Anniversaries
Newham Heritage Week 2018 focused on anniversaries to tell Newham's story: 100 years since the end of WWI and the women's Suffrage movement; and 70 years since the Windrush brought Caribbean migrants to Britain, many of whom came to work in the newly founded NHS. The multimedia workshops utilised for reflection archival material from the Hidden Histories archive (run by Eastside Community Heritage), such as photographs, and audio and video footage - a selection of which can be viewed below.
​
WW1 & Newham​
​
Upon the outbreak of World War 1, many males from London's large German immigrant population were sent to an internment camp on Carpenters Road in Stratford as supposed security threats, alongside those of Turkish or Austrian ancestry. Most were sent without due process and kept away from their families and friends, eventually being joined by prisoners of war. Those in the camp suffered poor living and working conditions in what was a former factory, holding up to 740 prisoners at any one time. When the war ended in 1918 the camp was closed, but it's legacy lives on to the current day.
Women's Suffrage​
​
Newham has a long history of involvement in the fight for women's rights. The first Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) branch in London was established in Canning Town in 1906. Factories were also a hotbed for women's rights campaigns and strike action. The Representation of the People Act (1918) gave women over the age of thirty the vote if they were or were married to a registered property or land occupier with a rateable value greater than £5, or of a dwelling house and not subject to any legal incapacity, or were graduates voting in a University constituency. Some 8.4 million women were added to the electorate as a result of the act, accounting for 39.64% of the electorate. One hundred years later we look at the experience of women in Newham since that date.
The Windrush Generation
​
In 1948 there began a mass migration of people from Britain's West Indian colonies as a result of the British Nationality Act, which gave citizenship to all those residing in Britain's colonies. The ship HMT Empire Windrush brought the first 802 migrants to the UK on 22 June 1948 in wake of the act, giving name to what became known as the 'Windrush Generation'. Migrants filled huge gaps left in Britain's workforce, especially in industries such as health and transport, helping to establish the National Health Service, founded in that same year. Many migrants settled in areas now in Newham such as Canning Town and Forest Gate, with a large British Caribbean population living and working in the borough to this day.
