Windrush descendants celebrate how Caribbean cuisine changed British food
A chef, a grocer and Britain’s only black farmer have spoken of the profound impact the Windrush generation has had on the nation’s culinary habits.
Thursday marks the 75th anniversary of the HMT Empire Windrush arriving in Britain on 22 June 1948, carrying 500 of the first wave of post-war Caribbean immigrants.
When the Windrush generation first started to arrive on British shores, there would have been a lot for them to get used to.
The cold, the fog and almost certainly the food.
“All that was available was short grain rice, and that wasn’t very nice,” says Collin Mitchell, who runs one of the first Caribbean supermarkets to be established in Nottingham, founded by his dad, Clifton, in 1955.
“People wanted their own food, they wanted their plantain, sweet potato, yam that kind of thing; their Dahseen and cassava.”
But in order to provide these tropical goods, his father would first have to work down the mines – facing challenges and discrimination on the way.
“There was a cultural barrier, trying to get through with the bank to get financing and so on was not easy,” Colin told Sky News.
Neither was getting hands on the produce.
“He would have to get up very early in the morning and travel to Liverpool docks, just to get the produce and bring it back. So he spent many hours on the road.”
Now, 70 years after Clifton set up his shop, it is still a staple of the community in Alfreton Road, Nottingham.
But as the demographic of the community has changed, so has his customers.
Colin says it’s still a place, a community hub of sorts, where people compare recipes from all over the Caribbean.
But now the shop also gets visitors from all different backgrounds.
“It’s probably one of the fastest-growing trends. They taste the food, that decides [if] they want to try and cook it”, he said.
Chef Kiesha Sakrah says food keeps people connected to their culture and traditions
Kiesha Sakrah is a chef currently working on a book about the history of Caribbean food and its influence on British culture.
She says that without the Windrush pioneers who introduced these foods to Britain, “we wouldn’t be able to stay connected to our culture”.
“It’s those foods that kept us connected to those traditions and just everything that my grandparents refer to as a ‘back home’,” she told Sky News.
The Caribbean-inspired drink and food industry is now estimated to be worth around £115m
She says the contributions that generation made “sometimes go unnoticed”.
“The contributions that generation has made to the UK as a whole today is massive. They really have contributed to the fabric of the UK.”
Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones MBE is the first black farmer in the country, providing produce to major supermarkets.
Britain’s first black farmer, Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones MBE, joined his parents after they settled in Birmingham
Food has always played a huge part in his life.
In fact, because he joined his parents a few years after they had settled in Birmingham, his mum’s cooking was one of the few things he recognised.
“Things that were familiar were quite important,” says Wilfred.
“And the only thing that was familiar was the type of foods that I would be having back in Jamaica”.
Traditional Caribbean food allows people to stay connected to their culture as well as influencing British cuisine
Later, he says “as a way of supplementing the family income” he would help his dad out on the allotment.
“This allotment really became my oasis, away from the misery of living in inner city Birmingham at the time.
“And I remember making a promise to myself that one day I’d like to my own farm.”
It would take decades to achieve, but now that Caribbean boy who travelled here decades ago sells the most typically British product.
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Alford Gardner told Sky News there was ‘lots’ of discrimination upon his arrival in the UK
“The Black Farmer really got our reputation from our sausages,” says Wilfred.
“I decided I wanted to be very mainstream, and I thought: ‘Well, what is it that everybody in this country loves?’ Everybody loves the sausage.”
And now, thanks to him, its also available jerked – a true fusion of British and Jamaican cuisine.
The Caribbean-inspired drink and food industry is now estimated to be worth around £115m.
But Wilfred thinks it should be even bigger.
Read more:
The descendants of the Windrush generation who changed Britain
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Windrush victims compensation battle
He hopes his story, as well as those who came before him, will inspire younger generations to follow in their entrepreneurial footsteps.
“It takes a lot of courage to leave everything you are familiar with, everything that you know, to come to another country, to better your life.
“So being an entrepreneur is very much a part of our DNA. Because for everyone that came, there’s a lot more that didn’t have the courage to do that,” he added.
“I think it’s very, very important, especially on something like the 75th anniversary of Windrush Day to remind people that it was a very brave entrepreneurial thing to do.”
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MP Mike Amesbury has pleaded guilty to assault by beating for punching a man in Cheshire.
The Runcorn and Helsby MP appeared at Chester Magistrates’ Court on Thursday morning where he admitted attacking 45-year-old Paul Fellows in Main Street, Frodsham, Cheshire, in October.
Speaking outside the court, he said the incident was “highly regrettable” and he was “sincerely sorry” to Mr Fellows and his family.
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CCTV footage showed Amesbury, who has been an MP since 2017, punching Mr Fellows on the ground.
Other previously released videos from another angle show Amesbury punching Mr Fellows repeatedly after knocking him to the floor as members of the public intervened.
It was reported to police at 2.48pm on Saturday 26 October.
The court heard how Amesbury told Mr Fellows “you won’t threaten your MP again” after punching him in the head with enough force to knock him to the ground.
The 55-year-old politician is currently an independent MP after he was suspended by Labour at the end of October when the CCTV footage emerged.
He will continue to be suspended so remains as an independent.
Pic: Richard Townshend/UK Parliament/PA
The court heard Mr Fellows recognised Amesbury in the taxi rank in Frodsham town centre at about 2am on 26 October last year.
Both were alone and had been drinking.
Alison Storey, prosecuting, said Mr Fellows approached the MP to remonstrate about a bridge closure in the town and CCTV then shows they spoke for several minutes but there was no aggression or raised voices.
Mr Fellows then started to walk away but Amesbury re-engaged and was heard saying “what” a few times before shouting it.
The victim then put his hands in his pockets and turned towards the taxi queue and when he turned back Amesbury punched him in the head, knocking him to the ground.
He then punched Mr Fellows again, at least five times, Ms Storey said.
She told the court he was then heard saying “you won’t threaten your MP again will you”.
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Amesbury was voluntarily interviewed under caution by Cheshire Police in October and was charged with common assault on 7 November.
At the time, Amesbury said what happened was “deeply regrettable” and he was co-operating with police.
A Labour Party spokesman said: “It is right that Mike Amesbury has taken responsibility for his unacceptable actions.
“He was rightly suspended by the Labour Party following the announcement of the police investigation.
“We cannot comment further whilst legal proceedings are still ongoing.”
Amesbury is set to be sentenced next month. If he is sent to prison or given a suspended sentence he could lose his seat.
A sentence of less than a year, even if it is suspended, would leave him liable to the recall process, which would trigger a by-election if 10% of registered voters in his seat sign a petition calling for it.
A jail term of more than a year would mean he automatically loses his seat.
UK
‘I have nightmares of dead bodies’: Patients dying and undiscovered for hours in hospital corridors
Patients are dying in corridors and going undiscovered for hours while the sick are left to soil themselves, nurses have said, revealing the scale of the corridor crisis inside the UK’s hospitals.
In a “harrowing” report built from the experiences of more than 5,000 NHS nursing staff, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) found almost seven in 10 (66.81%) say they are delivering care in overcrowded or unsuitable places, including converted cupboards, corridors and even car parks, on a daily basis.
Demoralised staff are looking after as many as 40 patients in a single corridor, unable to access oxygen, cardiac monitors, suction and other lifesaving equipment.
Women are miscarrying in corridors, while some nurses report being unable to carry out adequate CPR on patients having heart attacks.
Sara (not her real name) said she was on shift when a doctor told her there was a dying patient who had been waiting in the hospital’s corridor for six hours.
“It took a further two hours to get her into an adequate care space to make her clean and comfortable,” she told Sky News.
“That’s a human being, someone in the last hours of their life in the middle of a corridor with a detoxing patient vomiting and being abusive behind them and a very poorly patient in front of them, who was confused, screaming in pain. It was awful on the family, and it was awful on the patient.”
Dead patients ‘not found for hours’
A nurse working in the southeast of England quit her job after witnessing an elderly lady in “animal-like conditions”.
She told the RCN: “A 90-year-old lady with dementia was scared, crying and urinating in the bed after asking several times for help to the toilet. Seeing that lady, frightened and subjected to animal-like conditions is what broke me.
“At the end of that shift, I handed in my notice with no job to go to. I will not work where this is a normal day-to-day occurrence.”
Another nurse in the South East said a patient died in a corridor and “wasn’t discovered for hours”.
Sara told Sky another woman needed resuscitating after the oxygen underneath her trolley ran out. Sara was one of just two nurses caring for more than 30 patients on that corridor.
“I have had nightmares – I have a nightmare that I walk out in the corridor and there are dead bodies in body bags on the trolleys,” she said, growing visibly emotional.
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No electricity to plug in computers
One nurse, who spoke to Sky News, said the conditions were “undignified” and “inhumane”.
“It’s not just corridors – we utilise chairs, cupboards, whatever space is available in the hospital to be repurposed into a care space, in the loosest sense of that term. These spaces are unsafe.”
Some spaces, she said, don’t even have basic electricity for nurses to plug in their computers.
The nurse, who spoke to Sky on the condition of anonymity, said she has experienced burnout multiple times over the state of her workplace.
“I have come to the conclusion this week I don’t think I can continue working in the NHS or as a nurse,” she said.
“It breaks my soul; I love what I do when I am able to do it in the right way. I like caring for people, I like making people better, I also like providing a dignified death.”
She added: “I want to look after the institution I was born into, but for the sake of my family and my mental health, I don’t know how much more I can give.”
With 32,000 nursing vacancies in England alone, data also shows around one in eight nurses leave the profession within five years of qualifying.
Nurses are being forced to provide care in hospital corridors and car parks. Pic: PA
Staff ‘not proud of the care they are giving’
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) says the testimony, which runs to over 400 pages, must mark a “moment in time”. In May 2024, the RCN declared a “national emergency” over corridor care in NHS services.
Professor Nicola Ranger, RCN general secretary and chief executive, said: “At the moment, [nursing staff] are not proud of the care they are giving.”
“We hear stories of escalation areas and temporary beds that have been open for two years,” she added. “That is no longer escalation, it’s understaffed and underfunded capacity that is pretty shocking care for patients. We have to get a grip on that.”
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She called the situation “a disgrace”, citing abuse of staff as another reason for people leaving the profession in droves.
Last week, a nurse was left with “life-changing injuries” after being stabbed by a man while at work.
“The NHS used to be the envy of the world and we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and say ‘what needs to change?’
“The biggest concern for us is that the public Is starting to lose a little faith in their care, and that has to stop. We absolutely have to sort this out.”
Commenting on the RCN’s report, Duncan Burton, chief nursing officer for England, said the NHS had experienced one of the “toughest winters” in recent months, and the report “should never be considered the standard to which the NHS aspires”.
“Despite the challenges the NHS faces, we are seeing extraordinary efforts from staff who are doing everything they can to provide safe, compassionate care every day,” he added. “As a nurse, I know how distressing it can be when you are unable to provide the very best standards of care for patients.”
Have you experienced corridor care in an NHS hospital? Get in touch on NHSstories@sky.uk
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