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Homecoming

Homecoming: Episode 3

Episode 3

BBC Radio 4 - Homecoming, Episode 3

The voices of the Windrush generation telling their own stories.

Many migrants from the West Indies were not welcome 70 years ago, and there were no laws to curtail the discrimination and racism they met when looking for housing and work.

Growing up in 1960s Luton, Colin Grant avoided asking his Jamaican parents why they had emigrated to Britain in the 1950s. But now, seventy years after many ships - including the Empire Windrush - anchored on British shores, he brings together over a hundred first-hand interviews, archival recordings and memoirs by the women and men who came to Britain from the West Indies between the late 1940s and early 1960s.

After the Second World War, Britain encouraged immigration from Commonwealth countries. To a large extent this was to help rebuild the country, as there was a shortage of labour at the time.

The migrants were coming to a country promising prosperity and employment. Their stories are of hope and regret, of triumphs and challenges, brimming with humour, anger and wisdom. Together, they reveal a rich tapestry of Caribbean British lives.

Episode 3 looks at the dominant culture of racism in Britain at the time and how it affected the Caribbean migrants in their search for work and a place to sleep.

Introduction by Colin Grant
Readers: Burt Caesar, Don Warrington, Michelle Greenidge, Colin Salmon, Dona Croll
Abridged by Colin Grant, Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Produced by Jill Waters 

The Waters Company for BBC Radio 4

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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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The people of the Windrush generation tell their stories in the new book by Colin Grant.

Book of the Week. First-hand interviews, archival recordings and memoirs by the women and men who came to Britain from the West Indies between the late 1940s and early 1960s.

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