Finding Home

A Windrush Story

Inbunden, Engelska, 2023

AvAlford Dalrymple Gardner,Howard Gardner

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On 24 May 1948, the Empire Windrush sailed from Kingston, Jamaica, to harbour at Tilbury Docks. It carried 1,027 passengers and some stowaways, and more than two thirds of them were West Indies nationals. On 22 June 1948 they disembarked onto the docks, Alford Dalrymple Gardner was among them. Alford's story traverses both the uplifting highs and intolerant lows that West Indian migrants of his generation encountered upon travelling to Britain to forge out a life. From joining the British military during World War II to returning to Jamaica once it was won-only to come back to the UK when the government decided it needed him again-Alford witnessed milestone events of the 20th century that shaped the country he still lives in today. In the context of a supposedly 'post-Imperial' Britain where the lives of West Indian migrants hang precariously on the whims of the Home Office, Alford's heartening testimony is a celebration of those who endured hardships so that generations to come could call this place home.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2023-06-22
Mått160 x 236 x 26 mm
Vikt420 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor216
FörlagJacaranda Books Art Music Ltd
ISBN9781914344220

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Diskriminering och rättvisa inom Samhälle och politik
Andra världskriget inom Historia och arkeologi
Sanna berättelser inom Biografier
Migration inom Samhälle och politik

Alford Dalrymple Gardner (Author) Born in 1926 in Kingston, Jamaica, Alford Gardner first came to England in 1944 to support the war effort, serving in the RAF. After a brief stay back in Jamaica, he decided to return to England to help to rebuild the country. He boarded the HMT Empire Windrush intending to build a life in the country he once called home. Despite a less than accommodating welcome back, he persisted and succeeded in forging a better life for his family. In his later years, Alford spent all his leisure time at the bingo hall. When not playing bingo, he would watch sports or spend time with his family. A much fuller sense of Alford's life is conveyed in his autobiography: Finding Home. Alford passed away in 2024 at the age of 98.

Alford Dalrymple Gardner, an amateur guitarist and wicket keeper, was among the Windrush passengers. Along with his youthful fellow travellers (the average age on the ship was 24), he traded the certainty of devastating Caribbean hurricanes and unemployment for the chance of a better life in bombed-out Britain. His zestful style, undiminished by his 97 years and the challenges faced in his bigoted adoptive country, is commemorated in Finding Home, a memoir co-authored with his son, Howard. The book chronicles Caribbean pioneers' pitfalls and triumphs in a country that often seemed to despise them. "I'll never understand," writes Gardner early on, "how the colour of my skin can make these people so mad."Critics scoffed that the sun-kissed West Indians "wouldn't last one bad winter" in Britain. Finding Home illuminates the antipathy towards the pioneers (prime minister Clement Attlee received a letter from angry MPs warning it was a mistake to admit the migrants), showing that a hostile environment was in place long before the then home secretary Theresa May's 2012 policy ensnared some of the Windrush generation in a bureaucratic conundrum to prove, decades on from their arrival, that they had a right to live here.