How Caribbean migrants helped to rebuild Britain

After World War Two, Britain was a country short of workers and needed to rebuild its
weakened economy. Linda McDowell traces the history and experiences of the thousands of
5 men and women who came to Britain from the Caribbean.

When the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury from the Caribbean on 22 June 1948,
Britain, with its new reforming Labour government, was a country short of workers. Men and
women were needed to rebuild an economy weakened by the war years, especially in those
10 sectors crucial to the reconstruction programme. These included the production of raw
materials such as iron, steel and coal, as well as food. There was also a huge backlog of
essential maintenance and repair work and severe shortages in the construction sector. In the
service sector, both men and women workers were needed to run public transport and to staff
the new National Health Service (NHS). It was this prospect of employment that attracted
15 many of the Windrush passengers to leave the Caribbean.

The migration of colonial citizens began slowly. From 1948 when the Empire Windrush
arrived until 1952, between 1,000 and 2,000 people entered Britain each year, followed by a
steady and rapid rise until 1957, when 42,000 migrants from the New Commonwealth, mainly
from the Caribbean, entered. The numbers declined by almost a half in the two succeeding
20 years but by 1960 had increased again to 58,000, and then in 1961 more than doubled, in
anticipation of the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act that would restrict opportunities for
entry. By 1961, according to the national population census, the number of people living in
England and Wales who were born in the Caribbean was just over 161,000: 90,000 men and
just over 71,000 women.

25 So what did these early migrants from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and other Caribbean
countries that were then part of the British Empire, do in the UK when they came to what they
saw as ‘the Mother Country’?

The most common sectors in which people from the Caribbean found jobs included, for
men, manufacturing and construction, as well as public transport. Many Caribbean women
30 found employment in the NHS as nurses and nursing aides, as well as in public transport and
in manufacturing, especially in the growing white goods industries in cities.

People, in the main young, left the Caribbean for a range of reasons, attracted by job
vacancies in the UK but also seeking new opportunities for a different life. Some left to
escape societal oppression, to evade familial restrictions or escape poverty; others found the
35 decision to leave harder than they had imagined, as for many it involved leaving close family
and friends behind. These men and women (some of whom had fought or worked for the UK
during the war, and were initially leaving the Caribbean independently rather than being
actively recruited) felt that they were ‘coming home’, to join an imperial family to which they
assumed they belonged.
40

Linda McDowell, 4 Oct 2018, British Library