What was it really like for the Windrush generation?

This article is not about me. It’s about a woman in her late eighties called Ethel who goes to my local church; she came to this country in the Windrush era, which began 75 years ago today when 500 passengers arrived at Tilbury in Essex on 22 June, 1948. But this paragraph is about me. For most of my life I’ve felt a bit at odds with church, despite trying to join various parishes. In recent years I’ve been going, on and off, to a church in Harlesden whose congregation is mostly black (Caribbean), maybe eighty per cent. I have often felt a bit of an outsider, for obvious reasons. I tried other churches. But it drew me back, partly due to the mix of gospel-ish enthusiasm and Anglo-Catholic tradition, partly because of the calm welcome of the core members of the congregation. If I wanted to half-belong, as a misfit at the back, that was fine with them.