Tonight at the Lambeth Assembly Rooms I will be going to an event entitled 'Windrush. Lambeth Celebrates and Reflects' about the Windrush generation in Lambeth and the role of the Caribbean community in the borough. I will be going as a representative of the Green Party but my party colleague and council candidate for Brixton Hill Ward, Philippa Marlowe-Hunt, who is a member of the Black Caribbean community, will be speaking. There will be a short film on the history of the Windrush, which was the ship which brought many of the first Caribbean immigrants to the UK in the 1950s, when their services were very much required in rebuilding Britain after the war. This is a tiny historical detail which the BNP and others tend to overlook in their rantings about the non-contribution of migrant communities to this country.
As an Irish person myself, I was not here when the signs 'No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs' graced the windows of pubs and lodging houses in London, but when I came in the 80s there was stil considerable anti-Irish prejudice. The black and Caribbean communities faced the same prejudice but overcame it to become leading members of the community in Lambeth and across the UK.
There will also be a presentation on Black Women and some poetry, and also a very historical film from 1955 entitled 'No Colour Bar Dance' which was filmed in Lambeth Town Hall. With the regeneration of Windrush Square in Brixton there will shortly be a new Black Caribbean Archive opened, which will be a real source of information on the role of the Caribbean community in the borough over the last 60 years. At a time when diversity and multiculturalism are being threatened by those such as UKIP and the BNP it is important that all of those involved in progressive politics support an event such as this.
i am learning about that boat
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