There are many racists living in the UK but that doesn’t make it a racist nation… it’s the best place to live in Europe
THERE are many racists who live in Britain. But that doesn’t make Britain a racist nation.
In fact, the bigots are a dying breed, and a new Britain is coming into being.
Despite efforts by some to portray our country as being irredeemably prejudiced, we are no longer Alf Garnett’s England.
We welcome people who do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay and try to get on with their neighbours.
Our celebrity role models now come in every shape and colour — people like ex-England footballers Rio Ferdinand and Alex Scott in sport, and in music, Zayn Malik, Leona Lewis, Rita Ora and Dua Lipa all have immigrant roots.
Our Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary and Business Secretary are all people of colour.
Yet 75 years ago, when Alford Gardner, now 97, landed with the Empire Windrush ship in the first wave of post-war immigrants from the Caribbean, he found England cold, and many of the English colder.
Today, he says, despite the hefty £28/10shilling ticket for that trip — more than £1,300 in today’s money — he wouldn’t change a thing.
When I asked him if it was worth it, he replied simply: “Every penny. Yes, to me, every penny.”
Last week, a survey by the think tank British Future found that 80 per cent of minority Britain say it is a better place to live than anywhere on the Continent.
As the calypsonian Lord Kitchener famously sang as he stepped off the Windrush at Tilbury: “You can go to France or America, India, Asia or Australia, but you must come back to London city.”
That’s not to say it’s all been plain-sailing for the Windrush veterans.
Humiliating treatment
Let’s be honest, Britain hasn’t always been kind to people of colour.
Windrush elders still recall their early days when teddy boys would roam the streets of Nottingham and London, going “n****r-hunting”.
They were shocked by the hostility fuelled by Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech of 1968, prophesying race wars in Britain.
And in recent years, their humiliating treatment by our own government in the Windrush scandal, when many were unjustly threatened with deportation by the Home Office, was a low point in British race relations.
All that said, something pretty miraculous has taken place in our country, unlike in other parts of the world riven by ethnic conflict.
First, many of those original migrants have married the natives.
With more than 1.2million people having both black and white parents, we have more dual-heritage citizens than any other comparable developed nation.
It’s easy to be prejudiced about people you don’t know — it’s a whole different kettle of fish when they are your grandchildren, nieces or nephews.
Two of my oldest friends, Carrie and David Grant, were among the earliest prominent mixed-race couples.
David wrote the theme music to the first TV show I ever produced.
The couple now have four children, including Hollyoaks star Tylan.
Carrie is now famous as a voice coach to the stars.
But even now, they still face casual racism.
Out with his dogs, David was accosted by three men in his affluent North London neighbourhood, asking him whether he was planning to break into a car.
They told him to clear off out of “their” street.
The next day he ran into one of them, who apologised profusely and claimed he had only gone along with the abuse to please his mates.
David told me: “He said, I’m sorry, mate.
“It was my friends.
“I know who you are.
“But my friends were really racist.
“My wife really loves your wife.
“And yeah, we think what you do is really great.”
The apology — the act of a coward — came a little late, I’d say.
When Carrie and David first met in the Eighties, Middle England wasn’t too keen on such relationships.
Carrie faced opposition from her parents, a working-class couple who had moved up in the world.
In our Sky documentary, Windrush And Us, to be shown next week, she tells me of her parents’ reaction when she announced she and David were to wed: “Dad’s the head of the golf club and Mum’s the head of the tennis club . . . and suddenly I’m coming home and marrying David.
“I desperately wanted my mum’s approval but I said, ‘I’m going to marry David, whatever.
“And I love you and you’re amazing.
“You’re a lovely mum, but you’re racist’.
“And that was hard for her to hear.”
The family came round, but it took time.
Today, Britain stands out in Europe — no one much bothers who their daughter brings home, just as long as he doesn’t support the wrong football club.
The other major change that is transforming Britain’s black community hails from a completely different direction.
When my brother Mike and I first wrote our book Windrush, Black Britain meant Caribbean descendants like us.
There were some people who came direct from Africa but back in the Nineties there were twice as many of us as there were of them.
Today the numbers are reversed, with fewer than 700,000 Caribbeans and almost 1.5million Africans.
The African tide is changing our country for the better.
Entertainers such as Stormzy and Ore Oduba, as well as the Strictly sisters Oti and Motsi Mabuse, are bringing African colour and vibrancy into our living rooms.
But they are also infusing Black Britain with confidence.
They refuse to be weighed down by other people’s prejudices.
They see racism as a spur to prove the bigots wrong and to get in and get up.
The author Candice Brathwaite is of Caribbean background, but is married to a Nigerian businessman, Bode.
They moved to suburban Milton Keynes from Croydon, South London, so their children could avoid the fate of the hundreds of young black boys killed and maimed by knife crime in the capital each year.
But even in Milton Keynes they couldn’t quite escape prejudice.
Their child Esme came home saying a white girl had refused to play with her because “you have a black skin”.
Candice confronted the apologetic headteacher who admitted “many of the children were showing the tendencies of the National Front . . .”
Candice added: “Esme’s feet didn’t touch the floor. I took her out with Usain Bolt speed”.
But rather than simply moan about it, Candice and Bode moved their children to a local private school, where they found to their surprise that dozens of other African-heritage parents had also enrolled their kids.
Their response was to make racism not their problem, but the burden of those who practise it.
Seventy-five years on, the Windrush voyagers have changed Britain dramatically.
But Black Britain, too, is changing, and out of the mix of the Caribbean, Africa and the UK something exciting and world-beating is emerging.
When we go to our parents’ and grandparents’ homes in Africa and the Caribbean we are greeted warmly — but nobody expects us to stay.
We are the cousins “from foreign”.
Everyone can see the “made in Britain” stamp in the way we talk and walk.
We are now at home, here for good, in the UK.
I can’t wait to see what the next generation of Black Brits looks like when I make my next film about them in 2048 (I’ll only be 95).
I’ll bet now that many of them will be running the place.
- Windrush And Us will premiere on Tuesday June 20 at 8pm on Sky Documentaries and Sky Showcase. It will be on Sky News on Wednesday, June 21, at 8pm. Windrush, 75 Years Of Modern Britain, by Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, will be published on June 22.
IT WAS DOCK ’N’ AWE
THE Windrush has become a symbol for the first wave of immigration after World War
Two. As subjects of the Empire, the voyagers were entitled to come to Britain without restriction.
On June 22, 1948, the ship docked at Tilbury, Essex, carrying nearly 500 migrants from the Caribbean who had made the 30-day trip from Jamaica.
Many were men who had fought in World War Two, some as RAF crew and engineers in the Battle of Britain. Most of those who arrived 75 years ago headed for London and other cities looking for work. Jobs on building sites were easy to find in a Britain recovering from Hitler’s bomb attacks.
Women went to work in factories and the NHS, which was born just weeks after the Windrush landed.
Those Windrush voyagers were then followed by thousands of others.
During the past 75 years, the community these immigrants gave rise to has faced hardship and discrimination. But it has also produced famous faces, particularly in sport, music and entertainment.
Britain’s foremost black DJ, Trevor Nelson, born in Hackney, East London, to parents from St Lucia, says: “Some of our elders will be gone soon and there’s a risk we’ll forget what they did for us. That’s why we’re cele- brating the 75th anniversary and will have a party. It may be the last time we celebrate Windrush properly.”
- Windrush 75 events are taking place all over the UK. See windrush75.org.