The Oxford Companion to Black British History

The arrival at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948 of the Empire Windrush with 492 Caribbean immigrants on board has become an icon. It is viewed as a turning point in the recent history of Britain, and has come to symbolise the many ways in which Caribbean people have contributed to and transformed aspects of British life. The trouble with an event becoming an icon is that non‐historians tend to take the view that the icon is a beginning. It was the beginning of the great post‐war immigration that transformed British institutions like London Transport, the Post Office, and the...