In Pictures: The pioneering Windrush generation, who arrived 70 years ago
- Published
Pioneers from the Caribbean arrived in Tilbury, Essex, 70 years ago, marking the beginning of large-scale West Indian immigration.
The ex-troopship Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks, Essex, on 22 June 1948, carrying 482 Jamaicans emigrating to Britain.
The journey to Britain cost £28 and 10 shillings.
Those from Jamaica were leaving a country that had a struggling economy and had been devastated by a hurricane.
RAF officials from the Colonial Office welcomed the Jamaican immigrants at Tilbury.
Some of the arrivals stayed in temporary accommodation, like the Jamaican immigrants seen here standing on the streets of Clapham, south London.
Kenneth Murray, Eric Dryndale and Aston Robinson are seen settling in to their temporary bedroom in a former air raid shelter in Clapham in 1948.
In the decade after the first group of immigrants boarded Empire Windrush, about 250,000 West Indians followed, including this family arriving from Jamaica in about 1950.
Those who arrived were tasked with finding work and lodgings, like this man in 1955.
Rue Gordon, seen here in Birmingham in 1955, emigrated from Jamaica in 1953 and became a bus conductor.
Keith Edwards and Queenie Marques posed for a photographer in Britain in 1954 after arriving from Jamaica.
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