June Blog: Windrush anniversary
Monday 26 June 2023
75th Anniversary of the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush to UK
This month sees the 75th Anniversary of the arrival of the ship HMT Empire Windrush. It docked in Tilbury, Essex, on 22 June 1948 carrying passengers from the Caribbean to fill labour shortages in the UK.
It was symbolic of a much wider mass migration to the UK as people from across the then British Empire were encouraged to move to the UK to help with post-War labour shortages and rebuild its battered economy. In fact the Windrush generation refers to all of the people who migrated from Caribbean countries to the United Kingdom between 1948 and 1971.
Major urban centres like London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Liverpool, Leeds and Preston became focal points for these communities, where they established vibrant neighbourhoods and had a significant impact on the social and cultural lives of these areas - and indeed of the UK as a whole.
Discussing the Windrush generation is important for British students - it highlights the importance of immigration to the country and is a reminder of the contribution of the Windrush generation to British society.
It also gives opportunity to study civil rights' activists in the UK. For example Jamaican-born physician Dr Harold Moody founded the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP) - one of Britain's first civil rights' organisations. Moody campaigned tirelessly to improve the situation for Black people in Britain and to secure legislation to ensure equal rights; his work was influential in bringing about the 1965 Race Relations Act.
This article gives more detail on the work of the LCP both before and during the Second World War.
The Windrush Scandal which saw members of the Windrush generation - who had been in the UK for decades being wrongly deported or denied access to public services like the NHS - is also an important reminder of the need that we all have to continue fighting for rights and ensuring that hard won rights are not eroded by governments.
The Empire Windrush (The National Archives)
The National Archives has created some resources for you to use in your classroom.
US Civil Rights: an 'epochal moment'
The work of Dr Harold Moody and the LCP makes for interesting parallels with the work of US civil rights' activists and organisations such as the NAACP.
June sees the 60th anniversary of the murder by a white supremacist of US civil rights activist Medgar Evers who was Mississippi’s first NAACP field secretary. As with Dr Moody, Medgar Evans began his civil rights' campaigning after facing discrimination himself - he was turned away from from a local election at gunpoint - and then went on to lead campaigns against discrimination 'He fought against cruel Jim Crow laws, protested segregation in education, and launched an investigation into the Emmett Till lynching'.
Ironically Evers was murdered just hours after President Kennedy had given a televised speech giving his support for civil rights. In this speech, President Kennedy implored a nation divided by race, to rise to the challenge of that moment, to create a society in which all its citizens were afforded equal opportunity under the law. This was to lead to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The following article highlights how Ever's murder and Kennedy's speech - along with the refusal of Alabama's segregationist governor George Wallace to allow two Black students to attend the University of Alabama - are linked together to create a key moment in the history of civil rights in the US.
An epochal moment for civil rights in a single day: 11 June 1963 | Gary Younge (the Guardian)
50 years ago, three seminal events – a standoff with Alabama's governor, a presidential speech and the murder of Medgar Evers – left an indelible mark on American history, writes Gary Young
Anniversaries of women in space
“A bird cannot fly with one wing only. Human space flight cannot develop any further without the active participation of women.” – Valentina Tereshkova
“If we want scientists and engineers in the future, we should be cultivating the girls as much as the boys.” – Sally Ride
June 2023 is also the 60th anniversary of the first woman to reach space, Valentina Tereshkova, and the 40th anniversary of the first American woman in space, Sally Ride.
This article from NASA which was published this year for women's History month gives a great overview of the history of women's involvement in space travel up to the present day.
We would also recommend this excellent documentary about the 'Mercury 13': the women who were privately trained to become astronauts but who were not allowed to actually go into space by NASA.
Site update
We are continuing to upgrade our site - making the layout of our pages clearer and more attractive and more closely aligned to the IB syllabus. While doing this - we are also adding more content and activities.
This month we have worked on the following sections: