Reading honours Windrush Generation online

The Springer family children in their Sunday best outside their home in Beresford Road, Reading

A town with one of the largest Bajan populations outside of the Caribbean is marking National Windrush Day with a festival of virtual events.

Reading is thought to have the highest density per head of population of Bajans outside Barbados.

Thousands moved from the island to the UK as part of the Windrush Generation.

Reading council said the event "holds a special importance this year in light of issues affecting the black population in this town and elsewhere".

Ideal Casements, a window frame maker in Earley, employed some West Indian workers in 1960

The Windrush Generation includes the hundreds of thousands of people who moved to the UK from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1971 in response to post-war shortages in key industries.

Some workers who left the islands already knew the company they would eventually work for in Reading.

The town's Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory was a household name in the Caribbean and a favoured place for some workers arriving in Berkshire.

The firm already had long-established trading relationships in the West Indies by importing ingredients from there including sugar and coconuts and exporting biscuits.

Many people arriving from the Caribbean knew about Huntley & Palmers products

Virtual events, including musical and spoken word performances, will be available on Reading Museum's website from Monday until 30 October.

The town's Caribbean Associations Group (CAG) has co-ordinated work with the Alliance for Community Cohesion and Racial Equality (ACRE), AGE UK Berkshire, Globe Church Community and Reading Museum.

Karen Rowland, Reading Council's lead councillor for culture, heritage and recreation, said: "This year our celebration and acknowledgement of the Windrush Generation carries all the more significance, amidst the on-going struggles of the black community with the heightened risk of Covid-19, the continuing challenges for citizenship and the injustices facing the community which has been highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement."

The Small family's children were just infants when they arrived in Reading from Barbados

All photos copyrighted.