A lasting legacy: England Football celebrates Windrush 75

There are many significant dates in English football – but few to match 22 June 1948. It was then, on the banks of the Thames in Tilbury, that the Empire Windrush docked.  

Carrying 1027 passengers, 802 gave somewhere in the Caribbean as their last place of residence.    

No one knew it at the time, but the arrival of the ship would change the whole face of English football. Now, on the 75th anniversary of that date, we are celebrating the impact had by those on the Windrush and the other boats that would come in the decades that followed.   

Paul Elliott CBE, the first Black player to captain a Premier League side and the first Black skipper of Chelsea, is all too aware of the incredible sacrifices made by the Windrush generation. As is Jobi McAnuff, appointed independent non-executive director of the FA in May 2022.  

“We all need role models, somebody’s shoulders to stand on,” says Elliott. “I’ve seen the strength and the resilience of my mother and father and my grandmother, who came to London in that era.   

“I can relate to my own lived experience of their challenges on and off the field during my career in England, Italy and Scotland. Their strength and their character had a profound effect on me as I navigated my way through my own career.    

“If there’s one thing that galvanises us as Windrush descendants, it’s that their persistence and their resilience was their undoubted brilliance. That’s the definitive legacy. That’s what English football and sport-at-large has benefited so incredibly from.”   

McAnuff’s father moved from Jamaica in 1958, and the former Premier League midfielder is also quick to pay tribute to the strength and resolve of those who followed the initial Windrush influx.

“There was real trepidation for a young guy coming from the Caribbean to a place he didn’t know anything about,” says McAnuff.

“It was a hostile place to come, certainly in the early days. A lot of those people who came over weren’t welcome, that has been well-documented. They had to make
their own little communities and build friendships and networks to support each other.

“Jamaican culture and history was a big part of my life. And sport is obviously a huge part of that.”

Never has the impact of Windrush and the boats from the Caribbean that followed been so in evidence as during recent tournaments, including EURO 2020, when a dazzling side featuring a number of players who can trace their heritage to the Windrush generation, secured England a place in a first major final since 1966. They did more than simply bring joy to millions, they also proved a unifying force for positive chance.

But the love that poured from the terraces two summers ago couldn’t have been further removed from the vitriol that spilled from them as pioneers such as Cyrille Regis, Viv Anderson and Brendon Batson first sprang to national prominence in the 1970s. And thereafter, Kerry Davis, who became the first Black woman to play for the England women’s national side a decade later.

Batson had become Arsenal’s first Black player in 1971, while as many as 26 Football League clubs fielded their first Black player in a decade tarnished by the growth of the National Front – who saw football grounds as a fertile breeding ground for recruitment.

“The Laurie Cunninghams, the Cyrille Regis, your Brendon Batsons - they were the greatest pioneers of that Windrush generation,” says Elliott. “These players were told they couldn’t make it, but they just used that adversity to breed character and fuel their aspirations.

“I was told the equivalent in the 70s and 80s, people would say ‘Paul, why are you wasting your time trying to be a footballer?’ because the odds were so heavily stacked against you given the societal and professional challenges. I was rejected by so many clubs, but all I ever wanted was an equal opportunity to prove that I was good enough.

“But you know what it’s like when somebody says you can’t – you just get your head down and you work, work, work with even more vigour to prove people wrong, not right. Fuelling this desire, I saw what my grandmother and my mother went through and I always thought, if they had the courage to get through that, then nothing is insurmountable in life, let alone football.

“Their adversity gave them great character and resolve. That was the catalyst for their success, and I think if you speak to players from that era and in the generations that followed, they will tell you that their own approach and their own strength of character came from that Windrush generation. They gifted future generations those characteristics.”

By the time McAnuff broke into the Wimbledon first team in 2000, the number of Black footballers in English football had increased massively. And although racist attitudes were still prevalent, a number of the barriers which prevented so many Black footballers from forging a career in the sport in the 1960s and 1970s had been broken down.

“My dad would always tell me the stories of what so many Black footballers had to go through and endure during his time watching football,” says McAnuff.

“Some of the stories he would tell me, just in terms of watching games from the terraces – some of the abuse the players would have to take was incredible. These players were very much in the minority and on the pitch in much smaller numbers than they are today.

“A lot of that racism and discrimination went unchecked. It’s a huge testament to them that so many of them overcame that and still performed to the level they did. Their contribution to this sport is absolutely fantastic. If it wasn’t for everything they had gone through, then the path I took, which wasn’t without obstacles, was certainly smoother than the one they had to tread.”

Elliott’s family’s own story is a fascinating one, demonstrating the huge challenges facing those who came to England at the behest of the government to help rebuild the country after the Second World War.

“My grandfather, a trained-tailor in Jamaica, came here, worked incredibly hard, sent money home to the family,” says the former Chelsea centre-back. “Over time, he incrementally sent for other members of his family so they could build a new life in the UK and re-build and reconnect that family in London.

“From the start, it was a very challenging environment to live and work in. It’s common knowledge what society looked like then. The first, obvious challenge was the racism they suffered, which was of the worst order.

“When you have such drastic cultural change, that can be very hard. One of the biggest basic challenges my family had wasn’t to find work but to find somewhere to live. You would see signs on windows saying ‘No Irish, No Dogs, No Blacks’. When my mum was a child, that was visible – it was normalised. That represented the societal challenges faced, not just by my own family but by thousands of others.

“Any decent human being can only admire the character and strength needed to overcome that. That’s the legacy delivered by those passengers who filed out of the Empire Windrush 75 years ago, this week.”