David Olusoga: We Need to Talk About Windrush

The Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic games. A moment of ‘national triumph’, the nation pulling together to create a powerful and positive performance to broadcast to the rest of the world demonstrating the ‘best of Britishness’ . Danny Boyle’s ceremony weaved together a narrative of British history celebrating diversity and recognising the strength of tolerance and multiculturality in contemporary Britain. While hundreds of volunteers in NHS uniforms flooded into the stadium, a ship simultaneously pulled into the eyeline of the spectators and cameras: Windrush.

In 2012, the ship represented Britain’s celebration of its history as the “land of hope and glory” welcoming its "children of empire" to the "motherland". Fast forward to only a year later when legal advisers warned the Home Office that Windrush generation residents were being wrongly classified as being in the country illegally. Since 2013, charities and concerned MPs, alongside legal advisers, have been highlighting cases showing how this group is being wrongly targeted. In 2018 the ‘story’ broke when Amelia Gentleman wrote an article for The Guardian bringing the Windrush generation’s stories to light.

The word Windrush is now equated with the word Scandal.

Yet on Friday 11th October 2019, David Olusoga came to the Anson Rooms in Bristol SU to give a lecture as part of Black History Month entitled “We Need to Talk About Windrush.”

Not “why should we talk about Windrush?” or “how to talk about Windrush”, but a statement of intent. He began his talk by taking the audience back to the 2012 Olympic Ceremony. And then proceeded to unpick the realities of that image celebrated 9 long years ago, and the dismantlement of rights that has gone on undercover for years; in a need to expose the truth. This is an imperative, not a choice.

Despite the Windrush Scandal breaking into national news in 2018, public interest in the plight of individuals affected and their stories has dwindled. The work of individuals like David Olusoga and newspapers like The Guardian have continued to call for the scandal to be given more attention and for the trauma of the people affected to be fully recognised. Olusoga’s talk highlighted just how extensive the paper trail behind the Scandal really is.

Yet for Windrush Scandal survivors, the paper trail has not captured enough national or international attention to create national and international outrage. David Olusaga asks the question: is it that they don’t know, or don’t care? Until the building lit up in flames, the fears of the occupants of Grenfell flats were ignored, and it wasn’t that they weren’t known- it was that the people in the know didn’t care. But the Windrush scandal has already happened. People have been turned out of their homes and their right to live in the UK threatened.

In an article for the Guardian written 16th June 2019, Olusoga describes how British black history bears examples of what can be described as “doublethink”, a reference to Orwell’s novel 1984. This challenge to the way we think about and approach British imperial history exposes the institutional racism and racist narratives within education, journalism and politics. When questioning the public role of the humanities, cases like these show how humanities skills, such as evaluation, critical thinking and contextual knowledge, are essential factors in the defence of human rights when exposing historic injustices and their contemporary impact. We need cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall to challenge government policy: “We are here cause you were there”. We need historians such as David Olusoga to look at archived documents, conduct interviews and share his investigative journalism through media, both written and visual. We need investigative journalists like Amelia Gentleman to seek out and expose individual stories.

The stakes are high. People have died before receiving justice. Human rights have been breached by deliberate government policy, and this is only the surface level of the injustice. By stating “We need to talk about Windrush”, Olusoga left it to the audience to demand: “Why aren’t we talking about Windrush?” The answers to that question lie entirely in the realm of humanities research.