In Pictures: The pioneering Windrush generation, who arrived 70 years ago

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Pioneers from the Caribbean arrived in Tilbury, Essex, 70 years ago, marking the beginning of large-scale West Indian immigration.

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The ex-troopship Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks, Essex, on 22 June 1948, carrying 482 Jamaicans emigrating to Britain.

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The journey to Britain cost £28 and 10 shillings.

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Those from Jamaica were leaving a country that had a struggling economy and had been devastated by a hurricane.

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RAF officials from the Colonial Office welcomed the Jamaican immigrants at Tilbury.

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Some of the arrivals stayed in temporary accommodation, like the Jamaican immigrants seen here standing on the streets of Clapham, south London.

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Kenneth Murray, Eric Dryndale and Aston Robinson are seen settling in to their temporary bedroom in a former air raid shelter in Clapham in 1948.

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In the decade after the first group of immigrants boarded Empire Windrush, about 250,000 West Indians followed, including this family arriving from Jamaica in about 1950.

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Those who arrived were tasked with finding work and lodgings, like this man in 1955.

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Rue Gordon, seen here in Birmingham in 1955, emigrated from Jamaica in 1953 and became a bus conductor.

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Keith Edwards and Queenie Marques posed for a photographer in Britain in 1954 after arriving from Jamaica.

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