Hi, I'm Mr. Buckingham, and it's so good to see you here for today's lesson.

Today we are starting a brand-new unit based around a fascinating and important event: the arrival of the ship Empire Windrush in the UK in 1948.

I think you're going to love this topic, so let's get started.

Today's lesson is called "Exploring the Empire Windrush and the experiences of its passengers" from my unit called "The Empire Windrush: diary writing." By the end of today's lesson, we'll be able to explain why West Indian immigrants came to the UK on the Windrush and describe some of the challenges they faced when they arrived here.

So in this lesson, we're making the first step towards writing a diary entry in role as a Windrush passenger.

And to do that really well, we're going to need lots of historical knowledge about the Windrush and about what happened to Windrush immigrants.

So that's what we're gonna focus on today.

Let's make a start.

Here are our keywords for today's lesson.

My turn, your turn.

Colony.

Emigrate.

Immigrant.

Discrimination.

And racism.

Well done.

So a colony is a country or area under the control of another country, and if you emigrate, you leave your own country to settle in another.

An immigrant is someone who's come to a country different to their country of origin to live permanently.

Discrimination is treating a person or a group of people differently and unfairly because of a certain characteristic or something about them.

And racism is the harmful and unfair behaviours and attitudes people can show if they believe their own race is superior to another.

Here's our lesson outline for today.

We're going to start off by looking at the context for the Windrush's voyage, so the historical background to that.

And then we'll look at life in the UK for Windrush immigrants.

So I'm sure many of you know that over many centuries, Britain took over many areas of the world to create the British Empire, and you can see a map here of the British Empire at its greatest extent.

So by 1913, so that's just before the First World War, the British Empire ruled over nearly a quarter of the world's people, about 412 million people in many different colonies.

So colonies are areas of the world that are occupied by a different person.

So these included countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Canada, Australia, Nigeria, Ghana and Sudan, and you can see many more on the map as well.

Some of you might have families whose background is in one of those countries.

And most of these colonies, areas that were ruled by the British Empire, are now independent.

But this did not happen in most of these cases until this 1960s or the 1970s, so that's only 50 or 60 years ago.

So that's within the lifetimes of your parents or your grandparents.

You've probably also heard of the Caribbean, and the Caribbean is a region of more than 700 islands in the Caribbean Sea which lies between North America and South America, and you can see it here on the map.

We've got North America at the top there, South America at the bottom, Central America going up between the two, and then the islands in the middle in the Caribbean Sea are what we call the Caribbean.

Now, many of these Caribbean islands were colonies in the British Empire.

They were ruled by Britain.

Those include places like Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas and Barbados, and many more.

So because of the Empire's influence on those islands, English is the main language still in some of these countries.

And from the 1960s onwards, many of those countries started to become independent countries, so they ruled themselves instead of being ruled by Britain.

And most of them then joined the Commonwealth of former British colonies.

So the Commonwealth is a group of countries that were once part of the British Empire, but which no longer are, so they become independent.

So are the statements below true or false? Pause video and have a think.

Well done, good job.

So is it true that countries chose to join the British Empire? No, that's false.

They were occupied by Britain, often violently in order to make them become part of the Empire.

So they were forced to do that.

In most cases, they were not given the choice.

B says most colonies in the Empire are now independent.

That is true, but as we said, it's only happened at the last 60 or 70 years.

C says many Caribbean islands were colonies in the Empire.

That's true.

And the empire ruled nearly 25% of the world's people.

Again, that is true.

We said over 400 million people fell under the rule of the Empire at its greatest extent.

Really well done if you've got this.

So when World War II began in 1939, Britain called on its colonies and the countries of the Commonwealth for help.

So those colonies would've included those Caribbean islands.

At this point, the Commonwealth would've included countries like Canada and Australia, which used to be ruled by Britain but we were now independent, but were members of the Commonwealth still.

So you can see here a poster which was produced at the time.

It says "The British Commonwealth of Nations Together".

And this poster was of course designed to encourage men from across the Commonwealth to come and fight with Britain in Europe.

And over 10,000 men from the Caribbean colonies came to Britain to work in the military and for the war effort, some of them on the frontline, but some in Britain doing military work there as well.

And with their help, as we know, Britain and the Allies were victorious in the war.

They defeated Nazi Germany to win World War II.

So when the war ended in 1945, the UK was jubilant, it was happy, but it was also in a bad state for several reasons.

First of all, over 400,000 people, mostly men in the military, had died.

So that was creating huge job shortages, but also leaving families without fathers and children without dads as well.

So there was a huge gap in the population.

Also, two million people shortly after the war, emigrated, moved away to countries like Canada and Australia.

So they decided they didn't want to live in the UK, they wanted to move instead to one of these, usually former, colonies like Canada and Australia, where they knew that English was spoken and so they had a good chance of getting a job.

And there was of course still lots of bomb damage as well, particularly in London, after the Blitz and whole areas of cities needed to be rebuilt.

There was a huge amount of work to do.

Now, it's important to remember that although non-white people had been coming to the UK for centuries at this point, including during the Roman times, at this time, so at the end of the Second World War, most people in the were white, and that's gonna be important as we go forward.

So have a look at these two photos.

What do these photos suggest about London's experience of the war? Pause the video and have a think.

Well done, good thinking.

So we can see a contrast here, can't we? So we could say that people in London and the rest of the UK of course would've been thrilled that the war was finally over, but they would've also known that the country had a lot of work to do to rebuild and to get back on its feet, particularly because of the very sad loss of all the lives that were lost in the war.

Really well done for your thoughts there.

Now, in 1948, so three years after the end of World War II, a law was passed by the UK government that made clear that anyone who lived in a colony, so an area still ruled by Britain, or a Commonwealth country that had once been ruled by Britain, could live and work in the UK.

So we've got to remember that unlike most people in the UK, many people who lived in these colonies and in the Commonwealth were non-white.

So, for instance, they might have been Black Caribbean or Black African or Asian, depending on where in the world they were.

And what happened then was after this law was passed, Britain's public services started to run recruitment campaigns in the Caribbean, trying to encourage people living there to emigrate, to move to the UK.

So these immigrants, people moving from one country to another to stay permanently, were invited to come to Britain to help with its post-war recovery, to help it recover from the war.

And also, and really importantly, these people were invited to help in building new public services after the war.

So shortly after the war, the NHS was established, requiring a huge number of people.

And people were also encouraged to come and work for the railways and the public transport system and in postal services.

So there were big recruitment drives in the Caribbean to try and get immigrants to come to the UK to work.

So can you put these events in chronological order with number one as the first event? Pause the video and have a try.

Well done, good job.

So hopefully you started with this one.

Britain colonises many areas of the world, including many Caribbean islands.

Then we'd go here; during World War II, many men from the Caribbean come to serve in the British military.

Then after the war, Britain needs rebuilding and millions of people emigrate to other countries.

So that means people have left Britain to go to other countries to live.

And so number four, it says the government passes the law to make clear that those living in the colonies and the Commonwealth have the right to live in the UK.

And we know that after that, these recruitment campaigns began by the public services to encourage people from the Caribbean to come and emigrate to the UK.

But even before that new law came into force and before these recruitment campaigns started, some people in the Caribbean were keen to emigrate to the UK and that's where the Empire Windrush comes in.

So the ship the Empire Windrush was travelling from Kingston, the capital city of Jamaica, to London in June, 1948 and it was aiming to return soldiers to the UK.

And we can see a picture of the Empire Windrush here, so a really big ship.

And local newspapers in Jamaica and other places in the Caribbean were advertising tickets for sale on this crossing.

And they would cost 28 pounds and 10 shillings.

Now, that sounds very small to us, but actually it was a large amount of money then, and it's equivalent to about 1,000 pounds in today's money.

So many people bought these tickets and over 800 people from the Caribbean sailed on the Windrush across the Atlantic Ocean, travelling over 7,000 kilometres in 22 days to get from the Caribbean to Britain.

So these people were emigrating from the Caribbean to Britain.

So why would people want to emigrate from the Caribbean to the UK? Well, there were several key reasons.

First of all, many people on board Windrush were ex-servicemen.

They had served in the British military in World War II and they wanted to rejoin as a stable, well-paid job.

There was also very high unemployment.

That means many people were out of work in the Caribbean and very low wages at the time.

And there was less help from the government when people were in hard times from what you might get in the UK.

So people also believe that if they came to the UK, they'll be able to get better pay and better living conditions than they had in the Caribbean.

And they hoped that that would give them the chance to send some extra money back home to people who are still living in the Caribbean, and they'd have the chance to live in homes with more modern facilities as well.

And another really important reason is that many people in the Caribbean had been brought up, particularly by their schools, to believe in the UK being the mother country of the Commonwealth.

And so they wanted to see what it would be like in the mother country that had ruled over their islands for some time at that point.

So which of the following are reasons people chose to board the Windrush and to immigrate to the UK? Pause the video and have a think Well done, good job.

So yes, it was to get better jobs with better pay; yes, to see the mother country; not for the weather, but yes, to be able to send money back home.

So people really hoped that because they would be able to earn more money, they would have some extra money that they could send back to the Caribbean, to people who are still living there who are part of their family.

Really good job.

So let's do our first task for this lesson.

Let's imagine you're a resident of Kingston, Jamaica, and you read in your local newspaper about the Empire Windrush and you're trying to decide if you should buy a ticket.

I'd like you to write a pros and cons list about emigrating to the UK to help you decide.

So your pros are reasons in favour of emigrating, and your cons are reasons why you wouldn't choose to immigrate.

Pause the video and see how many you can come up with on both sides.

Well done, really good job.

So here's an example of the lists you might have made.

For the pros, I put better job opportunities, better pay and living editions, a chance to see the mother country, the fact that they speak English there too, 'cause remember, many Caribbean islands were English-speaking because they were part of the British Empire.

And I've put, we fought together in the war.

So remember, many Caribbean men had been in Europe and been in the UK during the war, and so they had a connection to that country already.

On the cons side, I've put these: the cost of the ticket, it was a lot of money.

It's a long journey, 22 days.

They would be very far from their family and it would be very expensive for them to get back again.

So remember, they've bought a ticket one way, but to get back would take a huge amount of time and it would be very expensive.

They also might know about the cold, bad weather they might think that Britain has.

They might be concerned about the different food and culture they might have there, and they might have mentioned the risk of discrimination as well.

Really well done if you came up with some similar ideas in your list.

Good job.

So now let's have a think about what life was like in the UK for the Windrush immigrants, for the people who came on that boat.

So the Empire Windrush we said had crossed the Atlantic Ocean taking 22 days in June, 1948.

So it arrived at Tilbury, which is a port near London on the 22nd of June, 1948 and journalists were there to record it.

So I really encourage you to go away and have a look online for some video footage of the Windrush arriving at Tilbury and the interviews the journalists did with some of the passengers.

So some of these Caribbean arrivals had jobs arranged and places to go, so these people had places they could go straight away to from Tilbury.

But hundreds of other people had no job and nowhere to live either.

So 236 people who were in this position were sent to live in an underground air raid shelter in London for up to the first four weeks until they found a place to live in London or elsewhere in the UK.

And the government did provide some help to the Windrush immigrants.

They were given free travel to any place in the country where they found a job.

And also in that underground shelter, the government created a small job centre to help people to find work in the UK.

So do you think the government treated the new arrivals well or poorly? Pause the video and have a think and see if you can explain your answer really clearly.

Well done, really good job.

Let's have a look at some ideas you might have come up with.

Maybe you said this: I think they were badly treated.

Imagine coming all the way from the Caribbean and being made to live underground for four weeks! Or maybe you said this: I think they were treated well in some ways.

I didn't think the government would've put so much effort into helping them find jobs.

Now remember, most people wouldn't have had to live in that shelter for the whole four weeks.

They would've moved out as soon as they possibly could because it would've been a very unpleasant situation for all that time.

But they were given the option by the government to live there for that length of time.

So we've seen that the government offered the Windrush migrants some support, but they faced many barriers in settling into the UK.

The first one was to do with housing.

There was a shortage of housing in Britain at the time because of the Blitz.

Many areas had been bombed and the houses had not yet been rebuilt.

But the immigrants faced another barrier, which was that many British people wouldn't rent houses to them because of their race.

And because of this discrimination, some immigrants were forced to live in very overcrowded and low-quality housing.

And the immigrants also faced discrimination in looking for work.

Many of them were very highly skilled, so they were able to do very well-paid jobs.

But because of discrimination, they were only allowed to do low-paid work for which they were very overqualified.

Some of these immigrants had planned to stay in the UK for only a few years and make some extra money before returning home to the Caribbean.

But because of the discrimination and because they were stuck in these low-paid jobs, it was very hard for them to build up savings.

So we can see there were many barriers there to them being able to settle comfortably into the UK.

So why would it have been frustrating for immigrants to be in jobs they were overqualified for? Pause the video and have a think.

Well done, good thinking.

So maybe you said this: Imagine training to be skilled at something and not being able to do it.

You'd feel like you were wasting your talents.

Or maybe you said this: People moved here to make good money.

If they were stuck in jobs which were less skilled, they might find it hard to save money to send home.

And that's certainly what did happen as well.

Really good job for your thoughts there.

So we've seen that around 800 people emigrated from the Caribbean to the UK on the Windrush, but they were followed by many more.

Thousands more people over the years followed, came from the Caribbean to the UK and we call these people the Windrush Generation.

Now, many of these immigrants worked in vital jobs in the public services.

Like we said, in the NHS, the postal service and in public transport, having been invited to apply by recruitment campaigns in the Caribbean.

However, many of them faced discrimination which took many different forms. For instance, sometimes the immigrants were barred from entering certain pubs or dance halls or churches, and sometimes they were refused service in some shops and restaurants due to the racist attitudes of the people who owned them.

And some politicians even encouraged white British people to blame Black Caribbean immigrants for the lack of housing that was being experienced after the war.

And in 1958, so 10 years after the Windrush's arrival, there were racist attacks on some of the Black immigrants by white, what were called Teddy Boys, which ended up in riots in which Black people's homes and shops were struck and damaged.

So are the statements here true are false? Pause the video and decide.

Well done, good job.

A says many of the Caribbean immigrants had been encouraged to come here by the public services.

That was true, they ran recruitment campaigns.

B says the government gave the immigrants houses to live in for free.

No, that's false, that's not the case.

In fact, even in the underground shelter, they had to pay to live there.

And C says white British people were commonly refused service in restaurants and shops.

No, that wasn't true.

And then D says the Caribbean immigrants often worked in public services like the NHS.

That was true.

Really well done if you got those.

Okay, let's do our final task for assessment where we're going to try and sum up the experience of people who arrived on the Windrush.

I want you to list some of the ways the Caribbean immigrants were treated well by the UK government and by British people, and some of the ways they were treated badly.

So you should have two lists.

One for the ways they were treated well, and one for the ways they were treated badly.

Pause the video and have a go.

Well done, good job.

So here are some examples of some of the facts you might have written.

Under treated well, maybe you said things like this: They were able to stay in the shelter for four weeks and entitled to live in the UK as citizens, and they were able to have free travel to a different place in the country for where they'd found a job.

Under treated badly, maybe you said things like this: The shelter where they were staying was obviously underground and they had to live often in poor quality housing due to discrimination and due to the housing shortage.

Sometimes immigrants were refused service in some shops or refused entry even to some places.

And sometimes they had to take up poorly-paid jobs and were not able to do the jobs that they were trained for.

And we saw that, sadly, some were also victims of racist attacks.

Really well done for your effort there, good job.

Let's summarise our learning in this lesson.

We learned that Britain had many colonies in the Caribbean as part of its Empire, and that the UK was badly affected by World War II.

We learned that in the years after the war, British public services ran recruitment campaigns in the Caribbean, and that the Empire Windrush was one of the first ships to bring West Indian or Caribbean immigrants to the UK, arriving in June, 1948.

And these early immigrants faced discrimination in housing and jobs, often driven by racism.

Really well done for your effort in this lesson.

I hope you've enjoyed learning about this important part of our history.

I'd love to see you again in a future lesson.

Goodbye.

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