LTB 261/20

18th May 2020

Dear Colleague,

Celebrating Windrush Day – Monday 22nd June 2020

The CWU has been at the heart of pushing for social justice in terms of the trade union movement’s efforts around Windrush. Last year was the first time a National Rally was organised and this took place on Sunday 22nd June 2019. A number of CWU activists attended the rally and our Union is committed to ensuring that future Windrush Days are strongly remembered and acknowledged.

Given the Covid-19 pandemic, gatherings of any kind are prohibited and are likely to be for the foreseeable future. In response to this, the CWU has been considering our options and in collaboration with a number of our BAME representatives, we are delighted to put forward the following programme of events that are designed to highlight the social injustices of Windrush but also to recognise the significant contribution made to our society.

Windrush Webinar

We are in the process of organising a special webinar that will see high profile guests speaking about Windrush and the impact this has had on those communities. This is planned to take place on Monday 22nd June. Further details will be announced in due course.

With the assistance of our Communications Dept, the CWU will be creating some promotional material. When this is produced, we will be grateful if you could share this extensively on social media. We intend to showcase the event throughout the Trade Union movement, as due to the anticipated limited Windrush activities, interest on the webinar is expected to be high.

CWU members and reps will have an opportunity to put questions to our guests, once they have addressed their online audience.

Windrush Competition

This exciting initiative is open to CWU members and their families. When we talk about Windrush to many people this will mean many things – from the invaluable contributions to the health & transport sectors to the various regiments that assisted the British army in both world wars and the unacceptable aspects of today’s hostile environment created by the Tory government.

The competition will be a chance for the CWU to create an historic resource that will reflect all those sentimental and special memories associated with Windrush. We are inviting you, as part of the competition to submit entries around the following:

1. Poetry

2. Short Windrush Stories, linked to Windrush experiences

3. Family Photographs

4. Paintings/Artwork

5. Recipes

6. Decorated cakes

7. Letters (this option is open to children up to the age of 12) – Write a letter to the British Prime Minster expressing your thoughts around Windrush and what the Government should be doing to acknowledge this very important chapter in British History.

The competition opens on Monday 1st June and closes on 1st September 2020 at which point the best entries will be judged (by the CWU WindrushWorking Party) and a prize will be given to the best entry in each category.

Once all of the entries have been received, the intention will be to put them into a newly created digitalised CWU Windrush book. Please send all your entries via email to: Equality&Education@cwu.org Any images should be sent as attachments and not embedded into the email itself. We will ideally need high quality images and scans for the book.

Any queries on this LTB should be directed to Equality&Education@cwu.org

Yours sincerely,

Kate Hudson Head of Equality, Education & Development