Royal Mail is marking the 75^th Anniversary of the arrival of MV Empire Windrush to the UK on June 22, 1948. Eight new stamps featuring vibrant illustrations, created exclusively to celebrate the occasion, will be revealed at a launch event at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton on 15 June.

The MV Empire Windrush arrived at the Port of Tilbury on June 21, 1948 and its passengers disembarked a day later. It carried several hundred West Indian migrants, many of them veterans of the Second World War. It has come to symbolise the mass migration of people from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom in the post-war era.

The original artworks were created by five Black British artists - all with Caribbean heritage: Kareen Cox, Bokiba, Tomekah George, Alvin Kofi, and Emma Prempeh. Cox, Bokiba and Prempeh designed two stamps each.

The artists were commissioned to create illustrations which celebrate the contribution of the Windrush generation and their influence on life in the UK.

The stamps depict the artists’ personal interpretations of the following themes: arrivals; education/Saturday schools; music/carnival; working life/everyday life in the UK; political activity/peaceful protests; sports; food/markets; and sound systems/dancehall scene.

For the wider product range, Royal Mail also worked with Colin Grant - a British writer of Jamaican origin who is the author of several books, a historian, associate Fellow in the Centre for Caribbean Studies and a BBC radio producer, and Sonia Grant, an independent historian, writer, researcher and photographic exhibition curator.

Revealing the stamps at the Black Cultural Archives, Winnie Annan-Forson, Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Royal Mail, said: “As Britain marks the 75^th anniversary of the 1948 arrival of the MV Empire Windrush, we are honoured to mark this key event with a set of Special Stamps, featuring vibrant illustrations from talented artists that celebrate the culture and contribution of the Windrush generation and those who followed. We are delighted to have brought their stories to life in this special way, passing their legacy on to future generations.”

In addition to the stamps, Royal Mail will be applying a special postmark to stamped mail from 21 to 26 June. The postmark will read:

MV Empire Windrush

Port of Tilbury

22^nd June 1948

Windrush 75:
Following the arrival of MV Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks in June 1948 the period between 1948 and 1972 saw over 500,000 Commonwealth citizens settle in the UK; they are often referred to as the Windrush generation. Peter Fryer, a young reporter who at the time was working for the Daily Worker, captured the spirit of the passengers who had disembarked at Tilbury as “five hundred pairs of willing hands”. Indeed, the newcomers were clear-eyed about what they had to offer the ‘Mother Country’. In so doing, they made notable contributions to every sphere of British life, including in the fields of entertainment, education and sport, as well as in the National Health Service (NHS). It can be argued that West Indian nurses paved the way for a multiracial and multicultural NHS, whose current workforce is made up of staff of more than 200 nationalities.

Despite numerous challenges – including race riots and discrimination in housing, employment and education – the Windrush generation left an indelibly positive mark on the UK, thanks largely to the character, fortitude and resilience of those early migrants. Their legacy can be felt in almost every sphere of life in today’s multicultural Britain. In June 2022, the National Windrush Monument, featuring a bronze sculpture by Basil Watson and accompanied by a poem by Professor Laura Serrant OBE, was unveiled at London’s Waterloo train station to offer a place of reflection and to celebrate the contribution of the Windrush generation to the UK.

Stamp-by-stamp:

Artist: Kareen Cox Title: From Small Island Life to Big Island Dreams	Artist: Tomekah George Title: Ode to Saturday Schools

Artist: Bokiba Title: Carnival Come Thru!	Artist: Emma Prempeh Title: Basking in the Sun After a Hard Work Day

Artist: Emma Prempeh Title: The March	Artist: Bokiba Title: Here We Come

Artist: Kareen Cox Title: Taste the Caribbean	Artist: Alvin Kofi Title: Dancehall Rhythms

The stamps are available to pre-order from today (June 15) at www.royalmail.com/windrush, by telephone on 03457 641 641 and at 7,000 Post Office branches across the UK. A Presentation Pack including all eight stamps in the set is priced at £13.50. The stamps go on general sale on June 22, 2023.

About Royal Mail Special Stamps: For more than 50 years Royal Mail’s Special Stamp programme has commemorated anniversaries and celebrated events relevant to UK heritage and life. Today, there are an estimated 60 million stamp collectors worldwide.

About International Distributions Services plc
International Distributions Services plc is the parent company of Royal Mail Group Limited, the leading provider of postal and delivery services in the UK and the UK’s designated universal postal service provider. UK Parcels, International and Letters (“UKPIL”) comprises the company’s UK and international parcels and letters delivery businesses operating under the “Royal Mail” and “Parcelforce Worldwide” brands. Through the Royal Mail Core Network, the company delivers a one-price-goes-anywhere service on a range of parcels and letters products. Royal Mail has the capability to deliver to around 31 million addresses in the UK, six days a week (excluding UK public holidays). Parcelforce Worldwide operates a separate UK network which collects and delivers express parcels. International Distributions Services plc also owns General Logistics Systems (GLS) which operates one of the largest ground-based, deferred parcel delivery networks in Europe.