LAST week you ran a headline on the Letters Pages which read “Lessons to be learned from Windrush affair” (The Herald, April 19). I am not at all assured that lessons are being learned.
Many years ago, armed with a brand-new qualification, I emigrated to teach in rural Jamaica. But I soon found out I actually went to learn lessons. I discovered the incredible cruelty of the historical experience of colonialism and “the Empire”. I learned of the total annihilation of the indigenous Tainos and the forced importation of thousands of enslaved Africans. I found out that the Scottish presence was very evident in the social fabric of that incredible society, especially in rural Jamaica. I found that this extensive Scottish community had been essentially an exploitative presence but so intensive and deeply embedded that Jamaica is an Afro-Celtic society.
I also discovered that the Windrush wasn’t the Windrush but the Empire Windrush, for Jamaicans were very much British citizens as part of the Empire. In particular The British Nationality Act 1948 was an act that created the status of “Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies” (CUKC) providing national citizenship of the United Kingdom for Jamaicans. When the migrants arrived in London more than 200 of them were given a cold billet in an abandoned bomb-shelter and faced incredible hostility.
But why did so many seek to leave Jamaica for an uncertain future in the mother country? Sugar had made Britain rich but by the 1940s it had left rural Jamaica sadly impoverished. But in 1945 Jamaica found a rich resource of valuable bauxite (critical for the creation of aluminium alloys for the military, defence and space industries).
However this vital mineral, so critical to the US, economy was sold off to the Americans by the British Government as part of the pay-back for the US post-war support to Britain under Marshall Aid. This left a very small proportion of the bauxite wealth for Jamaican development and has left Jamaica scarred and despoiled by excavation with great lakes of toxic red sludge. With more than 100,000 acres bought up by big American corporations for mining, many rural folk were forced to emigrate, thus the Empire Windrush. After a successful referendum Jamaica gained independence in 1962 with with the ability to renegotiate a bauxite levy.
The British Government needs to look more holistically at its relationship with the Caribbean while dealing with the current dire Windrush emergency. Of course compensation needs to be provided to the many who felt the cruel lash of Theresa May’s policies as Home Secretary. But there is more. The bigger picture of how to deal with reparation for the 300 years of enslavement and cruel imperial injustice needs to be addressed. (I don’t have time or space to include the atrocity of the Morant Bay massacre of 1865 when British troops slaughtered over 200 rural peasants). But reparation for enslavement and its outcomes as outlined by Caribbean governments has to be addressed and soon. Scotland cannot be excluded from this reparation history. In the full glare of Commonwealth leaders the ugly impact of Empire was vividly highlighted last week. There was the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s race-inspired rant plus the 25th anniversary of Steven Lawrence’s racial murder. This was followed by the spectacle of the Tory Party desperately attempting to whitewash its dark history as the “nasty party” on immigration. The Empire Windrush crisis has helped shed the bright light of public exposure on just one part of a long dark history. History will not go away and we have many lessons to learn.
Thom Cross,
18 Needle Green, Carluke.
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