Will My Granddaughter Tell the Windrush Story in 60 Years?
As another Windrush Day approaches, I find myself thinking about my ten-year-old granddaughter. In 60 years’ time, she’ll be close to my age now. Will she remember the Windrush story? Will she care?
And if she doesn’t, does it even matter?
I believe it does. Because,
when our history is erased, forgotten, or simply neglected, the quest to rediscover it becomes urgent— a mission only truly understood by those from whom it has been taken.
Having arrived in the UK during the so-called “Windrush era,” I’ve been reflecting deeply on what that period meant for me—and what it might mean to future generations. I wonder: Will my granddaughter or others of her generation understand the origin and controversies surrounding the term “Windrush”?
Should “The Windrush Generation” refer only to those who travelled on the Empire Windrush ship in 1948? Or does it include the broader generation of Caribbean people who migrated between 1948 and 1972? And what of the term “Children of the Windrush Generation”—does that apply only to the children of those who came on that ship, or to all of us whose parents arrived in that period, regardless of port or place of entry?
These distinctions may seem unimportant, but they matter. They shape who feels included, recognised, remembered.
Windrush Day has become a symbolic celebration for my generation. But will it endure? Will future generations understand how hard-fought it was to establish this day, to assert the value of our contributions, especially when some scholars remind us that Black people from the Caribbean had already been living in Britain long before 1948?
Will those same future generations understand why thousands of us came? That it wasn’t just as many understand, Britain called us—to rebuild the “Mother Country” after war but, there was opportunity for many to improve their lives socioeconomically. And, there were limited visa restrictions.
Will my granddaughter remember the story I told her of leaving behind the Caribbean sun and flying on a British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) plane from Kingston to a cold, grey Manchester? I turned 11 that day.
Will she understand the pain and injustice of the Windrush Compensation Scheme? Will she know that I, her grandmother, could have been deported despite my father having held a British passport—if I hadn’t completed my naturalisation papers? So many were not so lucky.
Will she realise that unlike other compensation schemes, this one failed to provide the basic legal support needed to protect those affected?
And will she ever reflect on how children from the Windrush era were deliberately and systematically mislabelled “educationally subnormal,” and denied the educational support to transition into a new culture?
I hope she’ll recognise the incredible accomplishments of the descendants of the Windrush generation—people who faced open discrimination and still rose to become leaders, professors, healthcare specialist, scientists. I hope she knows that we did this against a backdrop of signs that read “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish” and slogans like “If you want a n***er for a neighbour, vote Labour.”
Will she tell her grandchildren these stories?
And, as a young girl of mixed heritage, will she ever pause to consider how the lives of her great-grandparents on both sides of her family were shaped by the racial tensions and conflicts of their times? Will she understand that unless our stories are shared, she may never fully grasp where she came from?
Will she even know that I once questioned whether I should accept my MBE for services to physiotherapy—because of its undertones and manifestations of ‘Empire?
As the late Jamaican singer Johnny Nash once sang, “There are more questions than answers, pictures in my mind that will not show.”
On 22nd June, Windrush Day 2025, I’ll mark 60 years since I arrived in Britain as a Windrush child. And I’ll be reflecting on these questions.
Unlike me at her age, my granddaughter has seen more of the world than I could ever have dreamt of. Technology has given her countless ways to document and access stories. Whether she chooses to commemorate Windrush or not, I hope our family story will be preserved—recorded, shared, remembered.
More than anything, I hope she becomes a narrator and author of her own history.
Lived experience gives meaning that textbooks and outsiders can never fully replicate. Too often we come to that realisation late.
I know I did.
But I remain an optimist. I believe Windrush won’t be forgotten. Because as we grow older, most of us start to care more about where we come from. We begin to ask questions. We seek more answers.
And that is how the story continues.