Liverpool Communities - West Indian

A West Indian looks for accommodation in Liverpool in 1949

 

William Peatt Litt originated The West Indian Association, formed of West India merchants and planters resident in Liverpool. There already existed in London a similar Standing Committee of Merchants and Planters and he himself was a London West India merchant who had settled in Liverpool. An initial meeting was held on the 25th of May, 1799 and later a more general meeting took place at the Golden Lion in Dale Street. The objects of the Association were to watch over the general interests of the West India trade and to make representations to the Government if necessary. Funding was provided by membership subscriptions and a small note on imported West India produce. One of the Associations main priorities was to ensure that the duties imposed by the Customs and Excise on imported goods were kept at the correct level. In its early years it was also much concerned with the provisions of Pitt's 1803 Warehousing Act.

Throughout the 1880s to the 1920s, sailings between Liverpool and West Africa had seen numbers of white British sailors becoming sick as tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow fever struck them down and insufficient medical knowledge at this time could not counter this and, in some cases, these tropical diseases caused death. Liverpool shipping companies like the Elder Dempster Line began replacing white British sailors with West African ones during voyages from West Africa back to Liverpool. For the British shipping industry, it made economic sense to employ West African sailors as they were paid lower wages than white sailors, they were given inferior rations, they were prepared to work hard in difficult, hot, dirty and noisy conditions and they were not yet organised into trade unions. Many different groups of West Africans worked on Liverpool ships, including Gambians, Gold Coasters (from what is now Ghana) and Sierra Leoneans. British ships from Sierra Leone recruited Kru people (also spelt Kroo). Originally migrants from Liberia, Kru people moved to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, in search of work onboard ships. These Kru people made Freetown their home and some of those who travelled from Freetown to Liverpool as ships' crews eventually settled in Liverpool, mostly in the growing multi racial Toxteth community. These 'twice migrants' found there were a number of incentives for settling in Liverpool. These included the higher wages paid to sailors if they set sail from a British port rather than from West Africa; greater employment opportunities outside of shipping; better standards of living and, for some, relationships with local Liverpool women. Kru sailors and others made frequent journeys back to West Africa during their work on British ships. This meant their time in Liverpool could be transient or short-term, sometimes for a few months at a time before signing on with another ship bound for West Africa. In between ships, the Kru stayed in sailors' hostels or boarding houses that were close to where ships from West Africa docked in Toxteth, south Liverpool. Others 'jumped ship', became permanent residents and found work on shore or went on to work aboard other ships.

On the 22nd of June 1948, the HMT Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex, the first stop for the British Caribbean citizens before travelling onwards. They had been invited by the government to fill the skills and labour shortage in the aftermath of WW2, leaving behind livelihoods, families and friends to travel across the Atlantic. Those who were without accommodation had to stay in the 'Deep Shelter', a former air raid shelter in Clapham, 30ft below street level. Of those original passengers, it is estimated that around 68 men came to live and settle in Liverpool and one of those men was Harold Phillips, also known as Lord Woodbine, an RAF veteran from Trinidad. He joined the war effort aged 14 after lying about his age and using his brother's passport. His story is a typical one from that time. He ended up settling in Liverpool, met his future British-Nigerian wife, Helen Agoro Phillips (known as Ena) at a talent show at (Liverpool) club 'Jokers', both teenagers about 16 or 17, and they were married in November 1949. His daughter Carol remembers, "He joined the RAF in 1943 until 1947 and was writing to my mother when he returned back to Trinidad. I suppose that Shropshire was the nearest that he could get to Liverpool, so he took the job then made his way to Liverpool. The Caribbean and American black service men would travel to Liverpool 's black community to socialise." Harold was very musical and a Calypsonian, a style of music hugely popular in Trinidad and Tobago and across the Caribbean. He played steel pan and sang calypso and  helped build the creative counter-culture that put Liverpool 8 on the post-World War 2 art map and was the first singer-songwriter 'The Beatles' ever met. Prominent Calypsonians would adopt names like Lord Woodbine, Lord Kitchener, and Lord Beginner, and to have such a title reflected how well thought of a musician they were. Harold became 'Lord Woodbine' and when he came to the UK he brought his remarkable musical talents with him and was also a music promoter. With his business partner Allan Williams they would later become' The Beatles' first booking managers and were responsible for the first Liverpool group to go out to Hamburg, 'Derry and The Seniors'. His many stories from those times include smuggling an underage George Harrison into Hamburg and in 1969 sat for Liverpool artist Arthur Dooley as the model for 'The Resurrection of Christ' sculpture found at the Princes Park Methodist church in Toxteth.

Harold 'Lord Woodbine' seated 3rd left

 

The Windrush however was not the first by any means, as 108 Jamaicans, Bermudans, and Trinidadians paid their £28 fare to cross the Atlantic on the Ormonde from Jamaica to Liverpool in March 1947. The Georgic, which also arrived in Liverpool on the 25th of June 1949, had the 'biggest number of coloured colonial immigrants to arrive on one ship since the Empire Windrush'. The party of 254 included 61 women, 26 men who had already been to England, 'mostly in the R.A.F' and 30 Trinidadians. This depicted a diverse group of passengers, challenging the perception of voyagers as being single Jamaican men on their first journey to England. In 1954, the Reina del Pacifico docked at Liverpool, bringing more than three hundred Jamaican immigrants, men seeking work, or women coming to join husbands already established here.

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2022/03/liverpool-communities-hispanic.html