After World War II, and as a result of the losses during the war, the British government began to encourage mass immigration from the former countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth to fill shortages in the labour market.

People arriving in the UK between 1948 and 1971 from Caribbean countries have been labelled the Windrush generation. It refers to the ship MV Empire Windrush, which docked in Tilbury on 22 June 1948, bringing workers from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and other islands, to help fill post-war UK labour shortages.

It is unclear how many people belong to the Windrush generation, but they are thought to be in the thousands. They are among more than 500,000 UK residents who were born in a Commonwealth country and arrived before 1971, according to University of Oxford estimates.

Many of the arrivals became manual workers, cleaners, drivers and nurses - and some broke new ground in representing black Britons in society. For example, Labour MP David Lammy, whose parents arrived in the UK from Guyana, describes himself as a "proud son of the Windrush".

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