Windrush and the NHS: a nurse's perspective

I want to be positive. The NHS has managed to survive for 75 years. I have worked in or around it for nearly 36 years. I am here because White people were there, expanding the British empire to parts of the Caribbean. ‘There’ being Barbados, a small island in the Caribbean.

My parents are of the Windrush generation. They were not on the ship that arrived in 1948 at Tilbury docks, but my father came by boat as a seaman and my mother by plane in the early 1960s. The Windrush generation spans the time frame from 1948 to the early 1970s (Peplow, 2020).

My sister and I were both born in west London and my oldest niece was born in the same hospital before the site was sold off and made into flats. This was a common occurrence for specialist hospitals in prime London locations and a testament to the realities of the NHS in the late 20th century.