On Windrush anniversary, former passenger tell of new life in cold UK

Speaking to co-incide with today’s anniversary of the arrival of the ship, which brought a wave of Caribbean immigrants to the UK, Mr Gardner told his own story of crossing the Atlantic to settle in England.

He was 22 when he boarded the ship in Kingston, Jamaica, with his brother Gladstone.

They disembarked at Tilbury Docks in Essex, on June 22, 1948.

He was returning to Britain after arriving first as a teenage RAF recruit three days before D-Day in 1944, and then enduring the harshest British winter in living memory in 1947.

While most of those on board the Windrush – having paid the £28 fare (£1,040 in today’s money) to depart in May that year – went straight to London, Mr Gardner headed north.

Using what remained of the £50 his police officer father had given him, he jumped on a train to Leeds – the city where he had already spent six months training as an engineer.

And he has stayed for seven decades, raising a family of five daughters, three sons, 16 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren, founding the Caribbean Cricket Club, and helping build tanks and tractors.

“If I had to do it again, I would do every damn thing just the same,” Mr Gardner said at his home in the Bramley area of Leeds.

“If I had to do it all over, then nothing would change.

“Right now, the only thing I would like to do would be to win the lottery, or win enough to pick up the lot (his family), every one, and say ‘right... Jamaica for a holiday’.”

Despite knowing about the cold – he said he almost froze during his basic RAF training on the Yorkshire coast, even though it was in June – Mr Gardner said post-war austerity Britain was still a much better prospect than staying in Jamaica.

Travellers gambled and composed music during the three-week voyage on the Windrush, which he said had a “brilliant atmosphere”.

Once in Yorkshire, he said he was unlucky that his arrival coincided with newspaper bills saying “Four Jamaicans Attack Leeds”.

The great-grandfather said he thought that may have been behind an initial difficulty finding work, despite his mechanic’s qualifications.

“There was always a man in uniform saying, ‘Sorry son, there’s nothing for you’,” he said. “That happened on and on, every day.”

But Mr Gardner, who will be marking the 70th anniversary of the docking of the famed vessel at Westminster Abbey, said he managed to secure a job re-conditioning tank engines in a small factory in the Hunslet area of Leeds.

From there, he moved through other jobs before working at the Vickers/Barnbow tank factory, and spent more than 20 years at the International Harvesters tractor plant until he was made redundant and retired in 1981.

Despite early issues finding work and with his trade union boss due to his Jamaican background, Mr Gardner said: “I’ve never had any problems in my time in England. Any little, odd thing, I would deal with it, talk it out.”