1. Passenger Euton Christian went on to become Manchester’s first black magistrate.

2. In 1983, fellow passenger Sam King became the first black mayor of Southwark.

3. Apart from the West Indian passengers, the Windrush also brought 60 Polish women to Britain – they had come via Siberia, India, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and Mexico, where they embarked.

4. One Scottish Labour MP remarked that the Windrush passengers should “see the housing in Scotland... Then they will want to go back to the West Indies”.

5. Three-quarters of the Windrush immigrants were skilled workers; about a third of these were ex-servicemen who had fought for Britain during the second world war.

A mother and her children aboard the Empire Windrush, June 1948
© TopFoto.co.uk

6. Ivor Cummings, a mixed race Colonial Office official who met the Windrush passengers at Tilbury, smoked cigarettes in a long holder and addressed people as “dear boy”.

Arriving in England at the age of 13, Vince Reid was the youngest traveller aboard the Windrush
© TopFoto.co.uk / UPPA Ltd.

7. When the West Indies cricket team beat England at Lord's for the first time in 1950, the occasion was watched by the first-ever West Indian spectators living in Britain.

8. Oswald “Columbus” Dennison was the first Windrush passenger to get a job – night watchman of the meals marquee on Clapham Common, at £4 a week. After this, he became a street trader in Brixton, his job until retirement.

9. Among the stowaways was 39-year-old dressmaker Evelyn Wauchape, from Kingston, Jamaica. When the boat spent several days moored in Bermuda, Evelyn was treated like a VIP by the locals.

10. One of the non-immigrant Windrush passengers was the American writer, Nancy Cunard, who lived in Paris and was one of the famous ex-pat literary “women of the Left Bank”. Her works included Black Man And White Ladyship (1931).