What was it like to arrive in Britain?

L/O – To discover how peoples’ experiences of an event can differ and how we can try to understand their experiences

Starter – Brainstorm reasons why people come to Britain. How many can you think of?

What was it like to arrive in Britain?• In June 1948, 500 West Indians

arrived in Britain on board the SS Empire Windrush. It was 3 years after the end of WW2. Britain was short of factory workers, but other kinds of workers as well.

• They advertised in the West Indies (the Caribbean). Over the next ten years, 125,000 West Indians came to Britain. What was it like for these people to arrive and live in a new country?

We call working out what people in the past thought and felt ‘EMPATHY’. That is what this lesson is all about.

You will be using extracts from interviews with people who came to Britain in the 1940s and 1950s to help you find out

what they thought and how they felt.

Think about how people might feel:

Jot down a few words (5-10) that best describe what it might have felt like to have arrived in Britain from the West Indies on the Empire

Windrush in 1948.

What was it like to arrive in Britain?• You are going to study sources A-I. For each source,

use some of the words in the source to make a list of the words and phrases that describe what it felt like to be a West Indian immigrant. Then jot down any other words that you’d use to describe those feelings.

Source AImmigrants from Jamaica arriving at Newhaven, 22 September 1958.

Source B – Euton Christian – Town Councillor

Source C – Cecil Holness – Motor Mechanic

Source D – Berris Anderson & Pearline Wynter

Source E – Connie Mark - Nurse

Source F – Ivan Weekes – Local Councillor

Source G – Vince Reid – Teacher

Source H – Aldwyn Roberts – Singer

Source I – Tryphena Anderson – Nurse

What was it like to arrive in Britain?As a class, now compile a complete list of words and

phrases that describe what it felt like to be a West Indian immigrant in 1948:

Words Phrases

Compare the class list with your words from the sources.

Are they different? Why?

The Big Ideas• Part of History is empathy –

using sources to work out people’s feelings and experiences.

• You will use empathy a lot in History, but you do NOT just imagine what life was like for people. In History you use sources to find out their feelings and experiences.

The Big Ideas• It’s harder to find out the

feelings of some people than of others – because we don’t have enough sources to tell us what they were thinking.

1. What kinds of sources have been used in this lesson to find out about the experiences of the people on the Empire Windrush?

2. Are people’s memories, such as those you’ve read in Source A-I, likely to be trustworthy evidence?

The Big Ideas3. Here are five people. Whose feelings do you think it would be easy to find out about and whose would be difficult? William Gladstone,

Prime Minister when Queen Victoria was

queen.

Robert Blincoe, a young factory

worker who lived around 1900

Thomas Woodcock, a brewer who lived in

Wymondham, Norfolk, when Elizabeth I was queen

Harald Hardrada – King of Norway

1045-1066

Queen Elizabeth

Remember! There is always more than one answer to

‘What was it like to…’

Different people have different experiences. You have already worked this out for

yourselves from the sources in this lesson.

Whenever you study and event in history, you need to remember that people have different

experiences and attitudes.

The Big IdeasOne of the first topics you’ll investigate in Year 7 is the Norman

Conquest. Your teacher may ask you a question like this:

What do you think of the students answer? What should she think about or do to improve her answer?

Plenary1. What was the SS Empire Windrush?

2. Why did West Indian’s come to Britain?3. Did West Indian’s experience any bad things?4. Did West Indian’s experience any good things?

5. What is empathy? 6. Why is it important in History?

Did we meet our learning objective?L/O – To discover how peoples’ experiences of an event can differ and how we can try to understand their experiences