Windrush History
The Liverpool Museums website https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/history-of-slavery/transatlantic-slave-trade reminds us that: 'between about 1500 and 1900, Europeans forcibly uprooted millions of people from throughout West Africa and West Central Africa and shipped them across the Atlantic in conditions of great cruelty.'
The transatlantic trade in women, children and men supported the development of the great European empires. Following emancipation 1834, the British Empire turned its gaze to Africa and other parts of the world, but kept ownership of land and Government in the Caribbean and elsewhere until World War 11 when men, and some women, were enlisted to the forces and those services that supported the War Effort.
Returning to British colonies after the war ended was not easy, and in the years after the war many people took the opportunity to travel to other countries, including UK, to find employment. In 1948 the Empire Windrush sailed to Britain, but as David Olusoga explains in a Guardian article in 2018, 'The Windrush story was not a rosy one even before the ship arrived'.
Reading Museum dispays information from their research and display:
Click here for their Windrush display.
The Big Issue presented this article- click on it:
LM
