THE GUARDIAN 🔵 Windrush pioneer Alford Gardner dies aged 98
Alford Gardner, one of the last remaining Windrush passengers who once said he “didn’t expect to be a part of history,” has died. He was 98.
Gardner, born in Jamaica, became a pioneering member of the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants who marked the symbolic beginning of a multicultural Britain.
His son, Howard, confirmed the death on Wednesday, saying he had died on Tuesday in his Leeds home. Gardner had been unwell for some time after being diagnosed with bowel cancer this summer, according to his son.
“It’s very hard to know what to say at this time, to be honest. As a family we’re all very sad about his death,” said Howard, 73 who co-authored his father’s memoir, Finding Home: A Windrush Story, published in June 2023.
“He never thought of himself as a pioneer. He came to do a job twice during the war and he came again on the Windrush to help rebuild the country.”
Howard fondly recalls a visit to Buckingham Palace when his father’s portrait, commissioned by King Charles in 2022 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Windrush generation, was unveiled. “My dad’s face, being there – he spoke about it all the time: ‘Me, a Jamaican country boy in Buckingham Palace … ’. He couldn’t believe it,” recalled Howard.
During the second world war, Gardner served with the Royal Air Force as a ground engineer. In May 1948, Gardner and his brother were among 492 West Indians onboard the Empire Windrush, part of the postwar generation that helped rebuild the country and paved the way for others to follow.
“As the song goes, I did what I had to do and I did it my way,” Gardner told the Guardian in a 2023 interview.
Gardner recalled the journey over as a “brilliant” and happy crossing, enjoying music by calypsonians such as Lord Beginner onboard as he was reunited with other ex-servicemen from Trinidad and Barbados he had not anticipated seeing again after the war ended.
After the war Gardner returned to “No Irish, no blacks, no dogs” signs in windows. Accommodation had become difficult to find, leaving him to sleep in a chair or on the floor at times. Finding work was equally challenging, as was the discrimination he faced from his partner’s father when asking for her hand in marriage.
Despite moments of conflict and discrimination, Gardner remembered his life in England as a happy one. Settling in Leeds, he worked as an engineer and co-founded the Caribbean Cricket Club.
“I did my best to find places where I was treated equally,” he told the Guardian in 2023. “I had a good right hand, a beautiful right hand, so I had no problem.”
Years after Empire Windrush arrived, the name has become shorthand to describe the scandal the generation of West Indian Britons faced caused by Theresa May’s 2012 policy, which wrongly classified legal British residents as illegal immigrants. In 2018 thousands of legal UK residents were mistakenly labelled as immigration offenders. People are still struggling to receive documentation and compensation, five years after the government first apologised.
Arthur Torrington, the co-founder and director of the Windrush foundation, recalls Gardner as “the voice of Windrush”. The two first met in 1998 during the 50th Windrush anniversary and Torrington later contributed to Gardner’s memoir.
“Somehow he still could remember things from boyhood and times in the RAF. I found him inspiring to be passing on information from the old days and experiences that he had,” Torrington said. “These kind of experiences help the younger generation to understand the history, to garner a stronger identity in terms of knowing about the past.”
“I think Alford is a national treasure,” said Patrick Vernon, cultural historian and founder of Every Generation and the 100 Great Black Britons campaign. “His death is the end of an era in many ways.”