This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Windrush ship carrying Caribbean migrants to the UK to help rebuild a post-war Britain.

Today, we celebrate the Windrush generation for their significant and lasting contribution to Kent’s cultural, social and economic life, but their initial arrival was not met with the same warmth.

On the beginnings of Windrush, former Gravesend midwife Ursula Sullivan said: “Britain had had two world wars. When you look at those 16-year-old men, they went to war and they never came back.

“Twenty years later they had a second world war, and another lot of English people died. Where is the manpower?”

So, Britain turned to the Commonwealth countries, travelling to places like the Caribbean to recruit those who would be willing to migrate over and help rebuild the country.

Ursula said: “I think what people fail to realise or know is that I was born in the era of Great Britain. When I was a child, you knew so much about Britain, all the patriotic songs of England, your education was English.

“So, you had a good education, but like everything else, you couldn’t get any work, you haven't got enough jobs.”

Many left their homes abroad onthe promise of a better standard of living for themselves and their families.

In June 1948, the first group of migrants from Jamaica arrived at Tilbury, Essex, aboard the ship, HMT Windrush.

Medway Caribbean and African Association (MACA) chairman Carol Stewart said: “The Windrush ship was originally called the Monte Rosa and was a cruise ship.

“During the Second World War it was used as Nazi and Jew transportation. After the war it was captured by Britain and called Windush after.”

The Windrush ship carried more than 800 migrants to Britain that day, and over the next 23 years, thousands more would arrive from across the seas to ports and docks around the country.

Former Gravesend and Maidstone social worker, Nadya Cascoe arrived in October 1955 with her mum, brother and sister to reunite with their father who had come a year earlier.

She said: “We came on a ship called the Irpinia. I can’t remember – I was a year and 10 months old – but what I do remember is actually landing. I can see it in my mind now, the old Liverpool docks.”

What isn't talked about much, however, is the lengthy process it took to actually come over.

Ursula explained: “Outside of Southampton, you applied for your passport. You had a health check – a chest x-ray and injections.

“You went to the bank, because the minimum amount you had to have coming into England was £10, and that was stamped on the back of your passport.

“You had an interview on the ship. Then went through the customs at Southampton and got on the train to wherever you were going.”

Gravesend magistrate Claudette Bramble, who is also the co-founder of the North Kent Caribbean Network (NKCN), said there was a culture shock when those like herself eventually arrived.

She said: “I didn’t realise there was snow – I’d seen it in pictures but I didn’t realise, and when I arrived in January 1968, it was snowing heavily.

“My mum said ‘Right Claudette, nice to have you at home now. You’re in school on Monday’. I was like ‘What? Are you out of your head? Are you mad? There’s snow out there’.

Claudette had been separated from her parents for seven years before coming to join them. Her father had left in 1960, and her mother followed a year later.

It took them that time until she turned 13 to earn and save enough money to buy a house for their children.

For many who arrived, the reality of housing and accommodation was another reminder of the rejection they faced from those already here.

Nadya said: “My mum travelled for a whole month on the sea, with nothing to see. She came from a beautiful, sunny place to arrive here and come to live in one room.”

Ursula said: “There were houses in a newspaper called the Dalton Weekly. If you saw a house or room for rent, in the window it said ‘no Irish, no blacks, no dogs’.

“My friend and I went to see a place to rent in Peckham. We must have knocked and knocked and knocked but there was no answer. Then we came down the stairs, stood in the pathway, and my friend went up to the window, moved the lace, and the woman was there.

“She knew we were black and she didn’t want us in her house.”

Though some dismissed the ignorance, the hostility many migrants faced left others with the longing to go back to the Caribbean.

Nadya said: “My mum, in one sense, it was only her body that was in England. Her heart and everything else was in Jamaica, because her dad still lived there and she would be in constant contact with him.

“As well as saving up to buy the house, she would be sending barrels home, all the time. Up until she died, my mum was saving and sending it home.”

Sending barrels is a Caribbean tradition where people who were working overseas would send barrels filled with groceries and clothing to loved ones back home.

Nadya said: “When I think about it, the tears come to my eyes about my parents, about how those people struggled for us.“

The abuse they would face would be a frequent occurrence, from systematically to in schools and on the streets.

Nadya said: “They [my parents] took pains to protect us from all of those experiences but I know that as we grew older, like into teenagers, I experienced racism.”

Discrimination was also faced in the very place people thought they would feel safe, the reason why they had come to these shores - at work.

Amid a shortage, Ursula was invited by her uncle to be a nurse and so, after a year of debating whether to leave, she arrived in England in 1954.

As she prepared for an interview at the Commonwealth nursing association, she was warned of the realities she would be met with.

She recalled: “I was told, ‘you are going to have it tough’. I asked how and she said ‘Sullivan, white people have never seen black people’. She said ‘I’m preparing you for what life is going to be like’.”

The appointment was made and Ursula went, but was shocked by what she experienced.

She said: “I knocked on the door. She [the interviewer] said ‘come in’, and I went in and I walked up to her desk and she just looked at me. In the end she said to me ‘who are you?’, I said to her ‘I am the girl from the Colonial office’.

“She said to me ‘nursing is hard work, if you can’t do hard work then don’t come’ and I said ‘just let me know and I’ll come’ and I turned on my heels and slammed the door.”

After that Ursula received a letter to train, and worked her way up, applying to be a state registered nurse in Gravesend.

On her application, she said: I told them who I was and what I looked like. I used to put under my letter ‘I am yours respectfully, Ursula Sullivan’ and then I’d put in big letters ‘black girl’ because I did not want anyone to ridicule and ask who I am.”

In spite of how she was treated, Ursula dedicated herself to the NHS, eventually becoming a midwife and returning to Gravesend where she delivered thousands of babies.

Claudette’s daughter Michelle Bramble, who is current chairman of NKCN, said: “That generation made it very clear ‘we were here’ - they made their mark on jobs that would now be key or essential workers.”

Even though they struggled and were treated poorly, the Windrush generation worked hard to create the Kent we know today.

Carol said: “They challenged what they went through and fought to address the inequalities to bring change. They achieved equalities legislation, made discrimination illegal, and brought about integration in communities, working, living and playing together.

“They brought curiosity of black history and conversations of human rights and those continued to grow bringing notable figures.”

Nadya said: “I think about my parents and that generation with awe – they were pioneers.”