Today marks the day I start by doing a whole week of blog posts on citizenship, how do you identify yourself. The importance of moving back to black majority countries and finally how to gain citizenship in your parents countries or elsewhere. So I hope you enjoy but first let’s start from the beginning  the importance of the windrush to us a Caribbean people!

The 22nd June 1948, exactly 70 years ago the empire windrush docked in tilsbury, Essex bringing along with it over 500 migrants from the Caribbean. The vast majority were from Jamaica. The Caribbean people were invited to come and rebuild Britain after world war 2 the country was a mess. There was also not enough British men who could help to fix the country as a lot of them died fighting in the war.

It was also an opportunity for Caribbean men who had served in the war before or as part of the air forces, for a chance to come to Britain and see the advantages they had to offer. However when they did come here it wasn’t all roses, which they were soon to discover.

They faced constant racism, having to deal with niggers go back home spray painted on their front doors. Black nurses who worked for the nhs were paid incredibly poorly, think about it the white nurses weren’t paid much either and the black nurses were beneath them. Some of the white nurses used to wash their underwear in the black nurses pots and pans. I could go on all day about the discrimination and racism they faced.

However to get to the point I wanted to speak on their sacrifices they made in order for us to have a better chance at life. Compared to what they had come from, they wanted to settle here at least for a few years none of them had the intention to stay here forever but sometimes it’s what happened.

When you’re not earning to even have a roof over your head, how can you make plans to even return to your country of origin. Racism in the United Kingdom is so insidious that we were tricked to coming over here, to work for them and then ended up trapped with no means of being able to leave. That is until they wanted to kick us out.

Without our grandparents sacrifices, without them integrating into British society would we have been better or worse off. There is money to be paid in the uk however the British calling for West Indians to come and build up their country left Caribbean counties without the talented and those countries are now a mess.

I think it’s time we move forward and for us of the younger generation to start leaving the uk, I’ve already seen it happening in America children of African immigrants from countries such as Nigeria or Ghana are returning back to these countries. It is time for us Caribbean folk to do similar build up our countries like how we build up ungrateful Britain.

Written by Sistah Soul