Anna Boyne
Once upon a time, on the 22nd June 1948, Black people arrived in Great Britain. HMS Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, carrying 492 Jamaican men. The white English population welcomed them with open arms and streets paved with gold. Women, children and immigrants from other countries arrived at some point too (we just don’t remember when). And they all lived happily ever after.
At least that’s how the story goes.
In 1998, Trevor and Mike Phillips produced a TV series and accompanying book entitled Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain. The memory of Black arrival was born 50 years after 1948.
“In 1997 nobody had heard of Windrush.” Mike Phillips
Black presence in Britain was celebrated with a commemorative Windrush Square in Brixton and Windrush Sunday was added to the national calendar. Tony Blair led the way for New Labour who actively promoted the idea of a multicultural Britain.
Whilst we can acknowledge that any positive representation of the Black community was a cause for celebration, the problem with myths is that… they’re made up.
“In the production of a historical narrative, there is a simultaneous silencing of history.” Trouillot, Silencing the Past
This begs the question, who or what has the official Windrush narrative obscured?
Historian Mathew Mead dug through HMT Empire Windrush logbook. Instead of 492 Jamaican men, he found evidence that the ship was carrying up to 1027 passengers made up of men, women and children from Uganda, Kenya, Italy, Poland, Scotland and other Caribbean countries.
HMT SS Windrush Passenger List
Added to that fact, previous ships had arrived seemingly unnoticed before HMS Empire Windrush.
Evidence of Black presence in Britian also dates back centuries.
Contrary to popular belief, the British government didn’t invite Caribbeans to fill postwar reconstruction labour shortages. In the 20th century racial hierarchy, white workers from Germany, Italy and Poland trumped Black migrants from Africa and the Caribbean.
Historian Mark Smith has shown that the government’s kneejerk reaction was inter-departmental denial of responsibility for the immigration ‘problem.’ They then collaborated on ‘dispersing’ new arrivals across the country in hope that this would make the immigration ‘problem’ less visible to the UK population.
Neither tactic was very effective.
In subsequent decades, hostilities towards immigrants escalated in the form of laws, informal discrimination, and extreme violence.
In 2018, Windrush took on a whole new meaning. It emerged the Home Office had deliberately been creating a ‘hostile environment’ for Caribbean migrants who’d arrived in Britain between the late 1940s and early 1970s.
They were wrongly detained, denied access to benefits or medical care, lost their jobs or homes, threatened with deportation, and some were actually deported.
Where does Impact fit into this?
Through the perspective of generations of UoN students, we can gain valuable insights into Britain during a tumultuous period of mass migration. The articles in this series will be asking: does UoN print media fit or contradict the Windrush narrative?
UoN student print media dates back almost as far as the university itself:
• The Gong 1895-1976
• The Gongster 1939-78
• Bias 1978-85
• Impact 1985-96
• Impact Magazine 1996- present
Digital records from 1939-1990 are stored at King’s Meadow Campus (the one in the middle of nowhere) and hard copies of Impact can be found in their Portland Building office.
The earliest newspapers show migrant presence in Britain before the so-called arrival in 1948. One 1939 Gongster article discussing the soccer team mentions a “dark coloured gentleman from Burma, Gale, who has served us so excellently this term.”
Much of UoN student media was very unserious (think: reports on the annual Sherwood sex change party, advice on avoiding hangovers, and setting fire to loo rolls in Willoughby Hall).
Impact no. 67 November 1992
But students also engaged in the biggest debates of their day. They reported incidences of racism, lobbied the university for better policies and were politically engaged in the international affairs.
One 1954 article reported: “As a Trinidadian he was immediately concerned with West Indian problems; an example is the cold reception of the influx of Jamaicans into Britain during the last two years. He appreciated the fact that Britain is probably unable to bear the burden of unchecked immigration, but he demanded that any control of immigration should be universal, and not discriminatory against coloured West Indians.”
While no other group has a moment of arrival quite like Windrush, UoN student journalists were concerned with racism faced by all ethnicities. This also fluctuated depending on major world affairs. Notably, there was more reporting of discrimination against Muslims in the early 2000s, likely due to a rise in international Islamist terrorism which had provoked a racist backlash.
The ‘letters’ feature or comment pieces are particularly useful for understanding student attitudes. They were usually submitted by students across the university- not just Gongster/ Impact writers. And they often functioned like a debate forum, with students replying to other in subsequent editions. Students are known for their more liberal outlooks. Yet, UoN print media has reflected a huge range of opinions since 1939.
Impact no. 114 October 1998
Without ever explicitly referring to them as ‘Windrushers’, Impact frequently interviewed on first, second and third generations of migrants who arrived in Britain throughout the 20th century.
This included R ‘n’ B musician and Radio One Star Trevor Nelson: “Starting out at a time when black music was an underground phenomenon, on the pirate radio stations of London, he is someone who has definitely risen in the ranks.”
“How does he feel about claims from some quarters that black music is being taking over? He tale a more philosophical view: ‘We live in a world where the greatest golfer is black and the biggest rapper is white, it’s just the way it is.’”
An interview with singer David Mcalmont complicates the simple Windrush arrival narrative; he was born in London yet spent his teens in Guyana.
‘And the television was gone and the sweets were gone and Swapshop was no more. I spent the next nine years in Guyana hating Guyana.’ David Mcalmont
Interviewed in 2003, hugely successful Trinidadian-born Sir Trevor McDonald primarily discusses his career. Impact briefly mention the fact he became “Britain’s first black reporter in 1973.”
Impact no. 154 September 2003
But like most other ‘Windrushers’ who featured in Impact, the focus was rarely explicitly on race. These were all people for whom migration had shaped their lives but not defined it.
Missing pieces
In 1958 and 1981, racially motivated riots took place in Nottingham. So why didn’t Gongster or Impact report them?
The simple explanation could be that the riots took place during summer months when students tend to leave Nottingham and take a break from student media. Or perhaps, as amateur journalists, the events were too complicated to cover. In the past, the SU have asked Impact to refrain from reporting some news stories because mishandling it could cause serious damage- especially to victims.
Additionally, black women feature much less than their male counterparts.
“Control of the archive – variously defined – means control of society and thus control of determining history’s winners and losers.” J Schwartz and T Cook
This absence of archival material makes it a lot harder to understand their historical experiences. Black women existed but their presence in UoN’s student media is muted. It’s for this reason that so much of this project focuses on black male experiences.
Finally, the actual word ‘Windrush’ is barely used throughout Impact. As already discussed, it only came into common use from 1998. But even on the major anniversary of black British arrival, Impact don’t report it. UoN’s student journalists were concerned with race, so perhaps the Windrush myth was a much more gradual process than previously thought.
Impact told the Windrush story without even needing to mention the word.
Anna Boyne
This article is the first in a series examining how UoN print media fit or contradicted the Windrush narrative. To read the other articles, please click the tag ‘Windrush Project’ below.
Best efforts have been made to contact the original authors who retain copyright. If they come forward and would like articles to be removed, then they will be taken down.
Coming up…
- British Segregation: The Colour Bar
- Out, Out, Disembowel Enoch Powell!
- Roots in Boots, Blaxploitation and the Marcus Garvey
- The Colour of Justice: Stephen Lawrence
Bibliography
Primary sources
The National Archives: Passenger list from Windrush: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/commonwealth-migration- since-1945/passenger-list-from-windrush/ (accessed 26/04/25).
University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham Collection; os.X.Periodicals Not 5.G14.8 .F48, The Gongster 07/12/1939.
University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham Collection; os.X.Periodicals Not 5.G14.8 .F48, The Gongster 15/10/1954.
Impact no. 67 November 1992: Candied camera catches racist.
Impact no. 114 October 1998: Allegations of racism and sexism against British medical schools.
Impact no. 117 January 1999: Don’t call it soul: Interview with David Mcalmont.
Impact no. 147: Licked: Radio One Star Trevor Nelson on R ‘n’ B.
Impact no. 154 September 2003: Interview with Sir Trevor McDonald.
Secondary sources
Mead, M., ‘Empire Windrush: The Cultural Memory of an Imaginary Arrival’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing 45/2 (2009), pp. 137-49.
Peplow, S., “In 1997 Nobody Had Heard of Windrush’: The Rise of the ‘Windrush Narrative’ in British Newspapers’, Immigrants & Minorities 37/3 (2019), pp. 211-37.
Smith, M., ‘Windrushers and orbiters: Towards an understanding of the ‘official mind’ and colonial immigration to Britain 1945–51,’ Immigrants & Minorities, 10/3 (1991), pp.3-17.
Trouillot, M., Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, 1995).
