Some of you might be interested to know of the new online archive
documenting migration to Britain over the last 200 years.  The website
is
http://www.movinghere.org.uk/

Felicity Callard

>
> Online archive brings Britain's migration story to life
> Alan Travis
> Tuesday July 29 2003
> The Guardian
>
>
> "From de land of wood an water
>   Came they to where de air waz cold,
>    They come to work wid bricks
>    an mortar
>  They heard de streets were paved
>    wid gold"
>
> These opening lines from a poem, The Men from Jamaica are Settling
> Down, have been contributed by Benjamin Zephaniah to a unique
> interactive website being launched today, which documents 200 years of
> Caribbean, Irish, Jewish and South Asian migration to Britain.
>
> The site, movinghere.org.uk, makes available online for the first time
> more than 150,000 digitised sources, including film, photographs and
> text, from 30 museums, libraries and archives detailing the history of
> migration.
>
> The site includes access to original documents such as selected Asian
> and Caribbean ships' passenger lists, including the SS Empire
> Windrush. These are searchable by name, giving family historians the
> chance to check the original entries from their own computer.
>
> Moving Here also provides similar registers for the Jewish Free School
> dating back to the 19th century and Home Office records, titled
> Internees at Liberty in the UK, which provide names and details of
> Jewish refugees granted asylum during the second world war.
>
> The records include an entry for Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund,
> who is listed as a Hampstead psychoanalyst. It shows she was
> officially designated by a tribunal as a female enemy alien but
> granted exemption from internment.
>
> The site provides a general history of migration to Britain, gives
> guidance on tracing family history, allows some of the unique
> historical images to be sent as postcards, and allows visitors to
> contribute their own stories of migration to its pages.
>
> Sarah Tyacke, the chief executive of the National Archives, which has
> taken the lead in making the archives of 30 different museums
> available through the project, said: "Moving Here is a step forward
> because for the first time all this material has been digitised so
> that you can see it in your living room. Archives are moving away from
> their 'dusty and musty' image by making these documents available at
> the click of a mouse."
>
> Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the commission for racial equality,
> said it recognised and celebrated the contribution of immigrants to
> all sections of society.
>
> Among the images that are available through the website are rare
> photographs of slaves aboard a Royal Navy ship after being rescued
> from a slave ship, taken in 1869; lascars (Indian seamen) aboard
> British merchant ships in 1910; Asian suffragettes from the same era
> and Irish "God save the Pope" street parties in   London's East End. A
> photograph of the 1930 St Patrick's Day dinner in London is notable
> because among the packed benches of besuited Irishmen there is not a
> single woman.
>
> The site will also reveal that the first Indian to play cricket at
> county and national level in Britain was Ranji - Kumar Shri
> Ranjitsinhji - who came from Gujarat, India, in 1880 to attend Trinity
> College, Cambridge.
>
> It also includes online access to many official documents including
> correspondence between Gandhi and the British government charting the
> struggle for Indian independence.
>
> The Home Office file on playwright Brendan Behan's 1947 plea to be
> allowed to return to Britain, six years after his IRA conviction,
> makes clear that police special branch had few doubts about him:
> "Behan appears to be a thoroughly bad type ... He should not be
> trusted," it says.
>
> If you look up Britain's most prominent black politician, Paul
> Boateng, the chief secretary to the Treasury, you will find some press
> releases from his days as chairman of the Greater London council
> police committee.
>
> In July 1982 the radical Boateng was calling for the resignation of
> the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Kenneth Newman, for
> allegedly describing Jamaicans as "constitutionally disorderly".
>
> The site includes personal interviews with many immigrants, including
> Caribbean RAF   pilots who flew in the second world war.
>
> It also includes the poem contributed by Zephaniah, which was
> commissioned by the film company which made the recent BBC film on the
> arrival of the Empire Windrush, which brought the first postwar wave
> of Caribbean immigrants to Britain in 1948.
>
> The poet said the film company had rejected it because its last few
> stanzas were "too political" and they wanted "something a bit more
> celebrational".
>
> These verses make clear that though the black pioneers have been
> visible and hard-working since they arrived on the Windrush, they
> still do not feel they have "all that freedom galore":
>
> "But in-between lines you'll still read in de papers,
>  the men from Jamaica are settling down."
>
> Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
>
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr Felicity Callard
Department of Geography
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS
United Kingdom
t: (44) (0)207 882 5416
f: (44) (0)208 981 6276
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~