Post by Administrator on Jun 14, 2020 16:53:24 GMT
Plan to raise Windrush anchor.
There is no British equivalent of the Statue of Liberty, greeting immigrants with the resonant words: “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
But we do have a ship, the HMT Empire Windrush, that gave its name to a generation of immigrants and symbolised the creation of modern multicultural Britain.
In recent years it has become associated with the hostile treatment of Caribbean immigrants, yet this weekend a campaign group is announcing plans to retrieve the anchors from the ship and cast them as symbols of hope and reconciliation.
Patrick Vernon, 59, who persuaded the government to recognise June 22 as Windrush Day, said: “We need hope, we need aspiration, and maybe the anchors could bring the country together in the most prominent place in Britain.”
At the end of a week in which a statue of Edward Colston, a Bristol slave trader, was toppled into the harbour by Black Lives Matters protesters, there is a peculiar symmetry in the proposal — because the Empire Windrush is at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
The newsreels captured the scene from the Tilbury docks, in Essex, on June 22, 1948, when the anchor framed the expectant faces of some of the 539 Jamaican settlers — and 263 others from the Caribbean — as the ship came in to dock.
Yet the vessel, which was previously a Nazi cruise ship and had been used to transport Jews to concentration camps, was to do the voyage only once, going on to serve instead on routes between Southampton, the Mediterranean, Suez and the Indian Ocean, and travelling as far as Japan. Its final voyage, carrying 1,276 passengers including military personnel and their families, and Korean War veterans, was plagued by engine trouble, and the ship had to be evacuated in the western Mediterranean when a fire broke out.
More at: LINK
There is no British equivalent of the Statue of Liberty, greeting immigrants with the resonant words: “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
But we do have a ship, the HMT Empire Windrush, that gave its name to a generation of immigrants and symbolised the creation of modern multicultural Britain.
In recent years it has become associated with the hostile treatment of Caribbean immigrants, yet this weekend a campaign group is announcing plans to retrieve the anchors from the ship and cast them as symbols of hope and reconciliation.
Patrick Vernon, 59, who persuaded the government to recognise June 22 as Windrush Day, said: “We need hope, we need aspiration, and maybe the anchors could bring the country together in the most prominent place in Britain.”
At the end of a week in which a statue of Edward Colston, a Bristol slave trader, was toppled into the harbour by Black Lives Matters protesters, there is a peculiar symmetry in the proposal — because the Empire Windrush is at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
The newsreels captured the scene from the Tilbury docks, in Essex, on June 22, 1948, when the anchor framed the expectant faces of some of the 539 Jamaican settlers — and 263 others from the Caribbean — as the ship came in to dock.
Yet the vessel, which was previously a Nazi cruise ship and had been used to transport Jews to concentration camps, was to do the voyage only once, going on to serve instead on routes between Southampton, the Mediterranean, Suez and the Indian Ocean, and travelling as far as Japan. Its final voyage, carrying 1,276 passengers including military personnel and their families, and Korean War veterans, was plagued by engine trouble, and the ship had to be evacuated in the western Mediterranean when a fire broke out.
More at: LINK