By Elliott West
“I honestly didn’t know my mum, I thought my granny was my mum”.
Blacker Dread
Introduction
Much has been said about the heroics of those that chose to pay passage on the HMT Empire Windrush and make the several months’ trip to Britain in 1948. Yet on this 75th anniversary of Windrush, it’s important to get the full picture of this monumental time in history. One area that hasn’t been widely documented is the children that were left behind in the Caribbean by their Windrush parents. Dubbed the ‘Barrel Children’, these children only knew their parents through the barrel packages, containing food and clothing that were sent back to them in the Caribbean. Named that as the barrel has a powerful resonance in many Caribbean homes, as its presence in the corner symbolised transatlantic connections. It is thought that over 90,000 children were left behind when their parents left the Caribbean to seek a better life. These children were left traumatised and left with caregivers. This wouldn’t just happen once but twice with them being requested to join their parents in Britain and leave those that had become their adopted parents.
Strangers
I’ll never forget when I came off that plane and my sister said, ‘There’s your mum’ and I said ‘I don’t know this woman, I don’t know’ and my mother cried.”
Blacker Dread
When these children of the Windrush generation were reunited with their birth parents, they entered a scary and foreign world. Scary because they were now living with parents that didn’t know, just distant memories and a foreign world because they were now in a different country, the UK. They had to build relationships with not only their parents but also their brothers and sisters that had been born in this country. A taboo subject that hasn’t really been spoken about until now and in order to heal this emotional wound, it’s important to have a frank and open conversation about it. What is clear is that their parents were trying to do the best for them, leaving their love with them so they could face the trauma. Easier said than done, especially for a young child who needs their parents’ emotional embrace at this crucial time in life.
Some of these children were separated from their parents from the ages of 1 to 11 years, loved from afar but overlooked. An empty barrel that would eventually be filled with a misty love that was yet to have any foundation. They came to a society in the 1950s and 1960s that was hostile to black people flared by ignorance and racism. Children of disconnection and adversity that affected their everyday life and their education with many now making compensation claims for being branded as ‘subnormal’.
Revelations
These personal accounts are revealed in the book Mother Country – Real Stories of the Windrush Children and the 2023 film Barrel Children: The Families Windrush Left Behind amongst others. These accounts are happy but often bittersweet, making the barrel sent to them by their parents, laden with clothes, dolls, baby clothes and toys somewhat piecemeal in comparison to the years of confusion and self-abandonment felt for years afterwards. A world that didn’t make much sense and a new British culture that had to be adjusted to, mastered and the slings and arrows of ignorance avoided. This certainly wasn’t the promised land that these children expected. It was instead foggy, cold and some thought they had made a wrong turning. This would only apply to the 6,000 children who made the journey, often arriving to meet a person who was their mother but could only refer to as “that woman” for several months from the meeting.
These emotional scars could have also impacted the way that the barrel children brought up their own children in years to come. A generational chasm that has yet to heal and until now only talked about behind closed doors. This was a journey where the children were moved from one group of strangers to another, traumatic and where the only sense of family was their grandparents. Life stories that are real, raw and that pull on your heartstrings.
