Beginning with the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury in 1948, people from Caribbean countries settled in post-war Britain. Many filled labour shortages but encountered discrimination in housing, work and public life. Their families permanently transformed cities including London, Birmingham and Bristol.

Louise Bennett used Jamaican Creole to describe migration with humour and insight. Later poets including Linton Kwesi Johnson, James Berry and Grace Nichols made racism, language, memory and Caribbean British identity central to modern verse.