A Trinidadian researcher at Birmingham City University says she has uncovered letters from Caribbean migrants that challenge British media portrayal of their experiences in the United Kingdom.

Stirred by the discovery, Dr Rachel-Ann Charles is now asking people across the Caribbean to share any similar letters they have in their possession, especially those penned by individuals who in 1948 took up an invitation to help rebuild Britain after the Second World War and travelled to that country on the Empire Windrush.

The majority of the Windrush passengers were Jamaicans, but others arrived in the UK from Trinidad, St Lucia, Grenada, and Barbados on other ships until 1971. They all became known as the Windrush Generation.

Many of them were manual workers, drivers, cleaners, and nurses in Britain’s newly established National Health Service.

But despite their contribution to the rebuilding of the country, the reception they received was often hostile, as they were subjected to poor housing conditions — with accommodation in hostels often overcrowded and lacking basic amenities.

According to Dr Charles, British tabloid media in the 1900s portrayed Caribbean immigrants as “unemployed burdens on society”.

“We see from the papers, from the 1948 period when the Windrush Generation came… that they were being portrayed as a problem. And you see that language coming through in different newspapers during that time. But the language and the discourse carried on, even after that period, so we are talking about 1960s, 1970s, and it created a perception about Caribbean people,” she told the Jamaica Observer last Friday.

However, she said that the letters she found counter that media portrayal of Caribbean immigrants as unemployed burdens on society.

“Instead, they reveal hard-working individuals often holding multiple jobs… those are the key things I’ve found so far, and it’s showing that they weren’t really a problem. So it’s adding a different layer of evidence; that is the core of what my argument is about.

“What I am presenting that is new is the other side of the conversational evidence to say actually, that’s not the case.

“We’ve had evidence from people on this end where they’ve been talking about their own experiences here in Britain, but we never showed the letters they were sending home describing their conditions. Those are the letters that I have been looking at. It’s actually a different kind of evidence… which perhaps would give us different pictures. It will give us new insights,” she said.

In a news release on the issue, Dr Charles highlighted one of the letters, dated June 27, 1967, in which the writer said: “I think things will be hard in this country… People think this country is a bed of roses, but it is not even for people who were born in this country.”

She said the letters she has seen so far — about 50 in total sent home to the Caribbean from 1964 to 1975 — are from the average Caribbean migrant “telling their story through their lens”.

“I went through those letters, analysed them, and the call now is for more letters to be located,” Dr Charles told the Sunday Observer, adding that she recently visited Trinidad, Jamaica, and Barbados in her quest to develop an archive.

The visits, though, yielded no letters. Therefore, she is making a public appeal, through the media, for people to share any correspondence they received from relatives in the UK during the Windrush period.

Since her return to England she has taken her appeal to a number of communities.

“We want people in communities to respond to this call so that the researchers can… start collecting and analysing and doing what we need to do. Then we can publish post-analysis because we’re going to analyse them from a sociological angle, from a letter-writing angle. That’s when the actual work begins, once we can establish the archive,” she said.

“These letters offer invaluable insights into the Caribbean migration experience that cannot be found in official records,” Dr Charles stated.

“Many families across the Caribbean have similar collections stored away in old tins, boxes, or albums, each one holding precious memories and important historical perspectives to be preserved and studied,” she added.

The mission, she said, is to now “use a decolonised pen, using these letters, to rewrite the narrative about what the Caribbean contribution really was to Britain in terms of developing the British identity, as well as the Caribbean diasporic identity”.

“Each discovery adds another layer to our understanding of this crucial period in history. We must preserve these precious documents for future scholars and families alike,” Dr Charles insisted.

She is appealing to people willing to contribute to the research to contact her via e-mail at
rachel-ann.charles@bcu.ac.uk or via Instagram @ukcaribbeanimmigrantletters.

CHARLES… the letters counter British media portrayal of Caribbean immigrants as unemployed burdens on society

Some of the letters written by Caribbean migrants in Britain which were recently discovered by Dr Rachel-Ann Charles