The Welfare of the City
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Readings: Jeremiah 29:4-11; Galatians 3:23-29
On 22 June 1948 the Empire Windrush arrived at the port of Tilbury on the River Thames, 25 miles from the centre of London. It had come from the West Indies. On board were 693 Caribbean men and women intending to settle in Great Britain, largely from Jamaica but also from the then British Guiana (now Guyana), British Honduras (now Belize), Trinidad and Bermuda. Their passage cost £28.10s.
This was not the first arrival of people from the Caribbean. For example, about 16,000 people from the Caribbean colonies of the British Commonwealth volunteered for service with Britain during the Second World War. In 1948, all citizens of the Commonwealth were accorded citizenship of the United Kingdom and its Colonies, meaning they were free to settle in Britain. Many of the men on the Empire Windrush had served in the RAF during the War, returned to Jamaica and elsewhere, and decided to come back to the place often known as the Mother Country. They saw Britain as a place where their work would again be valued, and where they could have greater opportunities than in the small islands of their birth.
Between 1948 and 1964, it’s estimated that about 300,000 people migrated to Britain from the Caribbean. Moving to the Mother Country was often a shock. It somehow didn’t match expectations of wealth, culture and identity. In the wake of the Second World War, many British cities were still scarred by bombing, housing was limited, and often shabby, streets were scrubby and dirty, and the weather was much colder than the Caribbean.
There was often a cold reception among people too. West Indians struggled to find accommodation or work which accorded with their skills, training or expectations. Engineers and teachers became drivers and hospital porters – vital work but poorly paid. There was prejudice against people of colour, racism overt and subtle, intimidation and violence.
What about their faith? When people migrate, their faith goes with them. Most Caribbean people were Christian, and they came to England as Christians. What was their experience when they went to church? It is a mixed picture. Some were welcomed by the churches to which they already belonged in the West Indies – Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist and Baptist, in particular. Wilfred Wood, who arrived in 1962, spoke of being welcomed into a priest’s family life – in time he became the first bishop in the Church of England of Caribbean heritage. But others, who perhaps arrived earlier, spoke of going to their local church only to find that people drew “away from them as if they were contagious.”
Had these unwelcoming churchgoers heard the words from the Apostle Paul from today’s New Testament reading?
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. That unity in Christ, that identity in common, allows no room whatsoever for racism in the Christian church. (Nor sexism, nor any other form of prejudice.)
Despite suspicion and a struggle to be accepted, many Black Christians from the Caribbean persevered in mainstream churches, and have contributed hugely to the multi-racial churches which are now common in London, Birmingham and other cities. Other arrivals found themselves in Black-majority Churches, often from a tradition which is called Holiness Pentecostal. Some Christians worshipped in these communities because they felt excluded from mainstream denominations. But in fact many people had already belonged to these Holiness Pentecostal Churches in Jamaica and elsewhere and so, when they arrived in Britain, they founded new communities here. Some came as missionaries from the Caribbean to England. There is an irony here. In 1951 the Bishop of Liverpool suggested that the presence of so many West Indians in England was a wonderful missionary opportunity to spread the gospel. In reality – England was a mission field for Caribbean Christians full of faith to share the gospel with a white population who had much to learn of the liberating hope found in Jesus Christ.
Exile is a prominent theme in scripture. About 600 years before Christ, thousands of Hebrews were taken away from the land, from Jerusalem, and transported about 900 miles east to Babylon. They were there for about 70 years, before returning to Israel. And some Jamaicans saw England as another Babylon. In Small Island, the novel and subsequent TV series exploring Windrush stories of Jamaicans and English people, Elwood says to his cousin Gilbert when Gilbert tells him he’s going on the boat to London:
“Ah, Gilbert, me know you would do this. Me know you would wan’ go live Babylon. Me know you nah stay here.”
Did Caribbean migrants see themselves as being in exile in England?
Sometimes, perhaps especially when they missed back home – missing family members, proper spicy West Indian food, warmth, colourful clothes, and much more. Perhaps it did feel like exile, excluded from housing, work and prosperity by the colour of their skin and the accent with which they spoke. Perhaps they felt as the Hebrews felt when they were in Babylon. We heard their lament in Psalm 137 earlier:
By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept: when we remembered thee, O Sion…
How shall we sing the Lord’s song: in a strange land?
Our Old Testament lesson is from that time. It is the text of a letter from Jeremiah to all the Hebrew exiles in Babylon. It is couched in terms that we would see today as patriarchal – Take wives… Take wives for your sons for your sons and give your daughters in marriage. In that it was conventional for its day. But in other ways this is a radical letter. For Jeremiah goes on to say:
Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
So much of the Old Testament seems to be about the promotion of a single people, the children of Israel, the Hebrews, over against every other people – Canaanites, Philistines and any others you care to mention. And often this leads to conflict, violence, war, even massacre. But here, in exile, the Hebrews are encouraged not to hate their hosts but to pray for them. They are not invited to look after their own interests alone but to seek the welfare of the whole city of Babylon. There is a sense here, if not of integration, at least of a common environment and economy, of a mutuality in living together.
I think, over 70 years on from the arrival of the Empire Windrush, that many British Caribbean people have sought the welfare of the city. They came to work, to earn, to find more opportunities. But they also came to the Mother Country, the country which had ruled their small islands for centuries, which had shared its language, its royal family, its national holidays, its religion, and not least a game called cricket. They came seeking the welfare of this mother, tired and broken down after six years of war, needing workers to rebuild the city.
This makes it all the more scandalous and obscene that in 2014 an Immigration Act, in the words of the exhibition in the cloisters outside this chapel, “introduced immigration checks which caused many Commonwealth immigrants of Caribbean descent to be categorised as illegal even after years of living, working, and paying taxes in Britain.” Many people lost their jobs and homes, their access to benefits and healthcare. Others have been forcibly deported to countries they have not seen or lived in for decades. A picture in the exhibition shows a woman holding a placard saying “The Windrush Generation Helped to Build Britain.” They sought the welfare of the city. It was not clear during this scandal that Black lives mattered.
By contrast, there are countless Windrush stories, of people who have made wonderful contributions in politics, the arts, business and healthcare, sport and faith. Let me conclude with just one.
Sybil Phoenix was born in British Guiana (now Guyana), on the northern mainland of South America, but Caribbean in culture. She was a strong Christian, singing in local choir in Georgetown, and helping to run a church youth club called Clubland. She decided to come to Britain, and arrived in 1956, aged 29, with her fiancé Joe. Within days in London, she was asked to lead the youth service in the local Methodist Church. Then, after moving to Lewisham in south-east London, she started a new Christian youth club which she called Moonshot – it was just after the first landings on the moon. Moonshot had its own building, but in 1977 it was badly burnt in a racist attack by the National Front. Rebuilt, it continues to serve as a community centre.
Sybil began fostering over 100 children in 1961, and founded a supported housing project for single homeless young women in Lewisham. She has been a lay preacher in the Methodist Church, and set up an influential racism awareness workshop for churches. Sybil became the first Black British woman to receive an MBE. In 2008 she was awarded an OBE. Sibyl has written simply of herself: I am a woman of faith, and a Christian who believes strongly in ‘service’ to others.
Hers is just one Windrush story of faith, of seeking the welfare of the city. God bless Sibyl, 93 years old. God bless all who share this country and seek its welfare.
END