The ship that gave its name to a generation of immigrants, and a scandal, had a fascinating Nazi past
A decade before the Empire Windrush brought around 490 West Indians to Tilbury docks in 1948, marking the symbolic beginning of a multicultural Britain, the vessel was in use as a Nazi cruise ship, taking passengers on package holidays organised by Joseph Goebbels as part of his “Strength Through Joy” public enlightenment and propaganda programme.
Most people will recognise the ship from the famous Pathé news footage that showed Jamaican ex-servicemen disembarking in England, pronouncing that these people were “citizens of the Empire coming to the mother country with good intent”. Over the last year, images of it have illustrated articles about the immigration scandal that took the ship’s name, and in which thousands of legal British residents were wrongly classified as illegal immigrants by the government, some detained and deported, others sacked or made homeless.
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