To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the arrival of the MV Empire Windrush in Britain in 1948, From War to Windrush, a new special exhibition at Imperial War Museum London, tells the personal stories of West Indian people during the First and Second World Wars.
Using historical material and personal memorabilia, much of which has gone on public display for the first time, the exhibition looks at the involvement of black men and women from the West Indies and Britain on the frontline and home front during these conflicts. The exhibition also examines how their experiences contributed to the establishment of Britain’s contemporary Caribbean populations.
Approximately 16,000 men from the West Indies volunteered to fight for Britain in the First World War, and over 10,000 servicemen and women answered the call of the ‘Mother Country’ during the Second World War.
Thousands more served as merchant seamen. From War to Windrush explores how, despite facing discrimination during their service, many black West Indian servicemen and women and civilian war workers returned to settle in Britain after the Second World War.
WWI hero Walter Tull with Clapton Football Club and telegram offering sympathy to his family on his death. By kind permission of Finlayson Family Archives
The MV Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury docks on 21 June 1948. 492 passengers had paid the £28 10s fare to travel to Britain in search of work. Most were ex-servicemen.
Although it wasn’t the first passenger boat to arrive in Britain in the post-war period with passengers from the West Indies, the arrival of the former troopship is now seen as a landmark in the making of a culturally diverse Britain.
The first waves of mass immigration from the West Indies continued into the late 1940s and early 1950s, and ten years after the arrival of the Empire Windrush 125,000 West Indians were living in Britain. Today, one per cent of the current British population is of Caribbean background.
Among the exhibits are pages from the MV Empire Windrush passenger list and a weight of stories and objects that show the individual heroism and ordinary experiences of the Caribbean men and women who volunteered for service during both world wars.
Among them is the RAF flying logbook of Cy Grant, a navigator in Bomber Command, who was shot down over the Netherlands during the Second World War and spent the rest of the war in German prisoner of war camps.
Grant’s is just one of series of remarkable stories to emerge from the exhibition, which reminds visitors that in both world wars the British armed forces were in fact an army of the commonwealth that boasted people from all over the world.
A telegram from the King and Queen expressing their sympathy for the death of Walter Tull, helps to bring home the remarkable story the star footballer who became the first black British army officer in 1917.
Tull played professional football for Tottenham Hotspur and Northampton Town before the First World War interrupted his career and he joined the Army’s Football Battalion.
Quickly promoted to sergeant, he fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and despite military regulations forbidding a “person of colour” being commissioned as an officer, he was promoted to lieutenant in 1917.
He met his death leading an attack on the Western Front in March 1918. Several of his men made unsuccessful attempts to bring him back to the British trenches and his body was never recovered – adding even more poignancy to the telegram on show.
Other stories are less conventionally heroic but no less fascinating. Photos and audio testimony reveal the experiences of Connie Mark, who joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) in Jamaica in 1943 and served for 10 years in the British military hospital in Kingston, achieving the rank of corporal.
The MBE belonging to Sam King, who returned to Britain on the MV Empire Windrush after serving in the RAF, is also on show. King went on to become the first black mayor of Southwark.
A similar story of service follwed by a new life in Britain emerges from other quarters including Allan Wilmot, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1925.
Wilmot joined the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the Second World War and served on board HMS Hauken until 1943 when he was transferred to the Royal Air Force.
After a brief period in Jamaica after the war, he returned to Britain in 1947 and developed his career as an actor and singer. He was a founding member of the singing group the Southlanders, who enjoyed chart success in the 1960s.
Another veteran is Reginald George Mason. Born in Port Maria, Jamaica, in 1926, Mason joined the Royal Air Force in 1944 and was stationed at Filey, Yorkshire. After the war, he chose to stay on in the RAF, reaching the rank of flight sergeant. He now lives in West Oxfordshire where he is a Conservative councillor.
From War to Windrush was developed in consultation with a number of specialists including Arthur Torrington, Co-founder and Secretary of The Equiano Society and Windrush Foundation; as well as Dr Hakim Adi, Reader in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at Middlesex University and founding member and Chair of the Black and Asian Studies Association.
An accompanying series of free adult events will examine key themes featured in the exhibition as well as explore the wider experiences of black men and women during the First and Second World War. See www.iwm.org.uk/windrush for more details.
