Hi everyone, and welcome to our lesson today.

Today, we're going to be conducting some research to help us in preparation for writing an essay about the Windrush.

In today's lesson, you will be researching the historical and social context of the Windrush in preparation for writing an essay.

Here are some keywords we're going to use: British Empire, Commonwealth, immigrant, The Empire Windrush, the Windrush Generation.

Well done.

The British Empire consisted of countries ruled or controlled by Britain.

The Commonwealth is a collection of countries that were once, or are still, governed by the British Empire.

Immigrants are people who have moved to foreign countries permanently, often for work or better living conditions.

The Empire Windrush was a passenger ship that carried large groups of post-war West Indian immigrants to Britain in 1948.

The Windrush Generation refers to the people who travelled from the Caribbean to Britain from 1948 to 1971.

Today, we are going to be researching the Windrush in preparation for writing an essay.

Firstly, we're going to be learning about the British Empire.

Then, we're going to learn about the Windrush Generation.

And finally, we'll learn about what their life experiences were like when they came to Britain.

The British Empire consisted of countries ruled or controlled by Britain.

At the peak of its power in 1913, Britain ruled over 412 million people.

This was 23% of the world's population at the time.

So at that time in 1913, the British Empire ruled over almost 1/4 of the entire world's population.

At different points in history, the British Empire controlled 56 different countries.

These included India, Canada, Kenya, Australia, and Afghanistan, but there were lots more.

After World War I, many countries regained their independence from Britain, so the British Empire began to decline.

By regaining their independence, what we mean here is that these countries, rather than being ruled by Britain, decided to be ruled by their own governments instead.

However, many countries still wanted to have ties with Britain, so a Commonwealth of Nations was formed.

And this is the Commonwealth flag.

The Commonwealth is an association of 56 countries working voluntarily towards shared goals of democracy, prosperity, and peace.

Match the terms to their definitions and pause the video while you do that.

Well done if you spot that the British Empire was countries ruled or controlled by Britain, whilst the Commonwealth is a collection of countries that voluntarily work together towards shared goals of democracy, prosperity, and peace.

In 1655, many Caribbean islands came under the rule of the British Empire.

You can see on the world map here the countries that are highlighted in red are the countries that were ruled by the British Empire at some point throughout history.

Here, the arrow is pointing to a cluster of islands, and these are the Caribbean islands.

In the 1900s, many of these countries gained independence from British rule, but they became part of the Commonwealth.

True or false? All countries in the Commonwealth are still ruled by Britain.

Pause the video while you decide.

Well done if you spotted that this is false.

Now choose how to justify your answer.

Pause the video again while you decide.

Well done if you spotted that the correct justification was A, the Commonwealth consists of 56 countries that were once part of the British Empire.

Many of them wish to maintain their ties with Britain despite no longer being ruled by the British monarch.

After World War II, the British government passed a new law to change the definition of British nationality.

This meant that all people who were from a Commonwealth country had the right to work and settle in the UK and to bring their families with them.

The aim of this new law was to encourage people from across the Commonwealth to come to Britain to help with post-war construction.

Post-war construction simply means rebuilding the country after the war, because lots of the cities, particularly London, had suffered a great deal during World War II through bombing but also damage to economic structures such as schools, hospitals, financial buildings, lots of the infrastructure of the country had been destroyed at the time.

So the British government needed more people in the workforce to come and work in Britain to improve the economy and help to physically also rebuild the country.

Look at the photos of London after World War II.

What might life have been like? What might life have been like at that time? You can use the scaffold to help you.

I think that.

Pause the video while you complete your task.

Well done, everyone.

Here are some things you might have spotted or noted down.

I think that lots of buildings would've been destroyed.

Many people would've been homeless.

Many people's workplaces and public buildings such as schools would need to be rebuilt.

So from these photos, we can get an idea of the devastation that had been caused by World War II and just how much work was needed to be done to rebuild the country.

Great work, everyone.

Now we're going to move on to learning about the Windrush Generation.

World War II lasted from 1939 to 1945.

The Empire Windrush was a ship used to transport passengers from Jamaica to England in 1948.

And here's a picture of it now on the screen.

Many of the passengers were men who had served in the British Armed Forces during World War II.

The journey from Kingston Harbour in Jamaica to the Tilbury Docks in England was 4700 miles long, and it lasted 22 days.

Why might people have chosen to immigrate from the Caribbean to the UK? Pause the video while you consider this question.

Well done if you've had a think, and here are some ideas you've come up with.

People might choose to immigrate to another country for more job opportunities.

Promises of better working and living conditions.

And, England was seen as the motherland of the British Empire and Commonwealth, so many Commonwealth residents would've been very excited at the prospect of moving to England.

Now it's time for your task.

Put the historical events in chronological order.

Pause the video while you complete your task.

Brilliant work, everyone.

So firstly, World War II ended.

Then, Britain, especially London, needed to be rebuilt.

The UK government passed a law that allowed any Commonwealth resident to settle and live in the UK.

People from the Caribbean travelled from Jamaica to England on the Empire Windrush.

Great work, everyone.

And it's really important for us to understand the chronology of these historical events so we can see how the one thing led to another.

Now we're going to move on to learning about life in Britain for the Windrush Generation when they arrived.

When they arrived in post-World War II Britain, many of the Windrush Generation found that life was not as they had expected it to be.

They had been promised that they'd be welcomed to Britain as British citizens, but many of them experienced racism and prejudice.

England's population at the time was primarily white and there was very little multiculturalism.

Multi means lots of, and cultural means lots of people's different traditions and beliefs depending on where they come from.

So England was not a multicultural society at this point in history.

This meant that many people did not understand Caribbean culture.

Some people welcomed the Windrush Generation as a much-needed source of labour, but others treated them in a racist and prejudiced way.

They experienced difficulties with finding accommodation, so that means finding places to live, financial exclusion, securing jobs, and being treated fairly.

Many Windrush arrivals found it difficult to secure accommodation for the following reasons: When they first arrived at Tilbury Docks, there was no accommodation available for people to stay in.

So the government hadn't organised anywhere for these West Indian immigrants to stay when they arrived.

Many of them had nowhere to sleep.

The government said that they could use an air raid shelter in Clapham Common in London as a temporary home.

So during World War II, lots of underground tube stations in London were used as air raid shelters during bombing, but they weren't needed anymore as air raid shelters 'cause the war was over, so the government allowed the immigrants from the Windrush to go and sleep there instead and use this as a temporary home.

236 of the passengers spent their first days in Britain in this huge tunnel.

Landlords were racist and they refused to rent properties to members of the Caribbean community.

We know that this was racism because they refused to rent these properties to the Caribbean community purely based on these people's race.

Property was extremely expensive to buy or rent, so the cost of living in London was much higher than it would've been in Jamaica.

Living conditions were also very poor and the properties were very cramped.

Why did 236 of the passengers of the Empire Windrush spend their first days and nights in Britain sleeping in an old air shelter? Pause the video while you decide.

Well done if you spotted that this was because there was nowhere for them to stay.

Despite their contributions to British society, many of the Windrush Generation were denied access to financial systems in the form of bank accounts and loans because they did not have credit history in the UK.

Credit history just means a person's history of banking.

So in the UK, if you want to open a bank account or if you want to take out a loan, which means to borrow money from the bank, they'll check your credit history first, and that means they'll look at how you have spent and saved your money in the past.

Now because the immigrants who'd come from the Caribbean had never before had a UK bank account, they were frozen out of these financial systems, which means they weren't able to open a new bank account or apply for a loan.

Without a bank account or being able to apply for a loan, it was almost impossible to apply for a mortgage to buy a home.

A mortgage is a specific type of loan that you go to a bank to borrow money for in order to buy a house or to put down a deposit on a house.

This financial discrimination led the Windrush Generation to work together and support each other through a community-based saving scheme called Pardner Hand.

Pardner Hand is where a group of people agree to save money together over a period of time.

The Windrush Generation used this approach to collaboratively save, so that means they could save together as a group rather than everyone saving their own individually.

This meant that they were then able to eventually afford housing in Britain.

Match the terms to their definitions and pause the video while you do that.

Great work, everyone.

A loan is money lent to you for a fixed amount of time and that you have to pay back.

A mortgage is a loan used to buy a house.

Pardner Hand is an informal community-based saving scheme.

And financial discrimination is when an individual or group of people are unfairly denied access to financial systems because of who they are.

Many people find it very challenging to find and secure a job for the following reasons: There was a very poor selection of jobs available.

Many applicants were overqualified, but they ended up taking lower grade jobs than their qualifications.

So many people had immigrated to Britain from the Caribbean with professional qualifications, such as being nurses, for example.

However, they struggled to actually secure jobs in that same role in Britain due to lots of discrimination and lack of job opportunities, so they ended up taking jobs that they were overqualified for.

Many people faced racial discrimination when applying for jobs.

This made life very difficult because unskilled jobs were poorly paid and there were few opportunities for promotion or career progression.

This added to the pressure of trying to afford rent and the expensive cost of living in Britain.

During the 1940s and '50s, tensions between Black and white communities also became more pronounced.

The Teddy Boys were a group of young, white working-class men.

There were not many opportunities for these men at the time due to a lack of housing and jobs.

On the 29th of August 1958, a small group of Teddy Boys attacked an interracial couple, the woman was white and her partner was Black, in Notting Hill in London.

By the evening, the group of Teddy Boys had grown to three to 400 people.

During what became known as the Race Riots which followed, Black people and their houses and their shops and businesses were targeted and attacked.

The rioting continued until the 5th of September 1958.

During the riots, many people were arrested, including Black people for carrying weapons.

However, many felt that this was unjust because they were acting in self-defense.

The rioting caused a breakdown of trust between the police and the UK's Afro-Caribbean community.

Many people from this community felt that prior to the riots, the police had not taken their fears seriously.

They also argued that many Black people who had been arrested for carrying weapons during the riots were only acting in self-defense.

After the riots, many Afro-Caribbean decided to return to their home countries as they could not live with the racism and discrimination in Britain any longer.

Now this brings us onto our final task.

Using a tick, for positive, or across, for negative, sort the outcomes of the Notting Hill Race Riots into positive and negative.

Pause the video while you complete your task.

Great work, everyone.

Okay, so organisations were formed after the riots.

They continue to fight against racism and shapes 20th-century history.

This is a positive.

So these riots led to lots of civil rights activism in Britain and the wider UK.

Many Black people no longer trusted the police is a negative outcome.

The media and wider population were made aware of the racism that Black people were facing.

This was a positive outcome because it became much more widely known and understood, and therefore it meant that these issues of racism and prejudice could be talked about and tackled more effectively.

A year later, the first Caribbean Carnival took place in Notting Hill to celebrate Caribbean culture.

This was a positive outcome, and this continues to be an annual celebration every year at Notting Hill Carnival.

Some Black people decided to leave England.

This is a negative outcome.

Well done for all of your work in our lesson today.

We have covered a huge amount of information and content in our lesson.

This is all going to help us with the subject knowledge that we need to be able to write accurately and clearly and credibly in our essay.

Great work, everyone.

That now brings us to the end of our lesson, where today we've been researching the Windrush in preparation for writing an essay.

Understanding the British Empire and the social and historical context of what life was like in Britain after World War II is crucial to understanding this point in history.

The Windrush Generation were invited to come with their families to live and work in the UK to help rebuild post-World War II Britain.

When they arrived in the UK, many of the Windrush Generation experienced racism and discrimination.

There are still many strong emotions around this period of history today.

Great work, everyone, and I'm really looking forward to us putting this knowledge into practise when we come to plan and write our essay about the Windrush.