Here’s a wonderful photo of a boy standing by his family’s luggage after they had arrived in London on the boat train. The ‘boat’ in this instance was the famous Empire Windrush.
What The Windrush Generation means to me, a white man, is that it represents the lowest ebb of our compassion, our empathy, our humanity, in how we treated these wonderful people who had arrived here with such high hopes and full of good intentions.
Look how that boy is dressed – in his Sunday best suit, with a bow tie and clean white shoes. This was a very special occasion for him.
It’s hard for me to get my head round the idea that they earnestly believed this was their Mother Country, a place they respected and admired. And a people they respected and admired.
Even given the history of slavery, we were still the Mother Country and a place where a bright future awaited them.
The open, hostile, and entirely legal, racism they faced was astounding. They faced discrimination in every aspect of the new life they were trying to build: job or accommodation listings had notices that openly said “No Blacks”. Shamefully, they were looked down on everywhere they went. It’s enough to make you weep.
So I’m all for facing up to our responsibilities, to addressing the historic wrongs, from slavery to The Windrush Generation, and acknowledging them because too many people want to brush it under the carpet, or, if they haven’t already forgotten all about it, to forget it.
But, and this is a big ‘but’, the campaign for reparations for historic slavery, for which the clamour is growing, threatens to set race relations back decades, driving a wedge between communities just as the wounds were healing.
The case for reparations sounds compelling, that is, until you examine it closely, then it completely falls apart.
This site carries out that examination. Please follow the arguments, check the sources, and make up your own mind.
Reparations is a catastrophic route to be taking.