The Windrush (Black Lives Matter) | Trevor Perfect

Liner notes

This is a song about The Windrush, which was a boat which brought a large group of people (over 1,000) to the United Kingdom from Jamaica to London, just after the 2nd World War, also bringing people from other UK colonies.

As a result of the losses during the war, the British government pleaded and encouraged mass immigration from former countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth to help them fill the shortages in the labour market after the war. As encouragement and security, the British Nationality Act 1948 gave citizens of UK colonies the right of entry and settlement in the UK and gave them UK Citizenship.

Those who came on The Windrush and on later boats were known as The Windrush Generation. Despite being invited (not invading like the UK did with its colonies!), despite the help The Windrush Generation provided to the UK, and despite becoming true citizens (as promised when they left their original countries), in 2017 it was reported that the UK Government Home Office had threatened Commonwealth immigrants who arrived before 1973 with deportation if they could not prove their right to remain in the UK.

Subsequently many of The Windrush Generation, including their children who had lived in the UK all their lives, were deported from the UK because they did not have suitable paperwork and/or could not prove UK citizenship (despite it being promised, when The Windrush Generation boarded The Windrush). This disaster is know as the Windrush Scandal and it totally ignores the important message Black Lives Matter; hence the reference to that message in the song.

One of the the singers (Dennis Demille) actually has parents and elder brother that were part of that migration from the Caribbean to the UK. He said "the song definitely strikes a chord with me, as my parents and elder brother were part of that migration from the Caribbean to the UK".