Windrush

English

The River Windrush at Bourton-on-the-Water, Glos

Etymology

First attested as Old English Uuenrisc, from Old Welsh gwynn (“white”) + reisko (“fen”).

More recent senses derive from the ship HMT Empire Windrush, named after the River Windrush. The arrival of 802 immigrants to the UK from the West Indies onboard the Empire Windrush in 1948 is seen as symbolic of the beginning of mass immigration from the Caribbean to the UK.

The Windrush line was named for its running through several parts of London with large British Caribbean population.

Proper noun

Windrush

1. A river in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, England, a tributary of the Thames.
2. A village and civil parish in Cotswold district, Gloucestershire, named after the river (OS grid ref SP1913).
3. The first significant wave of immigration of British African-Caribbean people in the 1940s and 1950s.
   • 2012 December 1, Supriya M. Nair, Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature, Modern Language Association, →ISBN:

     Black Britain's past stretches back to India and Africa, but more recently it draws inspiration from the several generations who had been forced to settle as slaves in the West Indies. All that history informs pre-Windrush writing in the early twentieth century.

   • 2018 December 14, Subashish Bhattacharjee, Girindra Narayan Ray, New Women's Writing: Contextualising Fiction, Poetry and Philosophy, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, →ISBN, page 56:

     Its arrival marked the first large-scale wave of Caribbean immigration into the U.K. post-WWII and the beginning of the Windrush era.

   • 2022 June 23, Floella Benjamin, What Are You Doing Here?: My Autobiography, Pan Macmillan, →ISBN:

     It could also help counteract the widespread ignorance about why there are Caribbean people living in Britain in the first place, highlighting the fact that we were invited to come, and the contribution we've made to the nation, not just since Windrush but from the time the Atlantic slave trade began over four hundred years ago.

4. The Windrush scandal; the wrongful deportation of British citizens from the UK in the 2010s, especially of Caribbean immigrants belonging to the Windrush generation.
   • 2019 July 3, Karen Fowler-Watt, Stephen Jukes, New Journalisms: Rethinking Practice, Theory and Pedagogy, Routledge, →ISBN:

     When challenged, the government – and then Home Secretary Amber Rudd – repeatedly denied any awareness of Windrush deportations.

   • 2019 September 17, Amelia Gentleman, The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment, Faber & Faber, →ISBN:

     A team of reporters was allocated to interviewing the huge number of newly emerging Windrush victims.

   • 2024 June 13, Andrew Hindmoor, Haywire: A Political History of Britain since 2000, Random House, →ISBN:

     Two days later, Downing Street refused a formal diplomatic request to discuss Windrush and the issue of deportations at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.

5. The Windrush line on the London Overground.

Derived terms

• Windrusher
• Windrush generation