work the jobs that needed to be filled. England needed them, but many white people could not swallow the pill of a diversifying society. By denying these qualified men and women jobs, they held their own country back. The English were highly discriminatory in the hiring process and tried to keep black people out of many professions. The English had learned about the citizens in colonies as backward people and therefore did not trust them working important jobs and did not believe their education was satisfactory. This is illustrated in Small Island as Hortense attempts to use her Jamaican teaching degree to get a job in England: “‘The letters don’t matter,’ she told me. ‘You can’t teach in this country. You’re not qualified to teach here in England.’… ‘It doesn’t matter that you were a teacher in Jamaica,’”. This shatters Hortense as she dreamed of teaching in England. The English dismiss her, assuming that she is not intelligent enough to teach because she is black. In instances like these, the racism in England became overwhelmingly clear, and it drowned out the myth of the ‘Mother Country’ that Hortense had believed so earnestly in school. The racist messaging, often with a political purpose, indoctrinated the English. It played out in this cruel way when they were confronted with the people they had believed for so long to be uncivilized. When Gilbert, one of the main characters in Small Island, arrives in England, he realizes that the English do not know anything about Jamaica. He compares this to how West Indian volunteers learned about England daily, considering it their country: 

“Ask any of us West Indian RAF volunteers – ask any of us colony troops where in Britain are ships built, where is cotton woven, steel forged, cars made, jam boiled, cups shaped, lace knotted, glass blown, tin mined, whisky distilled? Ask, then sit back and learn your lesson. Now see this. An English soldier, a Tommy called Tommy Atkins. Skin pale as soap, hair slicked with oil and shinier than his boots. See him sitting in a pub sipping a glass of warming rum and rolling a cigarette from a tin. Ask him, “Tommy, tell me nah, where is Jamaica?” And hear him reply, “Well, dunno, Africa, ain’t it?”

Gilbert’s experience with English people makes him realize that there is no Mother Country, just a colonizer. He knows he has every right to be in England, but the English do not seem to want him there. British people had built a strong sense of nationalism by comparing themselves to the ‘other’ represented by colonized peoples, so they retailed in a violently racist way when Jamaicans arrived, claiming to be part of British culture. 

After the ‘Mother Country’ idea was shattered, Jamaican immigrants realized that to be successful, they would have to fight to be seen as equals instead of living an idealized English life that did not exist. Once they let go of the ‘mother country’ idea, Jamaican immigrants were free to stand up to the grotesquely racist English. At the end of Small Island, Gilbert confronts Bernard, his white landlord: 

“You wan’ know what your white skin make you, man? It make you white. That is all, man. White. No better, no worse than me – just white… Listen to me, man, we both just finish fighting a war – a bloody war – for the better world we wan’ see. And on the same side – you and me… But still, after all that we suffer together, you wan’ tell me I am worthless and you are not. Am I to be the servant and you are the master for all time? No.”

Gilbert’s insistence on whiteness meaning nothing to one’s worth is representative of Jamaicans challenging the racism of the English and asserting their view of equality. He points out to Bernard that they fought together in the same war, which highlights how each sees the goals of the British Empire differently. Gilbert saw them fighting united for a Britain that wanted to make a better world, while Bernard saw minorities and ‘others’ as his enemy. Gilbert’s courage standing up to Bernard makes Hortense, his wife, fill with pride for him and their heritage. Hortense calls him “noble,” a word she would have previously used to describe the vision she had of British people. By standing up for who they were, Jamaicans could come together instead of endlessly trying to assimilate to British culture and instead make Jamaican culture part of British life. As the feelings of allegiance to a superior mother country faded, Caribbean immigrants were left to consider what they wanted out of life in England and how they could achieve it despite discrimination. Realizing that the English were not a country of glorious elites with open arms allowed Immigrants to forge their paths independent of the desire to be just like the English. Young women who immigrated in the 1950s to be nurses said: “‘Black people, we were treated differently … but we didn’t worry because we know what we wanted to achieve and what we had to do and we did it, and we did it by making jokes with each other and laughing and doing our work properly’”. This motivation and pride meant that immigrants did not give up in the face of discrimination. Their determination created, in the long run, a better society in which Caribbean immigrants preserved their culture. In his article “Windrush and the making of post-imperial Britain,” Harry Goulbourne explains how Caribbean Immigrants survived the toxic environment in England:

“Discrimination in the crucial fields of employment, housing, justice and education served to focus attention on these matters. Exclusion from social and spiritual institutions – such as working men’s clubs, pubs and churches – led to the formation of their own non-discriminating meeting points.”

The creation of these meeting points and strong friendships allowed immigrants to thrive despite discrimination. They adopted a headstrong attitude to counter the brazen racism. While the formation of these separate social spheres was courageous, it should not have had to happen. The exclusion from English life was traumatic, and later generations took forceful action against this kind of treatment. In the moment, many immigrants felt they had to go into survival mode by creating safety in private spheres. 

Unravelling the complex relationship between these two islands not only allows the truth of the past to shine through but helps in understanding modern day immigrant stories and how the multicultural society of England came into being. Books like Small Island and interviews with immigrants call attention to the racism embedded in British culture. It is essential to acknowledge and understand why immigrants experienced this kind of treatment. Their contribution to English society was massive and done under the pressures of extreme inequity. The Windrush generation not only asserted their equality but raised a generation of English-Caribbean children who went on to campaign for justice. In writing Small Island, Andrea Levy, part of this generation, calls attention to immigrants’ experience and dispels the myth of England being a non-racist country. Only by owning the past can English society move into a more accepting future that understands immigrants’ hard work and contribution.

Bibliography 

Goulbourne, Harry. “Windrush and the Making of Post-Imperial Britain” The British Library. The British Library, September 6, 2018. https://www.bl.uk/windrush/articles/windrush-and-the-making-of-post-imperial-britain.

Levy, Andrea. Small Island. London: Tinder Press, 2018.

McDowell, Linda. “How Caribbean Migrants Helped to Rebuild Britain.” The British Library. The British Library, September 6, 2018. https://www.bl.uk/windrush/articles/how-caribbean-migrants-rebuilt-britain.

Torrington, Arthur. “Windrush70.” The British Library. The British Library, March 27, 2019. https://www.bl.uk/windrush/articles/windrush70.