Today its voyage is marked on coins issued by the Royal Mint, while the Imperial War Museum has even called it ‘one of the most foundational moments in British history’. Schools up and down the country will spend the day celebrating the Windrush’s journey from Jamaica to England.

Running through much of this commemoration is the narrative that the Windrush generation – the name given to the first wave of West Indian immigrants after the war – were answering a call for help from the mother country. The story of the Windrush is now commemorated by Laura Serrant’s poem, You Called… and We Came. The National Windrush Monument at Waterloo Station, unveiled last year, features the words of that poem, with the lines:

‘Remember… you called.
Remember… you called
YOU. Called.
Remember, it was us, who came.’