2023 Winner
The Windrush Generation
A generation of Caribbean workers whose energy, creativity and dedication helped rebuild post-war Britain and shape today’s UK.
The contribution the Windrush Generation and their children and grandchildren have made to British life and to Britain is immeasurable.
Invited to the UK as friends of the Commonwealth, they arrived to work in sectors such as the NHS and on our transport networks, leaving their homes and families in the Caribbean to work as doctors, nurses, drivers, ticket collectors and porters in the UK.
Between 1948 and 1971, more than 500,000 men and women made the brave choice to create a new life here – bringing with them a fierce determination to succeed. They brought other things too – new food, fashion and music that make our cities the vibrant, culturally-rich places they are today. We celebrate the skills of their descendants as they represent Britain on the global sporting stage too.
As well as luminaries such as activist and academic Sir Godfrey Palmer and Sam Beaver King, the first black mayor of Southwark, the Windrush Generation includes men and women who quietly built lives and families and became part of the foundations of modern Britain.
At Pride of Britain, they were represented by Alford Gardner, one of two surviving passengers on the original Windrush voyage in 1948, musical pioneer Lloyd Coxsone, Joseph Mowlah-Baksh, who suffered as a result of the Windrush scandal, Guy Bailey, who helped lead the Bristol bus boycott, one of the most important moments in the history of civil rights in Britain, and Vernesta Cyril OBE, who spent decades as a midwife and is founder of the South East Wales Race Equality Council.