Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
SPECIAL PRICE: Just £9.99 for your next 8 magazines
Subscribe today
Opinion

Floella Benjamin wants to 'give hope' for the future with Windrush edition

Trinidadian-British actress, author, television presenter, singer, businesswoman and politician Baroness Floella Benjamin OBE guest edits our Windrush generation edition.

I am honoured to be the guest editor of The Big Issue to highlight the story of the Windrush generation and to give hope to future generations. We are on the threshold of the very first official Windrush Day and I am so thrilled and happy to have reached this milestone in British history. 

The mass migration of people from the West Indies changed the face of Britain and it came at a great price for the Caribbean pioneers who made the journey. 

I am very much part of the Windrush generation because I came to Britain as a 10-year-old in 1960 from Trinidad.

Many of my childhood experiences in that new culture and unbelievably hostile environment gave me the determination and resilience to become the woman I am now.

For years in Parliament I had been suggesting a Windrush Day but my proposals were rejected on the grounds that we already had a Black History Month.

I argued that this was missing the point, because the arrival of the Empire Windrush in Tilbury [in Essex] in 1948 marked a turning point.

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

Caribbeans came here to help rebuild Britain, including working in the newly created NHS. So for those who had to overcome so much adversity, it has great significance. 

I am delighted that the government has announced that  June 22 will now be an annual Windrush Day.

Furthermore the Prime Minister, Theresa May, asked me to chair a Windrush Commemoration Committee, to create a permanent and significant monument as a legacy to the Windrush generation.

On the first official Windrush Day I will be announcing where it will be located.

@FloellaBenjamin

Read the rest of the Floella Benjamin OBE’s editorial in the Big Issue, available from your local vendor until Sunday.

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

READER-SUPPORTED SINCE 1991

Reader-supported journalism that doesn’t just report problems, it helps solve them.

Recommended for you

View all
GambleAware is closing down. Here's why we decided to put our charity out of action
Anna Hargrave

GambleAware is closing down. Here's why we decided to put our charity out of action

Deborah Vance of Hacks is awful – so she's become my role model
Lucy Sweet

Deborah Vance of Hacks is awful – so she's become my role model

Why the Home Office plan to confine asylum seekers to military barracks is especially cruel
asylum seekers at former military barracks
Ann Saltar

Why the Home Office plan to confine asylum seekers to military barracks is especially cruel

Dear Steve Reed: We must do better at tackling homelessness – and fast
Homelessness
Duncan Shrubsole

Dear Steve Reed: We must do better at tackling homelessness – and fast

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payments: Where to get help in 2025 now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payments: Where to get help in 2025 now the scheme is over

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue
4.

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue