Lesson video

- ♪ Well believe me I'm speaking broadmindedly ♪ ♪ I'm proud of to know my country ♪ ♪ I've been trying to countries years ago ♪ ♪ But this the place I wanted to know ♪ ♪ London that is the place for me ♪ ♪ To live in London you are really comfortable ♪ Hi everyone.

Welcome back to our lessons on the sixties.

My name is Mr. Wallace and this is less than four of six on our lessons on the types of stories we can tell about the sixties.

And I have to open up this with a confession that song is not from the sixties.

The songs you've heard so far are all sixties music, but that one is actually from 1948, but it is relevant to what we're going to be going into today.

So on the screen right now you can see someone by the name of Aldwyn Roberts.

You can see that name here, but he went by the name, Lord Kitchener, the guy in the the World War One propaganda posters that your country needs you, man.

He arrived in Britain with a great number of other people in 1948, on this ship, the Empire Windrush.

And as he arrived at Tilbury docks he got off the ship and started singing that Calypso song.

London is the Place for Me, to sum up the, the happiness, the relief, the joy that he was here in this country.

And he was just one of many people who have come to define, come to symbolise, to represent, the post-war migration.

And that's our focus for today.

By post-war migration I mean, the group of people who settled in this country after World War Two, starting in the late 40s going deep into the sixties.

And today we're going to look at what their experiences were.

What did someone like Aldwyn Roberts, Lord Kitchener, and all of the others who arrived on the Empire Windrush and everybody else who arrived afterwards, who arrived on ships in the 40s, 50s, and sixties what did they experience? What's their story of the sixties? Because they keep on talking about different stories here and about how the sixties is more complicated than the stereotype might suggest.

So before we move into what his story and their story was I want you to make sure that you're ready.

So make sure you've got a pen.

Make sure you've got something to write on.

And make sure you've got a peaceful hassle-free environment where you won't get interrupted.

If you're ready to start, we can move on.

All right, let's go.

All right, everyone, I'm up in the corner again.

Now, if we're going to start anywhere on trying to understand what migrants lives were like, the people who moved to Britain, we have to start with the ship.

The Empire Windrush has come to represent the migration story.

In fact, even people who moved to Britain, but were not on their ship became known as part of the Windrush Generation.

We're not just talking to people on the ship, though they are notable in themselves.

And Aldwyn Roberts is one of those, but people who moved to Britain at the same time, the late 40s, during the 50s and into the sixties all of these people are known as the Windrush Generation.

This generation of people who at invitation in many places moved to Britain because Britain was seen as the motherland as part of the British empire or they were from part of the British empire.

Britain had always presented itself as the real homeland, the motherland for all of these countries and after World War II needed assistance in trying to rebuild its country and rebuild its economy.

And many people moved to Britain and their experiences, the experience of the Windrush Generation are what we're really going to be looking at today.

Now, this might be a little bit familiar to you because the Windrush generation had been in the news more over the last say, few years because of some scandals and some problems they've had with the modern present day government.

We're not going to go into that much today, but it is worth examining because it shines a light on current issues to do with race.

So if you are interested in that it's maybe worth having a look, but we won't really have much time to look at that today.

Now the Windrush Generation, the people on on the Empire Windrush, the ship you just saw and the people who moved in after 1945 they weren't the first black communities in this country.

And of course the people who moved in also weren't just black.

We had many people who move from countries in say the Caribbean and islands like Jamaica or Barbados and so on.

But we also had people moving from parts of South Asia and India and Pakistan and so on.

But they weren't the first communities of colour in this country.

And an example that you can see here is someone by the name of Ulric Cross.

He joined the RAF during the war, part of the Jamaica squadron.

Being the only person of colour in the squadron he was dubbed The Black Hornet.

Now that's a name that wouldn't really fly these days.

And understandably so to single someone out because of their skin colour, that is obviously something that is not acceptable, but in 1941 he was the only black member of his RAF squadron.

He was based in the UK for several years.

He was awarded several medals because of his service to great Britain and the British empire.

And Ulric Cross is just one of many people who served, again, what is called, what they refer to themselves as the motherland.

And this goes back to World War One as well.

Empire soldiers were absolutely crucial during World War I.

Many settled in the UK afterwards, which caused some people in the UK were not particularly happy about.

There was a rioting and attacks on many of these communities in 1919.

But it wasn't migration to this country didn't just start after World War Two.

And it's worth noting that.

That there were people of colour in this country before 1948.

What happened in 1948 is it began to take off.

And there's several reasons for that.

So this is a map of the British Empire at the end of World War Two, okay? In 1945.

You can see places like Canada, South Africa, and Australia were part of what we would call the Commonwealth.

So they had the queen as their head of state.

but they're not part of the empire.

Britain didn't run them.

They ran themselves.

All of the places that you can see in red they had some sort of direct British rule like Britain appointed its leaders or something like that.

Now this would change quite soon because India in 1947 becomes independent.

But this is largely the state of the empire at the end of the war.

And as I mentioned before Britain had experienced devastation during the war.

It was almost bankrupt.

It had lost thousands of soldiers, thousands were injured.

It cities had been subjected to the blitz.

So a lot of them had been bombed and they needed young able workers in order to help rebuild the country and rebuild the economy.

And at the end of the war and leading into 1948 they passed what's called the Nationality Act.

You can see that right there.

The Nationality Act gave British citizenship to anyone in the British empire.

So you are British no matter whether you are from Britain, you are from an Island in the Caribbean, you are from one of these African colonies, you were from Pakistan, et cetera.

You were a British subject.

You had a British passport.

You had the right to move to Britain.

And just like anyone in the right in, anyone in Britain had the right to move to those places as well, okay? The Nationality Act gave citizenship to everyone in the British empire.

And with these rights came the right to live and work in Britain.

Now what the government expected, according to the historian, David Olusoga in this book in particular.

So I've got a book called "Black and British," which we will talk about more later because it's going to come up in your work.

You can see my post-it notes in there.

So I've been using this.

This is very useful in trying to understand the history of people in Britain who are black or from different communities.

And there's special focus on their experiences after World War Two.

And according to David Olusoga, the British government passed this law expecting migrants to come to Britain from the old dominions.

What they meant by the old Dominion's was Canada, Australia, New Zealand, white colonies.

They didn't think that there would be migrants coming from other colonies.

That's according to this particular historian.

And he studied government documents at the time, which he reprints.

And there's a very persuasive argument.

And there's a lot of discomfort.

The number of people who are coming from places such as the Caribbean.

Because unintentionally they've been telling people across the empire for decades that Britain is the motherland.

That Britain is a land where you can make it, where you can have a more successful life, where you'll be treated equally and so on.

And so after World War Two, with some of their countries experiencing difficulties and Britain needing help, many people from around the Commonwealth and around the empire moved to Britain.

They moved to the mother country.

And they were moving for work.

They were moving to help rebuild part of the empire.

There were job adverts in places such as Kingston and Jamaica, which asked for workers to come across and move.

So the government wasn't necessarily expecting this level of non-white migration according to this particular historian.

Now, let me just move myself so you can see this.

According to BBC Bitesize, as the UK economy picked up and then boomed in the late 50s and sixties migrants from India, East and West Pakistan, and that eventually becomes known as Pakistan and Bangladesh, Nigeria, Ghana, Cyprus and many other Commonwealth countries came to work in the textile factories of the North of England and in the engineering factories of the Midlands.

So we're looking at quite a diverse range of places here.

We've got people moving from, let's go back to this map, parts of Asia, people moving from part of West Africa, people moving from the Caribbean, all coming back to England on invitation because they had these rights and so on.

And these pictures are from 1962 from the last arrival, which arrived in London in 1962 before the government changed the law.

Because in 1962, the government passed a law called the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which limited migration coming into the country.

So this was the last arrival before that law has changed.

So from 1948 to 62 was when it was maybe at its most accessible.

And after 1962, there was still many ways that you could move to this country, but there were certain hoops you had to jump through, forms you needed to fill in, the certain requirements and so on.

And you can see a lot of these people moving over wearing extremely smart clothes.

They were dressed to try and get their foot in the door to try and make a good impression to get jobs et cetera.

They'd moved from often their own countries such as in the Caribbean where they had good middle-class professions.

Many people who had been, for example, doctors or teachers had moved to this country in the hope of trying to get similar positions here.

You can see a series of women here as well all waiting for maybe their husbands or maybe for transport.

But as time moved on the welcome began to change.

Now this photo isn't from the sixties, okay? It's from the early 1970s, this is from 1972.

But it would be a mistake to think that this type of racist attitude suddenly appeared in 1972 because in the background of all of this migration from the sixties, the 50s and the 40s, they expected a welcome, but according to David Olusoga and according to the words of many people who were part of this generation, what they actually faced was hostility.

Was people being prejudiced against them, treating them with racist comments, banning them from doing certain things, not offering them jobs or houses and so on.

This picture with the graffiti Keep Britain White is a good example of that.

So even though there's pictures from the early 1970s it does reflect attitudes, which where I wouldn't, I don't know if I would call them common in the 1960s, but they were certainly not uncommon.

Okay, and many people who moved into this country did have to go to overcome that added barrier.

I'm just going to bring myself back onto the screen now.

They'd that added barrier to get through.

They needed to prove themselves because there was a certain amount of hostility towards them because of their race.

Now once they moved they experienced some of the sort of living conditions that we looked at in our last lesson.

And that meant a lot of inner city poverty, overcrowded houses, but that was not necessarily a barrier.

And it would be a mistake and we'll get to this more later on to think that their experiences were simply negative ones.

There was a determination to overcome some of these problems, to rise up, to start businesses, to get educated, to contribute to the society, to do your share.

And whilst there may be things like this of children playing on kind of, you know, terraced streets that are in some of the poorest parts of England at this time.

That doesn't mean that that was their only story, nor is racism their only experience though it was a common one.

Now, at this point, I want you to pause the video.

Cause I want you to look through the worksheet.

And this worksheet is a little different to usual.

Usually there's a few paragraphs and some questions.

This time is based on sources.

I'm going to give you some accounts of what people at the time actually said, their own words, the words of other people.

And I want you to answer those questions.

What can we learn from the sources of the time about the experiences of migrant communities, of black communities? What is that story compared to the stories of the affluent, the poor, the swinging and so on? What is the story, the migrant story of the 1960s? When you're ready to come back and we'll go through the answers, okay? Let's go.

I'll take myself off the screen.

Come back when you're ready.

Okay, well done.

So at this point, you've read through the sources and you should have some good answers.

So let's go through them one by one.

The first question you can see here this is the historian I've been referring to, David Olusoga.

He wrote his book, "Black and British" just a few years ago.

And he said the main feeling that migrants experienced in Britain was disappointment.

I gave you two quotes, one from someone called William Naltey and one from Eric and Jessica Huntley.

Now what evidence was there in their quotes that they would agree with this, that they experienced disappointment.

So your answer might not look like mine because you may have chosen a different piece of evidence, a different quote.

But an answer could look something like this, okay? Both William Naltey and Eric and Jessica Huntley had experiences that would be disappointing.

For example, William Naltey had an unpleasant experience on a bus where another woman asked, "Isn't it about time they went back to their homes?" This made Naltey realise that many British people were not welcoming of him and his fellow migrants and they didn't really want us.

Furthermore, Eric and Jessica Huntley talk about disappointment in education in their experience dot, dot dot.

And I've kind of left that one hanging a little bit because that's where you then add in more quotes and evidence to back up that poin, okay? But an answer would have that sort of shape.

Give me a quote, give me a piece of evidence that they have said, which would support the argument that they would be disappointed.

So isn't it about time they went back to their homes? I mean, Britain was their home and it was surprising to some of these migrants who'd always been told that Britain was their motherland to get here and to have some people make them feel unwelcomed, that they weren't welcome in Britain.

So there were three laws that were passed during the 1960s that were specifically relevant to race relations.

And our two questions here is how can we argue that the government was supportive of migrants and not supportive of migrants using those three laws? So let's look at the answers here.

How could we argue that they're supportive of migrants? We can see that at times the government was supportive because they passed to Race Relations Acts.

These made it illegal to treat people differently based on their race.

So they could no longer be refused jobs, houses, or even served in a shop just because of the colour of their skin.

So until the Race Relations Act there was what's called colour bars in the UK that your colour could bar you from getting a job, from getting a house, et cetera.

The Race Relations Acts made that illegal.

So there was clearly some support and trying to make sure that their experiences were were better, that they were treated with fairness.

How could we argue that the government was not supportive of migrants? We can also see that the government was not supportive such as when it passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act.

This was aimed at stopping migration into Britain from nonwhite nations like Jamaica, but not from white nations.

This clearly discriminated against migrants based on the colour, based on their skin colour.

So in some ways they're supportive of the migrants that are here, but they're not particularly welcoming of attracting new migrants.

And then there was this quote from a speech by a politician at the time called Enoch Powell.

This has become a very what we would call notorious to speech in history.

So notable, but maybe not welcome.

And it's generally referred to as the Rivers of Blood speech.

And the quote I selected here is where he says, "We must be mad, literally mad as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents.

It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre." So what can we learn from that about his beliefs? We can tell from this quote that Enoch Powell was strongly anti-immigration and believed that it was a danger to Britain's future.

He claimed it was mad to let people in and that by doing so Britain was heaping up its own funeral pyre.

This meant the country was helping to kill itself by letting in migrants from other countries.

So Enoch Powell was probably the most famous of the anti-immigration politicians and this speech, an incredibly graphic speech, really laid out why he thought this was such a bad idea.

And the last question was about how his comments split opinion.

How can we tell that some supported and some opposed him? It is clear that some people supported Enoch Powell.

There were people who agreed with his views on immigration and his local newspaper received 35,000 supportive postcards.

However, there was also clear opposition.

He was sacked from his in government and newspapers called him racist and disgraceful for speech.

And this speech is still today seen as a very controversial one.

It's very hostile to people who are trying to move to this country and it's worth noting had the right to move to this country.

So what stories can be told about the sixties? Let's keep on thinking about this question then.

The story that we traditionally know, the stereotype is the swinging sixties.

But there's not a lot in what we've learned today which would suggest a swinging experience for migrants who moved to Britain.

Okay, so at this point, I want to introduce you to this particular phrase and this author.

So Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian author who wrote one of my favourite books.

In fact, she wrote a book called "Half of a Yellow Sun" which is set in the Nigerian civil war in the 1960s.

And a few years ago, she did a talk called the Danger of the Single Story about how it's a problem if we view people or countries or times as only having one story to tell because that leads to stereotypes.

It leads to prejudice.

It leads to misunderstandings and so on.

And this is something that we're learning more and more as we go through our work on the sixties.

There is no one story of the sixties, just as there's no one story of a person.

There's no one story of a country.

People, countries, time periods, they're much more complex than that.

And if we try and boil them down to one thing, to one experience, to one story, then we're not really being honest and we're not doing our jobs well as historians.

Our lives, our cultures are composed of many overlapping stories.

And so far we've looked at the stories of four particular groups.

We've looked at young people.

Today, we looked at immigrants.

We've looked at people in poverty.

And we've looked at what I call the middle classes.

And you could also say it we mean that as affluent people.

People who had reasonably well paying jobs.

Now their stories of the 1960s are all different.

They all experienced the sixties.

They will have similar memories, but their personal stories are different.

So if we try and say that the sixties is only one thing then we're not really being honest with ourselves and we're not really doing a good job.

And I'll be honest I've done that today.

I've presented a single story.

I've told you about one story of migrants, the Windrush Generation and the difficulties that they experienced.

How they had hostility.

How they had prejudice.

How they had politicians delivering racist speeches.

How they had hostility on buses and so on.

And you could walk away from this thinking that the migrant experience to Britain was just a terrible one.

They came here, they experienced nonstop hostility and it was a bad situation for everyone.

What I haven't really gone into is the positive experiences.

This man here, Sam King, is a very good example of that.

He was part of the Windrush Generation, served in the RAF.

He was the first black mayor of Southwark in London.

He was awarded an MBE by the queen.

And he's got an extraordinarily successful family.

He's got grandchildren, nieces, and nephews who have become doctors and so on.

Here's one of many, many examples of roaring success from the Windrush Generation.

And he says here, "This was my country.

We've contributed so much and we're British now." And there's a pride in that.

That he moved to the country and sure he would have had one or two uncomfortable unpleasant experiences, but he also worked hard.

He served, he did his job.

He raised his children to get educated and so on.

And there would have been millions of people in his shoes as well.

So the migrant story isn't just one of hostility and prejudice.

It's also one of success.

And weaving their story into our story.

So it becomes one Britain story.

Britain's lives, Britain's culture is many overlapping stories and the diverse experiences of immigrants, the diverse experiences of young people.

They all feed into that.

There is no one story of the sixties.

There's no one story of Britain.

And there's no one story of migrants at this time.

So let's finish by doing this.

I gave you this exact same word selection a couple of lessons ago, okay? And I wanted you to choose three at the time, which summed up the story so far.

I want you to do this a little bit differently now.

I've put the four groups we've studied so far at the top.

Young people, immigrants, people in poverty and the middle classes.

This time I want you to just choose one for each of those groups.

Which one word so far sums up each story from this different part of society? Or if you want to come up with your own word, that's absolutely fine.

Do that as well.

Just make sure you explain it, okay? So I want you to pause the video and we'll come back and see what I've chosen, but of course it doesn't have to be what you've chosen.

It's absolutely fine if not.

We'll come back into what I've chosen in a minute.

Pause the video and choose one descriptor for each group.

All right.

So let's finish then.

Let's see what we've got to.

These were the four words that I chose.

Young people.

I went with influential because it's their tastes, their styles, which influenced so many things.

Their styles of music for example.

For immigrants, I went for diverse.

And by diverse, I mean that their experiences were diverse.

They had different types of experiences.

Some people experience prejudice, some had great success, some served in the military, et cetera.

That they had many different experiences.

People in poverty, the word I chose was unequal because they're at the wrong end of an unequal society.

And they're not able to experience many of the things that the middle class has had.

And for the middle classes I put modern because they were the ones able to really take advantage of modern technology, appliances in the households like TVs and kitchens, foreign holidays, cars and so on.

But you may have chosen different words and that's fine.

And it's worth remembering within these groups young people in Gateshead and Newcastle would have had a different experience to young people in London.

Okay, people in poverty in different parts of the country all have different experiences they might have come up with a different way of describing, you know, the sixties for them.

That's fine.

But what as long as we're recognising that there is no single story and that the sixties are complicated and actually has layers of stories and people have layers of stories then we're doing a good job.

As much as we might want the past to be simplified it's actually not that simple.

It's complex and that's a good thing because it means that we have, you know, things to share.

We have ideas that we can share.

We have experiences that we can compare.

That's a good thing.

Not everything has to be the same.

Now, if there are more stories to be told than the swinging sixties, why do we remember that one so clearly? We've just gone through the fact that there are more stories to be told.

So why is that the one that everyone seems to remember? Why is that the thing that we latch onto? So in our next lesson, we're going to start looking at the sixties and popular culture.

How do we remember it? How do we in the modern day think about the sixties and where do we encounter it, okay? In the meantime, I think you've been doing absolutely great so far.

Well done in getting through this lesson.

It's interesting, but sometimes a challenging topic.

Keep working hard and I look forward to seeing you in our next lesson.

All right, have a great day.