The Homecoming Black and British: A Forgotten History

Let's, let's walk up.

(Yeah, OK).

I haven't walked up this street for 30 years.

I used to live... I think, about here.

A house that's long since demolished.

And I was 14 when my family were attacked in our house.

One night, bricks came through the window and one of the bricks...

With an elastic band there was a note that said, "Wogs, go home."

And then, a few nights later,

the same thing happened and we gave up trying to repair the glass

so we put plywood in the windows and me, my sisters,

my brother, my mother and grandmother would just lie in bed

at night in the dark, the house was completely black,

and there'd be thuds on the plywood and we'd scream

and shake in our beds.

We'd been moved to emergency housing and we were living somewhere else

and I had this urge to come back and see where I lived.

And I stood over on that side of the wall because it was from over there

that the bricks were thrown at my house and my family here.

And I stood there as a 14-year-old...

I stood there as a 14-year-old boy and I looked over and,

the house, still boarded up...

and on the white front door, someone had painted a swastika

and they'd written "NF..." - National Front - "..won here",

because it had been a victory.

HE SNIFFS

This...

This victory had been driving me and my family out of our home.

Something went really wrong in this country in the 1970s and the 1980s,

and I know that my story and my experiences...

that so many black people I know, they've got similar stories to tell.

And it's part of this long history.

For millions of people like me, that history began long before

we were born, during the centuries in which Britain built the Empire.

Centuries in which people from Africa and the Caribbean

were drawn to these shores.

Over generations, they made Britain their home.

APPLAUSE

Eventually creating the multiracial nation we live in today.

These are the people who made it possible to celebrate

being black and British.

CHEERING

APPLAUSE ECHOES FAINTLY

Today's multiracial Britain would have been unimaginable during

the Victorian era when the Empire was nearing its height.

An age in which skin colour divided the coloniser from the colonised,

the rulers from the ruled.

-ARCHIVE:

-Not many men in history have had a country named after them.

Offhand I can think of Bolivar and Columbus and, of course,

Cecil Rhodes.

Cecil Rhodes, what was he like?

There are few places and few people who really capture the scale

and the ambition and the avarice of the Empire at its peak

than this railway and the man who built it.

Cecil Rhodes was just a teenager in 1870 when his father sent him

to Africa in the hope that the mild climate here

would improve his health.

By his mid-30s, he was the Premier of the Cape Colony

and another territory, Rhodesia, had been named after him.

He was also one of the richest men in the world.

Rhodes got rich in the rush for South African gold and diamonds,

but he was driven by more than wealth alone.

For Rhodes, the supposed superiority of the British made

the expansion of the Empire the destiny of his race,

and driving this railway across the entire length of Africa,

from the Cape to Cairo, would help fulfil that destiny.

TRAIN WHISTLE BLARES

Rhodes had a vision of an Africa that could be crossed

without ever leaving British territory.

In 1894, five years after the first section of tracks had been laid,

this town, Mafeking, lay literally at the end of the track.

Between here and Rhodesia lay Bechuanaland.

So now Rhodes was busy lobbying the government

to get control of Bechuanaland.

That would allow him to unite South Africa with Rhodesia

and extend the railway north.

The Colonial Office was ready to support him,

but there was a problem.

Bechuanaland was a protectorate, a territory claimed by the British

but governed by local rulers.

Most prominent among them was

the multilingual Christian convert King Khama III.

And Khama could see exactly what Rhodes was up to.

What Khama understood was that the coming of the railways was just

the first stage in a process of colonisation.

What Rhodes planned to do was to pay for this railway by selling

the land on either side.

That would be bought by white settlers who would

flood into the area and become the new overlords.

The Africans would end up as the landless labourers on white farms

on their own tribal lands.

The same process was happening across Africa and Khama knew that,

while agreeing to the railway might sound harmless enough,

it would be a disaster for his people.

Khama came up with an ingenious way to fight back.

What he decided to do, as he said in his own words,

was to "Seek another way of approach by which I can speak

"to the Queen and to the people of England."

Along with two other Bechuanaland chiefs,

Khama set sail for the heart of Empire.

BELL TOLLS

The black African kings were coming to meet the great white Queen.

But the Colonial Secretary blocked their request

for an audience with the Queen.

He fobbed them off while she took her summer vacation.

DOOR SLAMS

And so, with the help of the London Missionary Society,

the kings embarked upon the other half of their plan,

to meet the people of Britain.

These books are the clippings that were

produced for the tour of the three kings.

All of the newspaper articles, all of the invitations,

all of the ephemera of the tour.

Straight away on their arrival in Britain,

there is a flurry of newspaper articles.

The Irish Independent, the Manchester Evening News.

"King Khama, who has just reached England,

"is one of the most interesting Africans of the century."

Here's all three of the kings taking poses,

looking every bit the educated, refined, Christian gentleman

that they are portraying themselves in the press -

which they are, of course.

Is that Khama working the plough with his top hat on in the fields?

That is wonderful!

And here's a snapshot of a dinner in honour of the three kings,

and they're at the end of the table, and the tables are lined with

these earnest faces of these evangelical Victorian Christians

with their starched suits and their buttoned up dresses.

"Bechuanaland Protectorate. Chartered Landgrabbing."

Three whole months they are here in Britain whipping up support

and they're doing it brilliantly.

Mr John Tweed, Henry Thossen.

These are the people who are won over by the campaign

of the three kings.

The Bechuana chiefs know that militarily on the ground in Africa

they have no chance against Cecil Rhodes.

They're trying to outmanoeuvre him by winning over the British public,

and each one of these articles, each one of these calling cards,

each one of these programmes for a speech or a reception at a town hall

is evidence that it was working.

What is this? Oh, my God!

This is a new line of travel trunks named after the kings.

The Bathoen trunk, the Sebele trunk and the Khama trunk.

HE LAUGHS

So they brought out a new line of travel luggage

named after the kings.

That is just amazing!

The kings' direct appeal to the public undermined

some of the prejudice against Africans that Britain used

to justify colonisation.

They were, finally, invited into the corridors of power.

Towards the end of 1895,

Khama and his delegation were granted an audience here

at the Colonial Office with

the Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain.

At that meeting, the Africans were granted most of the protection

from Cecil Rhodes and his company that they'd been looking for.

They were also granted an audience with Queen Victoria.

It's very clear from this image what the power relationship is

between the British and the Africans.

But what it can't disguise is that these three kings had come

to Britain, come to the heart of the Empire, and they had won.

THEY SING

ULULATION

The kings helped save their homeland from the fate that befell

Rhodesia and South Africa,

where Rhodes was sowing the seeds of racial segregation.

The deal struck was almost unique, because most of the people

who were drawn into the British Empire didn't have any choice

in the matter, they were forced into the Empire

often at the point of a gun.

But what Khama and the other kings had critically understood

is that there were differences of opinion between the British people,

the Colonial Office, Cecil Rhodes and the Queen,

and they had exploited those differences brilliantly.

In 1966, the colony of Bechuanaland became the country of Botswana,

and in London, in 2016,

they are celebrating 50 years of independence.

It's a really great story.

50 years of independence after, you know, our three chiefs

came to ask for independence.

So, yeah, really great.

SINGING CONTINUES

I think they were brave.

I think they did very well for us and we're very proud.

This is a very public celebration of an event that we've

really forgotten about in Britain.

But the tour of those three kings of Victorian Britain

was the birth of this nation.

Everybody here can trace the story of Botswana back to that moment

in the 1890s when three kings came here and kind of won over

Victorian public opinion.

This is the genesis story of Botswana.

CHEERING AND ULULATION

This event reminds us that the relationship between Britain

and the people of Africa was, on rare occasions, negotiable.

But, as more and more people of African origin made Britain

their home, the limits of racial tolerance would be exposed.

There's been a black community in Liverpool since the 1700s,

due largely to the shipping industry and the slave trade.

During the First World War, labour shortages swelled

the black population from around 3,000 to around 5,000.

But at the end of the war, racial tensions were exposed

that would threaten the community's very existence.

"White men appear determined to clear out the black people,

"who have been advised to stay indoors."

"The district was in an uproar and every coloured man seen

"was followed by a large, hostile crowd."

He was lynched, and there's no getting away from that.

Liverpool's descent into racial violence has largely been forgotten,

but the recent discovery of letters from the black community

to the mayor has allowed a local history project

to bring the past to life.

"The coloured people of this city are daily insulted in the streets,

"they are attacked and assaulted without the slightest provocation.

"Hundreds of our men have been ejected from their employment

"and left completely stranded in the city today."

"My wife is in the house all day.

"She hasn't any freedom to walk in the street.

"She's been insulted by people as being a coloured woman.

"I believe if there is no help for us

"my wife will do something wrong to herself."

So he's so worried at the level of racial abuse his wife is suffering,

he's saying she's going to harm herself.

She's going to harm herself, basically.

-These are really eloquent...

-They are.

-..pleas to officialdom.

They are passionate declarations of the suffering they're going through.

There's a letter here from the mayor to the Colonial Office.

"Only the other night there was a fight between the two races

"and matters are not likely to improve in this direction as

"the position develops and probably grows worse."

-So things are already getting out of control.

-Yeah.

This is the mayor of a British city saying, "This is going to explode."

Yeah.

SIREN WAILS

Within days of the mayor writing this letter,

the city would erupt in violence.

On the night of the 5th June, 1919,

a fight broke out in a pub here on Great George Square.

It was between a bunch of black sailors

and a bunch of Scandinavian sailors.

When the police arrived on the scene,

they decided to arrest the black men.

So they came round the corner to Upper Pitt Street.

But by this point, a mob several hundred strong had gathered.

Number 18 Upper Pitt Street was a boarding house

where a young Bermudan sailor was staying.

His name was Charles Wotten, and when the police tried to

force the door to his boarding house, he escaped out the back.

But he was quickly spotted.

He was chased by the police and the mob through the city

to a place he probably knew well.

Charles Wooten was pursued all the way down here to the Queen's Dock.

The eyewitness accounts tell us what happened next.

"When the crowd was at its height,

"there would be about 2,000 white people there."

"The witness could not say whether the negro was thrown into the dock

"or was swept in by the swaying crowd."

"They shouted, 'Let him drown!' "

"Had we arrived a few moments earlier we probably

"could have saved him."

Following Charles Wotten's death,

there were three days of rioting against the black community.

There was windows being smashed, there was fires being lit,

there was gangs of men, jeering,

shouting and screaming, children were crying.

Just hustled out of your house or, "We'd better take you to safety.

"We'll take you to the police station for safety."

They must have been bewildered.

They must have been in a terrible state.

Do you think that your grandmother and your mother's house

-had been attacked?

-Yeah, I think it was.

They were under attack, because my grandmother was a fiery woman

and I don't thing she would have left the house

unless it was absolutely necessary.

So when you first read these documents and you read about

the violence, the hunting of black people on the street,

you must have linked that to your family history.

-That must have been a shocking moment.

-Yeah. It's...

I'm so sorry that I didn't know the whole history of this years ago.

-But this isn't history that's well-known.

-Oh, no.

The majority of people we've encountered with the project

have all said, "Oh, we didn't know. We didn't know this happened."

I mean, I barely knew anything about it myself before the project.

It was not until we started going through the documents properly that,

you know, you get to understand how bad the situation was really.

Almost a century later, and another crowd are gathering at Queen's Dock.

This time, to remember Charles Wotten and the victims

of the violence that followed.

It's a tragic circumstance that we are gathered here today.

This is one of our ancestors.

It's a time for remembering our forefathers and mothers.

He could have been my brother, he could have been your nephew,

he could have been your son.

I wanted to cry. You know, you look at the waters here...

In my mind I was seeing this mob chasing this young, black boy

and he's thinking, "Where do I go? What do I do?"

He was lynched and there's no getting away from that.

That story needs to be told

and that degree of racism needs to be confronted.

This was a violent rejection, but some were determined

that Britain, as the centre of the Empire, was still home.

One thing the British public does not realise adequately

is that we are a coloured Empire.

You cannot prevent the black man from coming here.

You could no more tell him that he must not come to Liverpool,

London or Cardiff than he has the right to tell you

that you must not go to Lagos or Durban or Johannesburg.

As we unveiled a plaque,

it made me reflect on everybody that came before me.

I'm in a very fortunate position

to be a fifth generation black person

of the city and I thought about what my grandparents

and great-grandparents went through before I came along

and they've really paved the way for everything that I am today.

In the aftermath of war, there were similar outbreaks of violence

in Glasgow, London, Newport, Cardiff and on Tyneside.

They brought an underlying racism onto the streets of Britain.

As the nation entered the 1920s,

there was one man who carved out a home here.

CABARET MUSIC PLAYS

He became the era's acceptable face of blackness.

His appeal was he was an extremely competent

and very, very good artist.

I mean, he had a voice which people would, quite literally, die for.

I think a few people probably did.

He was born on the British Caribbean island of Grenada

and he performed in Paris and New York.

But it was in London that he shot to fame,

taking the exclusive cabaret scene by storm.

# I should like you all to know

# I'm a famous gigolo

# And of lavender, my nature's got just a splash in it... #

What he did, one of his things, he would sit at the piano

and he would get his big, white handkerchief and mop his brow

like this and, apparently, all the girls used to swoon.

# ..you'll find me stretching my braces

# Pushing ladies with lifted faces round the floor... #

His name was Leslie Hutchinson, better known simply as "Hutch".

# I'm a baby who has no mother but jazz

# I'm a gigolo... #

Good-looking, charismatic and bisexual,

part of Hutch's appeal was an air of exotic mystery.

# I'm a gigolo. #

APPLAUSE

Among his many lovers was the American Broadway composer

Cole Porter and Hollywood stars Tallulah Bankhead and Merle Oberon.

But it was among London's aristocratic elite,

the bright young things, that he was in most demand,

and by playing special after-hours private parties,

he became part of London's in-crowd.

How was it possible for this black man to be accepted into this world,

or seemingly accepted into this world of the aristocratic elite?

Because he had talent and he was admired for what he could do.

And the seduction of money and lonely lives within the Royals,

a lot of them, and society, a lot of unhappy marriages.

He was an alternative pleasure.

# I've got you under my skin... #

Hutch was a star, but he could never escape racism.

One of the times, he went up to Liverpool and he was at the top

and the height of his fame and he had to go in at the back door.

He wasn't allowed to go in the front, and yet he was on stage

-and adored by thousands.

-Through the back door?

And he wasn't allowed to stay at the hotel where he was playing.

# So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me... #

Caught between desire and rejection,

Hutch was forced to lead a double life.

I think he was surviving against all the odds,

against all the racism and so on, and he did it

by protecting himself, by joining the enemy, as it were.

Joining in with the aristocratic life that was there to have.

Sometimes his accent went from like American slang, jazzy, to...

-POSH VOICE:

-"Oh, where do you live?"

He could become Oxford black.

I know it's not a nice term, that, but that's what he would do.

# I would sacrifice anything come what might

# For the sake of having you near... #

Eventually, Hutch's double life caught up with him.

Since the 1930s, he'd been having an affair with

the wealthy society heiress Edwina Mountbatten.

She was closely connected to the Royal Family.

Her husband Louis, the great-grandson of Queen Victoria.

The story hit the gossip columns.

Edwina Mountbatten was identified as the woman in question,

but the papers wrongly named the black American performer

and activist Paul Robeson as her lover.

# And I want you under my skin. #

APPLAUSE

The newspapers had got the wrong man,

but the story scandalised the palace,

and Hutch would pay the price.

Perhaps naively, Hutch imagined that the British establishment

would afford him the same sort of freedom from censure and criticism

that they gave one another.

It was at this moment in his life that Leslie Hutchinson

discovered that he wasn't really part of the aristocratic elite

that he spent his life surrounded by.

He remained popular, but it would be decades before

he would be brought back into the fold of the establishment.

By the time of his comeback here at Quaglino's in the 1950s,

musical tastes had moved on and Hutch faced a long downward spiral.

He sort of went into a decline, to be honest with you.

He had to sell his house in Hampstead which he loved.

Moved into a flat, and the days of the Rolls-Royce and, you know,

endless parties and champagne, I'm afraid, came to a halt.

When Hutch died aged 69,

Lord Mountbatten offered to pay for his funeral,

which was attended by only 42 people.

But Hutch lives on in the memory.

Not least in his children, Gabrielle and Chris.

The relationship between Hutch and your mother

was a scandalous affair, wasn't it?

As far as I know, she was probably here and she passed her card

to take to his dressing room, so she went for him, as it were.

And I don't know how long an affair it was,

but this is what happened and I was the result.

And, because it was an aristocratic family, a private midwife

came in and I was delivered by her and, um, then I was removed.

I've got letters written by my mother's husband saying,

"Please remove this child."

Gabrielle never met Hutch and she was unaware that he was her father

until she was in her 40s.

Chris is Hutch's son by a different woman.

He saw his father only occasionally.

I'm torn between pride and anger.

You know, I'm angry about the way he was treated.

It's despicable, a lot of it.

But also angry about sometimes the way he treated us. And...

But proud of who he was and what he achieved.

Today, Hutch's fans and members of his extended Grenadian family

are gathering to honour his memory.

It's wonderful to be here today on this very special occasion.

Thank you, Quaglino's. He's home again.

He was so worried he wouldn't be remembered.

He's certainly remembered today. A ripping, roaring round of applause

in memory of a wonderful entertainer,

Leslie Arthur Julien Hutchinson, our father, Hutch.

APPLAUSE AND WHOOPING

Well, I really, really had a lot of time for him.

I still play his music and in a funny sort of way I miss him.

And events like this, with his plaque going up, you know,

just reminds one of what a great personality he was

and how important he was.

So there you are, that's Hutch.

One of the last times I was with him, he said,

"I'm just worried they won't remember me, Christopher," you know.

I said, "They will, they will."

So we left rather downhearted but we walked along Frith Street

and taxis... "Hello, Hutch, how are you, mate?"

And he's, "Oh, never been better, I've never been better."

So he was top of the world again.

All he wanted was to be loved and adored.

Despite his fame, Hutch's life reveals that to be both black

and British was still out of reach.

But during the Second World War, the people of Britain would be

confronted with the reality of a truly racial society.

CHOIR SINGS

This is Abersychan in the Welsh Valleys.

The people here, and in towns and villages across Britain,

became unknowing participants in a great social experiment.

For all the years that we've been in Wales,

people still can't accept the fact that we are black and Welsh.

Some would come out with new friendships

and their lives enhanced.

They took this young soldier into their home and they really

loved him as their own.

For others, the choices they would make would lead to years of

shame and secrecy.

People would say to me, "Where are you from?"

And I couldn't answer because I knew that I lived in Blaenavon but

I knew that I looked different.

By 1944, over a million US soldiers had landed in Britain,

and around 130,000 were black GIs.

One spring day, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion arrived here.

MAN CHUCKLES

But there was a problem.

Segregated America sent a segregated army to Britain.

Black and white troops lived in separate camps,

they ate in separate canteens

and spent their free time in separate clubs,

just like they did back home under the so-called Jim Crow laws.

The Americans also brought with them racial violence.

White GIs would routinely attack black Allied soldiers.

These official documents relate to one of many such incidents.

It's from March 1942, and these documents tell the story of

how one Corporal Samson Morris, who was a West Indian, was attacked by

a group of US Marines at Lyons' Corner House in Marble Arch,

and Morris tells us that while he's waiting in the queue to go

into the restaurant, one of the Americans comes up to him and

says, "You're not going in there to eat with us."

Perhaps unwisely, Morris says,

"I'm a British subject from the West Indies,

"and you're not in America now, where you lynch us people."

At this, one of the Americans threatens to stab him

and six of them attack him and beat him up.

Wartime Britain was getting to see close up what

a racially segregated society was like.

But would they fall in line with their American allies?

Would British pubs refuse to serve black GIs

because of the colour of their skin?

Would British restaurants and dance halls refuse them entry?

Would there be white-only carriages on British trains?

And would the British people really accept the imposition of

American Jim Crow-style segregation onto their communities?

Across the nation there was a resounding response.

Its spirit is captured in a single letter from one Welsh mother

to a black American mother.

"Mrs Monk, you have a son to treasure and feel very proud of.

"We love him very dearly and we'll do anything in the world for him.

"We have told him he can look upon our home as his home while in

"our country, and I will try to fill your place, if only in a small way.

"We will look upon him now as our own.

"Mother to mother, very sincerely, with loving thoughts,

"Jessie Pryor, xxxx."

The recipient of this motherly love

was the 19-year-old Wilson Monk from New Jersey.

He was taken into the home of Jessie and Godfrey Pryor,

who handed down their wartime story to granddaughter Cheryl.

-Your grandparents encounter this young African-American...

-Yes.

-..and almost...adopt him.

-Yes, they did.

They really did,

they took him in and they spoke a lot and they had great fun.

Do you think your grandparents had known or met any black people

-before they met Wilson?

-No, I don't think they would have, actually.

And to my grandmother it wouldn't have made any difference.

That's just how she was. And to her, that's what you did then.

'Just as suddenly as the black GIs had arrived, in June 1944 they

'were gone, to play their part in the liberation of Europe.'

I think that was further down.

'But they left a lasting legacy.'

-This is a school one.

-So this is you?

-Yeah.

-And you're not the only mixed-race child in this class.

-No.

There's David Phillips by there.

His father was also a black GI?

Must have been.

Were all the mixed-race children at school the products of

-relationships between black GIs and local women?

-Yeah, must have been.

Cos, erm, you never seen any darker...you know, any black man,

fathers or anything like that,

it was only children that I can remember seeing.

'Ann Johnson was born in 1945 and brought up by her grandmother.'

-That was the one that reared me.

-This is your grandmother?

Yeah, and we used to call her Mam.

So this is the woman you call your mother

-but was really your grandmother?

-That's right.

She looks a tough woman.

Yeah, she was strict, I can tell you.

'Ann's grandmother was fiercely protective.

'For most of Ann's childhood, she didn't know that the woman

'she thought of as her sister, Molly, was really her mother.'

But that was my rightful mother...

-That's your mother?

-Yeah.

But you know that your father was a black American soldier?

American, yeah.

But by all accounts he used to send letters home to Molly

and then our mam used to burn them.

So... And then she was put in the doghouse, as they say,

weren't it, in the workhouse.

So other than that, it was all kept silent.

In many communities like Abersychan, the secret history of

the so-called "brown babies" is only now being uncovered.

So your birth mother never told you who your father was?

Can never remember that.

And your grandmother who brought you up

never said your father was a black GI?

No.

-So there was some sense of needing to keep this a family secret?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-I think so.

Ann's family history is now being passed on to her great-granddaughter

and her daughter Claire, who reject the shame of the past.

They wanted the silence.

They wanted to block out everything that went on at those times.

I think they wanted to forget all what went on.

But now we look back, it's part of our history

and who we are, so I've got an acceptance I think is...

You know, I'm fine with it.

I'd like to introduce Ann to join me here, because Ann is going to

unveil the plaque which is commemorated to her father

and all the African-American soldiers that were billeted here.

APPLAUSE

-70 years ago.

-I know.

Never forget. You know?

It's part of history, and my family history especially,

and, no, you mustn't forget.

I brought my granddaughter today and I thought, yes, because

she does history in school, and you have to remember these things.

The black GIs offered a glimpse of

what a post-colonial Britain might look like.

The aftermath of war would soon make that a reality.

Across Africa, it gave fresh impetus to independence movements.

In the Caribbean, many who had fought for Britain

felt the bonds to the mother country become ever stronger.

We were taught that we were British

and we accepted that without question.

And now they were coming home.

-NEWSREEL:

-Arrivals at Tilbury.

The Empire Windrush brings to Britain 500 Jamaicans.

Many are ex-servicemen who know England.

They served this country well. In Jamaica...

The arrival of the Empire Windrush in June 1948 has come to

symbolise the founding moment of modern black British history.

We're hoping to collect lots of people's stories and memories

about their journey to Britain.

We can't just focus on the big names in history,

we need to focus on the history makers that live amongst us.

-NEWSREEL:

-Citizens of the British Empire coming to the mother country

with good intent.

Today in Brixton, members and descendants of

the Windrush generation are celebrating their history.

I've been here from, erm, 1944.

The groundwork I did here in this country

has stood me well all my life.

So it has many of my fellow West Indians who are here today.

Many of the migrants arrived in Britain thanks to

a new open-door policy.

Introduced in 1948, it offered some 800 million

citizens of the Empire the right to settle in the UK.

My father was a member of that generation.

He was born in Jamaica in 1925.

His father was Chinese and his mother was black Jamaican.

-NEWSREEL:

-In 1954, about 10,000 West Indians came to Britain.

In 1955, it is believed another 15,000 will make the long journey.

This kind of mass migration wasn't creating the post-colonial Britain

that the policymakers had had in mind.

The people whom the Government imagined would make use of

the rights of entry and residence enshrined within the 1948 act

were white people, people who were said to be of British stock -

Australians, Canadians, white South Africans.

People who were coming home to the imperial mother country.

And their rights of entry were seen as valuable bonds that were

essential if Britain was to remain the lodestar around which

the colonies and former colonies orbited.

Almost nobody imagined that black people,

people from the Caribbean and Africa, would make use of

their rights to enter and live in the United Kingdom.

# London is the place for me

# Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum

# London, this lovely city... #

And my mum was one of the first set of people

to work in the hospitals, and she...

You know, that generation made the most of it.

Many people from the Commonwealth wanted to come to Britain,

and post-war austerity Britain badly needed them.

# I've been travelling the countries years ago

# But this is the place I wanted to know, darling London

# This is the place for me... #

Nursing was calling me,

so I came to England to pursue the career that I wanted so badly.

-That's me.

-That's you?

That's Myrtle, and that's Greta Fitzthomas,

and this is my book, for surgery.

I came from St Catherine, Jamaica, in 1960, at the age of 20.

This was the very first time I was leaving my parents.

I came out of the plane and I just could not believe how cold it was.

My first thought was, "How do these people live in this icebox?!"

Right from the start,

the new National Health Service recruited staff from the Caribbean.

When you arrived in Britain,

did you feel that people recognised that you were British?

-WOMEN:

-No.

-That's... Everyone said no.

-No!

-No. That's all round the table, no.

-They asked you what part of Africa you come from.

-Yes, yes.

Well, you see,

I don't think that they learned history and geography like we did.

The image of Britain that you got from

a British education in the Caribbean,

how did that differ from the reality of Britain when you arrived?

When we came here and I saw the houses in England,

I was shocked,

because I've left better houses back home!

And the poverty of the people, it did upset me.

When they came into hospital, the state of the hygiene...

Sometimes we used to have, like, a delousing trolley. I wonder why...

..nobody never tell me that's what, you know, the country was like.

As well as dealing with the harsh realities of post-war Britain,

these young women were at times denied their British identity.

I found it extremely hard,

and when I was in my second year and this patient said...

when I was going to wash her, she said, "Take your black hand off me."

And she said it with so much venom

that I just rushed to the toilet and cried.

But that was so hurtful.

Found it extremely upsetting.

If you knew what you know now about Britain and everything that's

happened, would you still do the same thing?

-ALL, EMPHATICALLY:

-Yes.

-That's everybody.

-Yes.

-You don't regret your choice at all?

-No.

In the end, this great experiment we've all been through

in this country, with immigration and moving around the world,

it worked out for you guys.

Really and truly, Britain has given us what we didn't have,

but we had to work very hard for it.

And when you came, you were suddenly seen as West Indian

rather than British.

How do you see yourselves now?

I am a bit confused. When I left home I was a Vincentian.

When I came here I was a West Indian.

Then I was a Caribbean.

Now I'm an ethnic minority. I am so confused.

THEY LAUGH

-I say I am black British.

-Mm-hm.

-And that will do.

The Windrush generation never let go of the British identity

they'd grown up with in the Caribbean.

But those who were born here and those who arrived here as children

faced their own struggle to belong.

It was only in the early '60s and late '60s and this growing

pride in the '70s of belonging to a culture that was distinct,

and this is the story that I tell.

I was trying to capture strength and proudness.

And I decided that I would never click the camera unless I

see strength in that person's eyes and body.

And if you look up my images, you almost know that that's one of mine,

because the subject is always very sure of themself.

Photographer Neil Kenlock captured

the experiences of this new generation.

Yes, that's me. That was in 1976.

I entered that competition, and the prize was a trip to Jamaica.

It was attractive to me to go back to see my grandmother,

whom sadly I'd left, and was desperately missing her.

I didn't win the first prize that year

but I did enter the following year.

Fortunately I did win the prize

and I did go back to Jamaica to see Granny!

Well done, well done!

Well, they was enjoying themself. Later on, like in this photograph,

they've realised now that the opportunities that they were

promised were not available to the full extent that they should be,

and this is a demonstration in Brixton against discrimination

and the police treatment of our community.

You were there to capture the politicisation

-of this second generation.

-Absolutely.

-The children of the immigrants.

-Yes.

And here again, I used my camera to tell that story, erm,

because there was nobody else taking photographs.

Yeah, a difficult image for us, because this is Desmond's Hip City,

that's the name of the record shop in Brixton,

and somebody drove a vehicle into the shop and smashed it up.

And here you can see Neville here.

-This is you, Neville?

-It is, yes.

-What year is this?

-Probably about '72.

And as you can see there, I was helping Desmond

to clear up after the...incident.

So this is an attack not just on a record shop...

Oh, no, no, it's an attack of our society,

the black society, so to speak.

Did you feel under...under assault, under attack?

HE SCOFFS

In those days, if you was in Brixton,

you was always under attack... by the police...

If not the police, it's the National Front or the skinheads.

I think for some people now these images that were...normally

-part of your lives...

-Yes.

-..seem shocking.

It is hard to believe that this happened half a mile down the road.

It was a part of our lives, yes.

And...

-this image is the one I know of yours the best.

-Yes. Mm-hm.

But it's you in the photograph, Barbara, isn't it?

Yes, it is me in this photograph.

This photograph was taken

about 1979, I'd say.

I first saw this picture when I was I think in my late teens or

early 20s, and I remember thinking, I wonder what it was like,

I wonder what she was thinking.

So it's amazing to meet you and to find out what you were

feeling and what you were thinking.

Yeah, in terms of my expression, it was like, well, yeah,

it's just another day in the life, erm, of somebody who's

a black person living in Balham at the time.

I think I interpreted your expression as one of hurt

-when I first saw this photograph.

-Yeah.

Well, I think maybe there's just a constant feeling of hurt

that just went through our lives,

because, I mean, you can't go through that kind of abuse

sort of day in and day out -

it's not even week in and week out, but day in and day out -

and not have some kind of hurt, and, you know,

you've got to survive, you know, as a child and as a young person.

You know, I was born in London

and, er, my mother had high aspirations for me

in terms of school and I did everything I needed to do,

did very well at school, and just thought, yeah,

I can go out and get a job, and that just wasn't the case.

Barbara's experience,

like the attack that drove me and my family from our home, was the

violent rejection of the idea that you could be black and British.

-NEWSREEL:

-Cars are overturned and used to barricade the streets

into a nearly no-go area...

Discrimination and deprivation were widespread, and an entire

generation of black youth was hurt and alienated.

Stopped 101 times walking back to Willesden, and about ten times

by the same officer...

Systematic harassment by the police

brought all these frustrations to a head.

Grab me up, right, chuck me in the corner, right,

and say he wants to search me, got a warrant to search me, right...

In the 1980s, the inner-city areas of Liverpool, London, Bristol,

Birmingham and Manchester all witnessed uprisings.

And I can assure them that they will help in the cultural life in

this country, and every attempt on their part is at social integration

and being completely happy and cooperative with the British people.

We don't want any special privileges or anything more than

any other British worker has in this country.

Britain was in a way haunted by its colonial past.

A generation who had worked hard to make this nation a home for them

and their children had been failed by the imperial mother country.

More than 30 years later,

and Britain is an enormously changed country.

Black people still face many disadvantages -

high levels of unemployment, high levels of homelessness

and discrimination within the legal system -

but there is one barrier that confronted the Windrush generation

that we have largely overcome,

and that's because there are few people these days who question

the idea that it is possible to be both black and British.

Now just a handful of those first post-war Caribbean pioneers remain.

I'd love to pay tribute to that generation of people.

Erm, so many of them now have passed away.

Now is a fitting moment to celebrate

their role in shaping modern Britain.

APPLAUSE

That this is where we would end up was never a foregone conclusion.

Anybody looking at Britain as it was a century ago wouldn't have

for a second concluded that we could or would become

the multiracial society that we are today.

Modern Britain looks and feels like a nation that was once

at the heart of a vast multiracial empire.

I'm British but my parents are from Nigeria.

My parents are from Cameroon, I'm from north-west London.

Born and raised in north-west London.

I'm from Tanzania, originally born in Zanzibar.

Old imperial attachments have brought

a new wave of Africans to these shores.

My uncle fought in the world wars on Britain's behalf because

then we were a British colony.

Everything in Kenya is about British.

We love the cup of tea at four o'clock, like the English people,

so we feel sort of British.

Like generations of black people before them,

stretching back to Roman times,

these people will help redefine what it means to be British.

For me, home is here,

largely because I am married here and I have children here.

I would say home is London, I'm a Londoner now.

I think that there's so much to black history, and everything

about it is so rich, it actually makes me so happy.

And makes me a proud African as well.

If we look at the deeper, longer, more nuanced history,

the story that begins 18 centuries ago with the Afro-Romans,

there we find a history that shows we've always been global and

the lives of black people and white people have often been entwined.

-Peace to Africa!

-APPLAUSE

And that story suggests that perhaps we shouldn't be that surprised

that this is where we find ourselves today.

If you'd like to find out how to research black history in

your area, there's an iWonder guide, with links to our partners, at...