No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish

The other evening I was relaxing watching an old Repair Shop programme. A young woman of colour brought in an old radiogram to be restored. Her family had come over on the Windrush ship. They had been invited over by the then British government after the war as they needed workers to build up the new National Health Service. Because they were our colonies under the disgraceful British Empire, they saw Britain as their motherland. They did not understand that the Empire was a bad thing as they had been brought up under it. They had no idea that British people would not welcome them. When they needed to rent rooms they were met by this sign by the front door, “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”. 

They were absolutely horrified to be made to feel so unwelcome. They then began to live together in their own areas like Brixton. They worked hard and little by little families bought their own homes and formed a community where they would be happy together and stay away from white people.

So where does the radiogram come into this back story? Because they had to make their own lives away from the white people, these radiograms were in their own homes where they could hold parties and play their own music. Next year I will be 80 so although I was born just after the war, I was too young to see what was actually happening. 

As I watched the Repair Shop they showed one of these disgusting signs. Even though I knew about them, to suddenly see one of them on the Repair Shop, I started to cry. I could not stop the weeping for a while. It made me feel sick to see with my own eyes for the first time the horror of it and to understand what they must have felt, thinking they were going to be welcomed and to find that they were hated. As the Native Americans used to say, “If you want to know how we feel you need to walk in my moccasins.” Although I have fought racism all my life, to actually see the sign, for the first time, just for those few seconds, I walked in their moccasins and that is what made me so sick.

My parents moved to Malaya as it was called at that time so we were not around when the Windrush boat arrived. When we returned we then came across this racism for the first time. It was a terrible shock. So we saw, through the years , that the children born here from Windrush parents, received the same hatred and were made to feel unwelcome, it was horrific.

As I grew up and went to university. I spent a great deal of my time demonstrating for Women’s rights, against Racism, Apartheid in South Africa, segregation and slavery in the Southern States of the USA and anti the Vietnam War. I did learn then that Britain was involved in slavery and was transporting slaves to the USA. 

The money we earned in Britain for supporting slavery built Bristol and a great deal of Liverpool. We gradually in Britain became a tolerant country of which I was very proud. My friends from abroad would comment on our wonderful attitude towards people of all races.

Since then we have moved away from this and now my friends from around the world know very well that we are renowned for our racist attitudes and our hatred for people of colour. I blame Farage for a great deal of this. There are many people in this country, the ignorant ones, who hate all asylum seekers (incorrectly called illegal immigrants) and even descendants from the Windrush times. They are born here and still seen as not British.

There is a National Windrush Day, the 22nd June named after the ship, the Empire Windrush, which was the date of the arrival of this first ship in 1948 when 500 passengers stepped off , travelling from the Caribbean to settle and work in the UK by invitation of our government and this continued until 1971.

Anti-semitism is also on the rise again. Not all Jewish people support Israel and Netanyahu at the present time but they are being treated appallingly in this country too. The latest example is the arson attack on 4 Jewish Community Ambulances. This is a hate crime. There have been attacks on synagogues in Manchester and London.

The ignorance, hatred and violence has got to stop. We who are against these things must stand up and be counted as the saying goes. We have to bring back the tolerance we used to have in this country and fight this dreadful ignorance. An example of this was when my mother took her neighbour on a trip to Lyon in France. She had never been abroad before so it was very exciting for her. They were sitting outside a lovely cafe watching the world go by.

She turned to my mother and said,”Look at all these foreigners,Carrie.”

My mother replied in a very gentle manner and said, “No, darling, we are the foreigners here.”

She replied, “I’ve never been a foreigner in my life.” My mother sighed deeply and changed the conversation.

It is always ignorance that breeds this hatred. We have to confront it and talk to people about it. It can always be in a pleasant way but assertively. We have to make a stand.

I feel very sad looking at my country today. The people who came off the Windrush ship that day never expected to be treated with such hostility. They were terribly shocked. Many of the men were veterans who fought for this country in the Second World War.

We need to change our attitudes and become more civilised.

When will come the day when we become more caring, more pleasant, more tolerant.

We need to make our society an open, polite, trusting and trustworthy one. To make these changes we will have to work very hard to return to the days when tolerance was the byword of our country, a country to be proud of not just sticking up flags all over the place. We have made these flags a symbol of hatred. What a tragedy!