“I merely survive because of my pride” The experiences of Caribbean children migrating to post-war Britain

• In Event: Of kinship, family, and oceans

Description for Program

“Many Rivers to Cross” originally written and recorded by reggae artist Jimmy Cliff in 1969. Cliff expresses his pain at the physical and metaphorical rivers he is struggling to overcome. In this same decade and the years that followed young children across the Anglophone Caribbean would cross their own “rivers” as they followed their parents to England before the various immigration acts of the 1960s and 70s attempted to block their path. Children formed a significant part of post-war migration from the Caribbean to Britain as they became the heart of one of Britain’s key post-war institutions: education. Through this migration they were forced to reckon with fractured family relationships, the racism within Britain’s education system and the coldness of British society; in weather and welcome.

In some cases racial injustice within education became another river to cross for Caribbean children in Britain. High levels of youth unemployment in the 1980s disproportionately impacted Black men, a symptom of some of Britain’s institution’s inability to work with a more racially diverse society. Fourteen years after Cliff penned the original, the British reggae band UB40 covered the track. Their name UB40 selected to reference the Unemployment Benefit Form 40, an attendance card issued to those seeking unemployment benefits in Britain.

Through the use of oral history this paper explores the migration experiences of children from the Caribbean, ‘crossing rivers’ to overcome the loss of their old lives and situate themselves within the metropole and its fluctuating post-war society. This paper also explores their connection to home through the natural world and the politics of memory in regards to histories of childhood; to understand their often marginalised experiences of post-war Britain.

Author

• Deanna Lyncook, Queen Mary University of London