I had a doll. Well, no child in the area would have had a doll. And I had patent shoes that were shiny and pretty and I had pretty dresses. Those all came from England. So you were made to feel that little bit more special if you had parents in England.

I’m Evadney. I was born in St. Ann in Jamaica. And I arrived in the UK in 1971 so I just fall into that Windrush generation. But of course my parents are clearly Windrush generation people. They came here before, in the, my mom came in the 60s just after she left me. I found out when we’d been doing lots on Windrush during the 75th celebrations that I was only a few months old when she left. I had no idea. I thought I was much older. And my dad came prior to that, so I’d never seen my dad until I came to this country at age 11.

I saw my mum for the first time when I was nine years old. And by then I had my sister who was born in the UK and she came to, to Jamaica with my mum. Now on reflection, although I knew my grandparents were my grandparents, I still saw my grandmother more of a mother than my own mum. So I don’t think that when she came, I thought of her in any way other than a nice adult that has come visiting from England.

I think if you’re happy, which I was, I was a very happy child, my grandparents doted on me until the day they died. I love my mum dearly and my mum and I get on very well, but my grandmother was my mum.

When I was 11 my grandmother said that I was going to go to England to my parents. It was exciting at first. I remember being excited. But I think it’s because I had no real concept of where England was.

Whenever anyone was going abroad, it would be a huge thing within the village. Everybody – we had a minibus that everybody came on the minibus, ‘cause they wanted to come to the airport with you. And I remember my grandmother was crying and I was crying and it was, even now… Tearful, laughs. I can’t believe that even now at my age, it was just leaving them, knowing that, even though I didn’t know that I wouldn’t be back to see them for years – I didn’t know that. But it’s just that I was going in this plane for, that’s the first time I’ve seen a plane. An airplane, this huge giant airplane. And I was going on this airplane to meet my mum and dad. So I think it was excitement, but fear.

My dad met me at the airport. He came with a friend. And I don’t know why this is, but I have very, very little recollection of what happened. I have a friend who came when she was only three years old, yet she has vivid recollection. I do not. And I don’t even remember how I felt when I went into the flat for the first time. It still hadn’t hit me that I wasn’t going to see my grandparents for years.

I couldn’t call him my dad for a long time. I remember, if I needed to speak to him, I’d tell my sister to tell him. For some reason, I didn’t have that same difficulty with my mum, whether it’s because I’d met her, I don’t know. But he, I couldn’t call him dad.

I hated it when I came here, hated it. I really cried every day. I wanted to go home. I just, I just felt that it was so different. You come from a country where it’s hot and you live outdoors all day, to a country where it’s cold and you have to ask permission to go outside. That has been, and I’ve never forgotten that, ‘Can I go out to play?’ I’ve never heard of such a thing.

It just hit me that I’d never asked my mother what it was like for her. As I said, I thought I was about two years old when she left, when in reality I was two months old. So I cannot, even having children of my own and grandchildren, I can’t envisage going to another country, leaving my baby. And I’m her first child. So it just hit me that, oh my gosh, that must have been awful for her.

So she was by then living in Jamaica and I phoned her. And I said, ‘What was it like for you leaving your child?’ And she said, she cried all the time.

My mum, alongside everybody else that I’ve spoken to, never expected to stay longer than five years. That was why there were never the plan to bring up your child straight away. Because you did, you thought you were going to go five years, earn some money and be able to come home and set up. It was always that, that England had opportunities that they didn’t have. They were told there was lots and lots of work here and it would be easy and so she came with that assumption that, ‘Well I’ll be back home in five years.’ And by then they’ll have had some money, they can start a home.

And it just never materialised. Because whatever you were earning, which would have been a lot, lot more than they could have earned at home, they then had to take care of the family at home. So you have to live your life here in England, take care of the family back home and still try to save for that day to go back home. So that would be impossible. But she came deliberately. She said, never, they never expected it to stay. That’s why it’s called the long five years.

Those of us that were left in the Caribbean, it was through receipts of the barrels and the parcels that I mentioned, that we get the connection with our parents and our loved ones abroad. So that’s why it’s coined the ‘barrel children’. Even as late 60 year olds and 70-year old-people, there is still a painful trauma that has never been explored, that’s never talked about. And it was because it was the norm. And it’s still happening now. Immigrants are still leaving their children at home while they come to the UK to try and make a life. So it’s not, it’s an immigrant story.

But when there’s so much negativity around immigration and immigrants, and people coming to this country, I think we need to be talking about it. Because it is traumatic and it’s a trauma that people carry for decades, or throughout, you know, throughout their lives, maybe. And if we were to discuss this and children were to be taught in history, I think there’d be far more sympathy and empathy for immigrants and what they’ve had to leave to come here to try and make a life.

I would like to see far more acknowledgement and recognition for the contributions that people of my parents’ generation have made to this country.

This country, we have adapted so much of what they have brought here, that we forget where it came from. We acknowledge, whether it be in the language, in the fashion, in the music. If I’m sitting on a bus and I’m listening to young people speaking behind me, they all sound the same. And a lot of the language they’re using are of Caribbean heritage. And they won’t know, because it’s their language. It’s what they’ve adapted. It’s how they are.

And I just think, in schools, I want us to teach young people. I see all of these news bulletins with these kids talking about their grandparents, great-grandparents and their country. And nobody’s saying to them how many people from Africa, from India, from the Caribbean died in World War II.

Let’s do English history, let’s do British history. And what I would like them to be remembered for is their contributions to making Britain the Britain that we all live in.