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I don't know how many of you have heard about Windrush, and the scandal surrounding it that took place in England. Some of you might even wonder where I have been for the last few years. Well, I ended getting caught up in that  Windrush saga, which took a lot of my time since then to take on the UK government. Other Guyanese, or descendants of Guyanese, also took up the cause. MP David Lammy and many other MPs of Guyanese descent gave their time for free. The black MPs of South African descent did not lift a finger. I regularly attacked and questioned them on Twitter, but Africans don't care about we West Indians. The British MP Chuka Ammuna is a case in point.
Anyhow, things have now been largely resolved, and I received a letter of thanks from the current UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid, plus a certificate handed to me in person by the Mayor of the borough I life in, in an official ceremony on the 12th of July, on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen. So I am well chuffed, and can now get back to my "normal" life.

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Gilbakka posted:

I've read about Windrush particularly as it relates to Jamaican immigrants deported on that boat decades ago.

And that's the key issue that affects Guyanese who also came to the UK. Because they are not Jamaican and did not come on the Windrush nobody took any notice of their plight. With Guyana becoming independent in 1966 that just complicated matters. But luckily there were Guyanese willing to stand up and be counted as victims of the same hostile policies.

Mr.T
Mr.T posted:

Anyhow, things have now been largely resolved, and I received a letter of thanks from the current UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid, plus a certificate handed to me in person by the Mayor of the borough I life in, in an official ceremony on the 12th of July, on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen. So I am well chuffed, and can now get back to my "normal" life.

Kudos Mr.T,

great respect to folks who make the world a better place.

Django

Welcome back.  I was at a meeting in Brixton where this was discussed in the Carribbean community living there.  Did we cross paths?

A book will be published soon “Memory, Migration, and De colonization in the Caribbean and Beyond”, focusing on the Empire Windrush.  44 Guyanese were on the voyage on June 21st, 1948.

Bibi Haniffa
Last edited by Bibi Haniffa

It was kind of funny when I went to one of these meetings of West Indians. I was the only mixed race person there. But coming to think of it, that shouldn't have been a surprise. Mixed race kids were hard to run into when we were kids. Mixed race kids only really showed up when we migrants started dating the local white girls.

Mr.T
Mr.T posted:

The British MP Chuka Ammuna is a case in point.

I think you mean West African.  Yes many of the Nigerians in the UK used to boast that they "sold off all the lazy and stupid people to the whites".

Curious though. Why does it appear as if only West Indians were involved? Why not South Asians who were also migrating to the UK in large numbers during that period?

Yes this Windrush scandal has being going on for quite a while.  I suspect that it was Brexit  (which made the UK gov't more sensitive about its global image now as it steps away from the EU) that the issue became open. I was reading about this in the Jamaican papers from at least 2011.  I also saw BBC programming on it quite a while back.

FM
caribny posted:
Mr.T posted:

The British MP Chuka Ammuna is a case in point.

Curious though. Why does it appear as if only West Indians were involved? Why not South Asians who were also migrating to the UK in large numbers during that period?

It's a case of West Indians being prepared to stand up and make their voices heard. People from Asia and Africa were also affected, but it's up to them to fight their own corner. They sure haven't shown their support or joined in the fight against the UK government to get things sorted. So it can reasonably assumed that they don't have the same numbers of people who are affected.

Mr.T
caribny posted:
Mr.T posted:

The British MP Chuka Ammuna is a case in point.

I think you mean West African.  Yes many of the Nigerians in the UK used to boast that they "sold off all the lazy and stupid people to the whites".

Curious though. Why does it appear as if only West Indians were involved? Why not South Asians who were also migrating to the UK in large numbers during that period?

Yes this Windrush scandal has being going on for quite a while.  I suspect that it was Brexit  (which made the UK gov't more sensitive about its global image now as it steps away from the EU) that the issue became open. I was reading about this in the Jamaican papers from at least 2011.  I also saw BBC programming on it quite a while back.

There were others involved.  Here is the breakdown by country on board Empire Windrush.

AFA6459C-9108-4981-A86A-801AB01E7F29

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Bibi Haniffa
Last edited by Bibi Haniffa
Mr.T posted:
 

It's a case of West Indians being prepared to stand up and make their voices heard. People from Asia and Africa were also affected, but it's up to them to fight their own corner. They sure haven't shown their support or joined in the fight against the UK government to get things sorted. So it can reasonably assumed that they don't have the same numbers of people who are affected.

I suspect that IndoPaks don't have that problem as they are certainly well able to represent their interests.  Better in fact than are West Indians.  As often as they travel home to bring back wives if they had this problem it would have shown up long ago.

I also suspect that West Africans in the UK don't see themselves as needing West Indians to help them out.  Most of them arrived long after the Windrush era.

FM
Last edited by Former Member
Prashad posted:

Prashad always found West African people, culture and food to be friendly and good. I don't know where the Carib got this stereotype from. Maybe Ian Smith told him.

What stereotypes are you referring to?

1. Most West Africans arrived in the UK after the 70s so were not part of the Windrush generation.  A small % were and it turns out that some also have this problem, but are too small a % of the overall UK based West African population to have much leverage with the leadership of that community.

 2.  A high % of the West Africans arrived as college educated people so often think that they are better than the West Indians, who tended to have a more blue collar background.  The UK isn't like the USA where one can migrate based on having close family members.  So most Africans came in based upon their credentials, so the blue collar element are less represented.  The West Indians arrived as colonials of the British Empire so prior to the early 70s a more blue collar migration was possible.

3. Just as some West Indians/Africans who migrate to the USA look down on black Americans so too do many West African migrants to the UK look down on Caribbean British blacks, hence the reaction to Mr. T to a problem that they didn't think had much to do with them. 

FM

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