It's over 60 years since the Windrush docked in England, bringing people from the Caribbean to these freezing shores. What made people leave their tropical homes and settle on a small island in the North Atlantic? In 1948, an advert appeared in a Jamaican newspaper offering cheap transport on the Empire Windrush for anybody who wanted to come and work in the UK. At that time, there were no restrictions on immigration for citizens of the British Empire moving around the colonies. This prompted many people to move from the West Indies and the colonies to England.



On 22 June 1948, the Windrush docked at Tilbury, near London, carrying 492 passengers from Jamaica wishing to start a new life in the United Kingdom. Since the Windrush, over three quarters of a million people from the Caribbean have either settled or been born in England. Yet very little is known about their stories.



“Rewind” is a reminiscence project working with the older Caribbean community in Preston. The project aims to produce a collection of books detailing the lives of people who migrated to England from the West Indies. The books explore why they made the long journey to a place they had been told was the Mother Country, what made them stay and how things have changed?