Seventy-six years ago, Alford Gardner was among 492 passengers who arrived on the Empire Windrush to help rebuild Britain after the Second World War.
Alford, now 98, went on to form the country’s first Caribbean cricket club in Leeds and was one of the Windrush Generation selected to receive a Pride of Britain award last year.
Many more people arrived between June 22, 1948, when the liner docked at Tilbury, Essex, and 1971, with around half a million thought to have settled here in all.
Life here was not easy for them, with many facing racism as well as threats of detention and deportation because the Home Office had destroyed their paperwork.
Alford said: “Initially we were met with open arms. Of course, there were tough times, but I always took people how I saw them and so many people were good to me.”
Alford first came to the UK from Jamaica during the war to join the RAF and was stationed in Gloucestershire, as a mechanic.
After the war, he completed an engineering course in Leeds, before being sent back to Jamaica in 1947.
Struggling to find work, he returned on the Empire Windrush and settled in Leeds, where he still lives.
He worked as an engineer and had eight children, including eldest son Howard, 72.
Alford featured in an ITV documentary – Pride Of Britain: A Windrush Special, in which Prince William took him to a party at Headingley Cricket Ground, with his family and some cricketing legends.
Alford bowled at William, who urged: “Easy ball, Alford. Be gentle.”
He then added: “Oh, he’s got it!”
And he told him said: “I think, hopefully, you’ve seen how much you mean to everyone round here.
“They’ve all come out to say thank you. And I want to say thank you as well to you and all the Windrush generation, who started so many things off when you first arrived here all those years ago.”
Alford’s son Howard, a retired engineer from Wakefield, West Yorks, says his dad was thrilled by the Prince’s visit.
He says: “I don’t think Dad even realised who he was at first, it was such a surprise.
“But cricket is one of his biggest passions, and he really enjoyed it.”
He says his dad had to work twice as hard in the UK because of his colour.
“The amount of stuff he’s done in his life – joining the RAF, coming back on Windrush, and then being turned away from jobs because of his colour, ridiculous,” he says.
Joseph Mowlah-Baksh, 65, one of thousands of people wrongly denied a British passport for decades after coming from Trinidad as a baby, was also on stage to receive the Outstanding Contribution award from presenter Carol Vorderman.
In 2018, it emerged that the Home Office had not properly recorded migrants like Joseph, who had permission to stay here or issued any paperwork confirming their status.
Their landing cards had been destroyed, so they couldn’t prove they were here legally - meaning they couldn’t access medical care, housing or get a job. A historical case review discovered at least 83 people who had arrived before 1973 had been wrongly deported.
Then-Prime Minister Theresa May apologised in 2018, and an inquiry found the scandal had been “foreseeable and avoidable”.
Around 15,000 people were eligible for compensation and, so far, according to April 2024 records, the Home Office has paid £85.8million to 2,382 people.
Also representing the Windrush Generation were Lloyd Coxsone, 79, a musical pioneer who founded the sound system movement, Guy Reid-Bailey, 78, who was part of the 1963 Bristol bus protest after being rejected for a job because of his colour, and midwife Vernesta Cyril, 82, who founded the South East Wales Race Equality Council.
Since Pride of Britain, the awards have kept coming for Vernesta, of Newport, South Wales, who was honoured at the Saint Lucia 45th Anniversary Showcase in February.
She was presented with a sculpture thanking her for her contribution to the Windrush Generation, from the island’s government.
She was also invited to King Charles’ birthday celebration at Highgrove in November, where the monarch personally thanked her for her work.
Vernesta feels things in the UK have improved, but there are still important changes to be made.
She said: “People have come to this country, they haven’t asked for anything from the government, they have gone to work and they have done well, but aren’t always shown recognition.
“It has improved because I looked at the First Minister in Wales during a meeting and I said, ‘I wouldn’t have believed that 50 years ago I would be standing between two First Ministers looking the way I do.’
We’ve got a little way to go, but things have improved in the time I’ve been here. A lot of the big authorities are trying their best. There are so many well-educated, well-placed Black people now.”
Activist Sir Godfrey Palmer, known as Geoff, was among the award recipients too.
He was sent by boat to the UK from Jamaica in 1955, aged 14, by his aunt to join his mum Ivy Larmond-Palmer, wrapped in newspaper to keep him warm.
Despite being assessed as “educationally subnormal”, he earned a place at a grammar school, thanks to his cricket skills.
After completing a degree in botany at the University of Leicester, he became an award-winning grain scientist.
He went on to become Scotland’s first Black professor in 1988, and has been chancellor of Herriott-Watt University in Edinburgh since 2021.
Sir Geoff, who is also a respected slave-trade historian says of Windrush Day: “It should be commemorated on the basis that Caribbean people came over to help build Britain.
“Running the buses, the trains, working in factories, making ordinary goods, which ordinary British people didn’t want to do.
“My mum used to finish dresses. We were invited and we considered it wonderful that the mother country invited us to help. We came, and we did what we could.
“We also brought our slavery-derived culture, and we, therefore, added to British culture in terms of music and the knowledge of who we were. Culture to me is custom and practice, and what we brought will remain part of the custom and practice of Britain forever.
“It’s not just about slavery, but it’s important to understand why we were here.”
- A comprehensive list of events across the UK to mark Windrush Day is available at windrush100.org.