‘Roots of the Windrush Scandal Go Much Further Back Than We Think’
‘How working with a local community project forced me to rethink the Windrush Scandal
Previously published by the NN Journal — 29th May 2021
When NorFAMtoN CEO Shereen Ingram asked me to join her project to help members of Northampton’s Windrush Generation, I jumped at the opportunity without a second thought, to give back to the people that raised me. I am still firmly of the belief that the village raises the child and for me, that village was Northampton’s Caribbean communities recalling my sites of childhood like the former-West Indian club on Claire Street. Additionally, watching men like my grandfather play steelpan across Northampton, including Monks Park Working Men’s Club on the Wellingborough Road bringing communities together over the melodies of my countrypeople.
Steel drums finds its history in the oil industry of Caribbean, wrought in the violence of White corporations and Black labour of the 20th century. However, what came out of that in this music is beautiful — and before this project, I never really felt that connected to those islands in the Caribbean but now I feel the link between myself, Britain and my grandparents’ countries as inextricable. The Noels and the Ventours came to Britain and hence Northampton in the late 1950s early 1960s. Northampton has not been the same since. Going door-to-door with Shereen and co with hampers for my grandparents’ generation, has only made me appreciate them even more than I already did. A Boxfood initiative under non-profit NorFAMtoN, I was part of the ‘Windrush Generation Doorstep Befriending Team’ where we delivered Caribbean-specific hampers and fresh meals to members of the Windrush in Northamptonshire. With the arrival of the lockdowns due to the pandemic, we saw increases in loneliness, fear, and food poverty in Caribbean elders due to them not be able to get to the shops to get their usual cultural requirements. The Windrush Doorstep Befriending Team acted as a lifeline to Black Caribbean elders, though reliant on the goodwill of volunteers delivering a service that should have been filled by the local authorities.
As the hampers’ products were sourced from local Black and independent businesses including Boxfood, Vicky’s Kitchen and Mandala Moon Therapy, it gave some respite to a people that have often been responsible to help and economically support relatives in the Caribbean as well. But speaking with Shereen these last few weeks and absorbing her passion for this work, as a descendant of the Windrush herself, we talked on how the national press’ critiques of the Windrush Scandal did not go far enough in their analysis. The Boxfood initiative showed me how the work we were doing was also a Black Lives Matter issue and inherently anti-racist. Furthermore, I also began to think original exposés by the national papers on the Windrush Scandal were not critical enough in their analysis which only covered seventy or so years.
To understand contempt for Black lives in the British context we must go back centuries, and in 1562 a trader by the name of Sir John Hawkins set sail for the west coast of Africa acquiring into his possession a few hundred enslaved Africans, going on to sell them in the slave markets of Spanish America.
Queen Elizabeth I was so impressed, she funded a return trip. However, it was not until the 17th century that British colonialism took root in the Caribbean starting in 1627 with arrival of men like Christopher Codrington in Barbados. So, to understand the Windrush Scandal we must go back to the days of White masters and enslaved Black people, where the conceptualisation of a White race and a Black race were constructed, and then imported into the Caribbean from Britain. And whilst today the Government put the economy first in their Coronavirus strategy, members of the Windrush that are both Black and elderly were bludgeoned by the intersectional violence where racism and ageism interlock to create something devastating. Further to the fact many of this generation may also be working-class and living alone.
Intersectionality continues to be threaded through this story and though the NorFAMtoN project is necessary, it is filling a gap that should have been filled by the local authorities in a world that follows the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, where we know racial inequalities have exasperated since March 2020. The Windrush Scandal exists unabated in a society where Black and Brown ministers in the Government continue to act as the diversity bunting of institutional racism. In Northampton, we have seen members of the Windrush experiencing food poverty, loneliness, and isolation compounded by the racism in British society at large. Yet, anti-Black racism in Britain has a history that goes back centuries both in this country and its former colonies. Working with Shereen these last few weeks as well as looking at the Black Lives Matter resurgence last year, reveals to me that in order to understand what is continuing now with the Windrush Scandal, we must also trace this history back to Britain and the Caribbean in the 17th and 18th century.
It forces us to look at policies of institutional racism in not just enslavement as a White supremacist system, but also during the world wars, pertinently after WW1 which was followed by the 1919 Race Riots in many places including London, Salford, Glasgow, Cardiff, and across Tyneside.
And with the ongoing hostile environment machine and the Windrush Scandal, I am brought to look at the everlasting relevance of community organising in a Britain where Black lives are continuously thrown under the weight of White supremacy — from disproportionate police stop and searches of Black people to a school curriculum that is White supremacist by design.
Coming into proximity with the local Windrush elders here, and after many conversations with my grandparents, the work I have contributed to with NorFAMtoN resulted in an a long-read article Writing this, I make links between the Windrush Scandal today and the racisms of yesterday, including that of the First World War and enslavement — where the actions of colonisers during the slave-trading era are still influencing the world we live in now.
