Brixton celebrates Windrush and the start of multicultural Britain

There is a curious, old round brick building at the southernmost edge of Clapham Common in south London. It lies directly opposite the entrance to Clapham South tube station. Most commuters shuffle by without giving it a second glance.

It is the entrance to a deep-level, subterranean second World War bomb shelter. Yet that is not what it is best known for; the shelter opened in 1944 after the Blitz had ended and so it was barely used for its intended purpose.

Four years later the structure, some 180 steps beneath the ground, was famously deployed as emergency housing for the first black immigrants to Britain who were shipped over from the West Indies on the HMT Empire Windrush. This Thursday marks the 75th anniversary of the first docking of the ship with immigrants, and with it the official beginnings of multicultural Britain.

Three quarters of a century later, official Britain still has a complex relationship with the Windrush generation – the mostly Afro-Caribbean people who arrived between 1948 and the early 1970s in the first great wave of black immigrants here.

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They first arrived at a time when the country had a desperate labour shortage and invited people from Commonwealth countries such as Jamaica to help rebuild after the war. Many brought children and often arrived without papers, or their documents were later lost or destroyed.

A government decision in the early 1970s should have confirmed that they didn’t need documentation and could remain in Britain legally. However, it emerged six years ago in reports in the Guardian newspaper that hundreds of the Windrush generation were wrongly deported years later for having no papers to prove they were entitled to residency.

[ Theresa May apologises to Caribbean leaders over treatment of immigrants ]

The Windrush scandal emerged during Theresa May’s premiership and near the height of Britain’s post-Brexit angst, which somewhat drowned it out. It remains an open sore for some of Britain’s black population of Windrush descendants.

The first Windrush immigrants who slept in the bomb shelter beneath the Northern Line at Clapham South tube station emerged daily from their warren to attend a labour exchange. The nearest one was in Coldharbour Lane in Brixton. Many soon found jobs and housing nearby, transforming Brixton into the beating heart of London’s black community.

This week Britain’s home secretary, Suella Braverman, herself the daughter of immigrants who arrived in the 1960s, ordered police to step up their use of stop-and-search powers

Immigration of black people dramatically changed Brixton into a cacophony of sights and sounds that would have seemed strange to its original inhabitants. In recent years internal migration of white people has changed the area again.

Brixton is now at the heart of London’s gentrification debate as many of the city’s working class havens are taken over by wealthier, middle class and mostly white young workers. They are often disparaged as hipsters, and their arrival has helped to drive the price of the average semidetached house in Brixton to well over £1 million.

This week, on a balmy Monday evening, bustling Brixton town centre prepared to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the generation who built Black Britain. The marquee signage above the Ritzy cinema on Windrush Square contained a thank you to the immigrants from Lambeth Council. Posters stuck on the railings of the town library overlooking the square advertised Windrush celebrations for Saturday.

“Bring your great grandchildren!” said one for a family event. The nearby Black Cultural Archives at one corner of the square was closed for renovations but it was due to reopen in time for the official anniversary on Thursday.

Brixton may be gentrified but it has no shortage of social problems. Further down Brixton Hill further away from the square, homeless men queued on Monday evening for a free hot meal outside the shops beside the tube station. Behind this area the stallholders of Brixton Market and the famous Electric Avenue cleared up after the day’s trade.

Yet the entire market is now owned by a wealthy Texan property developer who wants to build a high-rise building on the site, infuriating older locals. Through the far side of the market, the continuing gentrification of the area was also apparent this week in the plethora of wholefoods stores and vintage outlets near the railway arches and all the way up Atlantic Road.

[ Windrush generation: ‘If people had information on you, you never knew what they might do’ ]

Many Irish people may recall Brixton as the scene of race riots in 1995 and earlier in the 1980s, when tensions boiled over due to the police use of stop-and-search powers that disproportionally affected young black men. The more some things change, the more they stay the same.

This week Britain’s home secretary, Suella Braverman, herself the daughter of immigrants who arrived in the 1960s, ordered police to step up their use of stop-and-search powers. She justified it as a measure to save black lives. Black young men may be seven times more likely to be searched than their white counterparts but statistics suggest they are also four times more likely to be stabbed.

Despite all the gentrification, it seems certain that Braverman’s exhortation to police will play out on the streets in areas such as Brixton. Britain, as ever, maintains a complex relationship between its various multicultural strands.