The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth Context: Project and Research Outputs | London
- Event type
- Other Events
- Address
- Leigh Day, Panagram Building, 27 Goswell Road, Barbican, London EC1M 7AN
- Speakers
- Juanita Cox (IHR), Richard Black (Windrush Respondent)
- Event dates
- Contact
- ihr.events@sas.ac.uk Email only
The 3-year AHRC funded project, The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth Context (ending in June 2024), provides a unique study of the Windrush Scandal in Britain in the context of UK-Caribbean and Commonwealth transnational relations. In this talk Dr Juanita Cox will focus on research outputs and the resources which are being made available for use by academics, students producing undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations, secondary school teachers and interested parties outside of the academy.
This will include an overview of the project’s website, where audio excerpts from sixty major oral history interviews of one-to-four hours in length, are being made available alongside podcasts, and other educational material. The talk will also speak to some of project’s findings based on interviews with respondents from a wide range of backgrounds including: survivors of the scandal and their advocates e.g., church elders, lawyers, journalists, MPs, councillors, diplomats, community leaders, campaigners and activists; Home Office officials; Caribbean NGOs, academics and museum workers. Dr Cox hopes in doing so to offer a glimpse into the complex story of the Windrush Scandal from its long historical perspective.
Richard Black, a survivor-activist and one of the project’s respondents will also be speaking about his experience of being interviewed as part of the project and the importance of the support he obtained from campaigners and advocates from the UK.
Juanita Cox gained her PhD in 2013 from the Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham, and is a winner of the prestigious RE Bradbury Memorial Prize. She is currently working at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) on a three-year, AHRC-funded project, The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth Context. Cox has a keen interest in oral history as a research methodology working with Caribbean communities. She is a trustee on the board of the Oral History Society (OHS), the convenor of their Migration Special Interest Group (SIG) and a member of the OHS’s In Dialogue steering committee. Future plans include a jointly-authored monograph on The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth context.
Richard Black migrated to the UK from St Lucia in 1960 to join his already settled mother and elder brother. He was then aged 6. After leaving school he become a freelance photographer and married his first wife in 1976. On 13 July 1978 he was issued with a ten-year British passport. He used it to visit his in-laws and to attend carnival in Trinidad. In November 1983 when his wife’s elderly parents fell sick, they again travelled to Trinidad. By the time they were ready to return to the UK, Richard’s passport had expired. The British High Commission’s refusal to renew it marked the beginning of several attempts to return to the UK and a chain of devasting events including the denial of his right to attend his mother’s funeral or visit his UK-based daughters.
Black’s experience of being made ‘stateless’ was first brought to the attention of Dr Cox by Glenda Andrews, a founding member of the Preston Windrush Generation and Descendants UK (PWGD UK) in 2020. His rightful return to the UK in April 2024 after an absence of over forty years has been widely covered by British media.
All welcome- this event is free to attend, but booking is required.
