MARIA
I been here year and half months. But I go home soon for holiday? I miss my home.
ALFRED
That never changes, no matter how long you here.
—Let There Be Love

Though there have been Blacks in Britain longer than in America, the first significant waves of immigration did not really start until immediately following World War Two, when England began to invite West Indians from her Caribbean possessions to come to the “motherland” to help in post-war reconstruction. Since the first several hundred men stepped off the converted troopship Windrush that gave their generation its name, the population has swelled considerably. As the Windrush pioneers begin to die off, their children and grandchildren now share space with a stream of new arrivals—as well as with immigrants from around the globe. But for those who remain and those who come after, it is Kwei-Armah’s convincing contention that the first generation—through the opposition they overcame and by all they brought with them—did much to “warm” Britain.
—GW

“My health is better since coming back and I have no regrets returning, because this is home and it doesn’t matter where you go you will always want to come back home.”
—Constance Samuel, “My front room in a ship container,” in The Front Room by Michael McMillan

“I’m still living in the house I first bought and still got a year or so mortgage to pay. I would prefer to be living in Jamaica because I know my wife would go back tomorrow morning—and she’s been here 40 years.

Jamaica is my home. We had always planned to go back, but I didn’t make that preparation, that is my carelessness. We really thought the wages would be more substantial and they were not, so we couldn’t afford to save up. Although I am a British citizen, Jamaica is my home. [...] I was born and grew up in Jamaica and it’s my home, because if I say England is my home I disown Jamaica and I would never like to do that.

A man or a woman who disowns their country is like a man who says their mother is not their mother.”
—Eustace Ford, Moving Here.

“When I was eighteen I left and decided to travel. It cost around 80 American dollars to travel to the UK. I left on the 4th March 1962. I had friends living in London and a cousin and my brother. I came to London first then Huddersfield. Worked at Cross Church Street in town.

I thought England was a very cold place. Once I went for a stroll in town and saw snow for the first time. I had to pay 1 shilling for a raincoat.”
—Lionel Noel, Moving Here.

“I was born in the Caribbean, in St Georges, Grenada. I have two brothers and one sister. My two sisters came to the UK first, and then I did, when I was nearly ten, then my brother. We came here because my mum and dad were here. My grandmother was looking after us in Grenada.

My first impressions were that the UK was cold and dismal. Come December and you walked along you felt this chill and I thought, ‘where am I? Is this England?’ Everything was so dark and every time you spoke, fog came out of your mouth and I thought, ‘Jesus what kind of world is this?’”
—Anonymous, Moving Here.

“I do ordinary work. I work in a hospital. Now I work in a hotel. I get my food there, but the money is not good. I am 44 and not married. All my friends here are from Dominica and Grenada. No one ever say things to me about colored. I never go out after seven; too many fights. I listen to the news, and read. I share a room with a man from Grenada; the other people in the house are white and black. No trouble. You have to take what you can find, cannot pick friends, all black men together. If I have the money I go home now.”
—Anonymous migrant from Antigua, in London’s Newcomers: The West Indian Migrants by Ruth Glass, 1961.

“In the Caribbean the front room was closer to a Victorian parlour tradition and in England the front room was closer to a respectable working class tradition. This is how the West Indian migrant front room in the black British context intersects and overlaps with the respectable working class front room.... To find a  space in which to recreate a sense of the home that they had in the Caribbean took a long while in Britain, but once that took place, the front room was recreated as the spiritual, moral, and social centre of the public presentation of the family towards the outside world.”
—Michael McMillan, The Front Room.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: more first-hand accounts from West Indian immigrants