New Documentary Podcast Series Uncovers Untold Stories from the Windrush Generation

By Features Desk

Wednesday, April 1, 2020.

A new podcast series is being launched that will reveal some of the untold stories and unsung heroes of the Windrush generation

The series, which starts this month, is the brainchild of Broccoli Content, and it launches as a two-part podcast documentary series. 

‘Generation Windrush’ will be hosted and produced by Jaja Muhammad, a second generation Black Briton with Jamaican roots. Ms Muhammad is a radio and podcast producer, who formerly worked for the BBC. The podcast will take a deep dive into the fate and feelings of the Windrush Generation, then and now. Guest contributors to the series are Patrick Vernon OBE, Allyson Williams MBE and Colin Grant, who will be sharing their insights, stories and reflections on what we can learn from the generation, the impact of losing their identity and the systems that played their part in the subsequent scandal. 

Each participant in the series has a strong connection to the Windrush era: Mr Vernon is a social commentator and political activist of Jamaican heritage and was the leading campaigner for a national Windrush Day for the last 10 years; Ms Williams MBE, is of the Windrush generation, who originally came from Trinidad. She moved to Britain in the 1969 and served in the National Health Service for 35 years. Ms Williams was honoured with an MBE as a recognition for her services to the midwifery profession in London. Her late husband Vernon "Fellows" Williams was a founding member of the Notting Hill Carnival in 1964; Mr Grant is a historian and author, whose parents originally emigrated from Jamaica. In his book ‘Homecoming’ Mr Grant collected nearly 200 voices from the Windrush Generation to tell their essential life stories through first-hand interviews and testimonies. 

The Windrush era is an important moment in the history of modern Britain. In 1948, the merchant vessel Windrush docked at Tilbury, in Essex, carrying almost 500 Caribbean men and women. This heralded the arrival of thousands of men and women from the West Indies to Britain. They had all responded to the call of the “Mother Country” to help rebuild what was left of the nation, after the devastation of the Second World War. In more recent times they were dubbed the ‘Windrush Generation’, a generation who contributed their lives to a country that it thought would honour their contributions.  

In the Spring of 2018, British mainstream media uncovered a scandal that rocked the nation. The scandal detailed the fact that scores of the Windrush Generation, who had contributed to the building of the nation’s health service, transport networks and added so much to the nation’s cultural mix, were being deported from the country they called home. The UK Government has decided that because many were unable to provide the authorities with the right paperwork and proof of UK citizenship, they were therefore deemed to be on UK soil illegally and had to return to the countries of their birth. The scandal uncovered the depths of the hostile environment in the UK, and in March 2020, Windrush Lessons Learned Review found that the Home Office had “institutionally failed” the Windrush Generation. 

With episodes due to be released on April 5 and April 12, the Generation Windrush podcast series highlights the lessons from the Windrush scandal and the legacies and stories from a Generation that deserves to remain visible and unforgotten