By the time the Windrush had docked at Tilbury, the Ministry of Labour, working with the Colonial Office and local authorities, had made arrangements for the dispersal of the new arrivals. Just over 80 of the Jamaicans were volunteering to enter the armed forces and these were transported to temporary accommodation in a hostel in Wimpole Street, London. About 100 had friends or family in England and, after reaching London on the boat train, were left to their own devices. Those with no contacts were taken to a former underground bomb shelter in Clapham South, close to the Labour Exchange in Brixton. By the end of three weeks, all had moved on. The new arrivals and those black servicemen who had stayed in Britain after the war faced a mixed reception from the resident white population, veering from the welcoming to the openly hostile, with white landlords refusing to accept black tenants and white workers refusing to work alongside black colleagues.

The following extracts are from interviews with people recalling early reactions to their presence in Britain. They come from the book Windrush: the irresistible rise of multi-racial Britain by Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips.

I suppose you can say racism crept up on me, although some other people may have seen it straight away. But it is something that crept up on me very slowly. Just after the war was over, I was on a bus and there were two service people in front of me, one a woman. And she was saying, "Isn't it about time they went back to their homes?", and it was the first time that it hit me that, you know, that people were putting up with us, that they didn't really want us, but we were a necessary evil. But, apart from that, I didn't experience much problems with people. William Naltey who joined the RAF from Jamaica in 1943 and remained in Britain after the war.

Things were changing. Although things were still rationed, they were re-building the cities and all that. But the attitude of the people was changed, people were more aggressive to you. In short, they are trying to say that you shouldn't be here. But there's another side. I would say a third of people in Britain still had imperialist ideas. People from the colonies should be planting bananas and chocolate and whatever it is. Another third, I would say, did not really matter as Arsenal win on Saturday. The other third, they were just nice, ordinary people. Sam King who arrived on the Windrush in 1948.

Just when we got married, 1949, and I saw this advert, you know, in a shop window about rooms to let and then when I phoned this lady, she say, "Oh yes, come around, it's all here, you'll get the room." So when I arrive, I rang the bell and this white lady she came out and I said, "Good afternoon, madam", and the moment when she answered the door you know it's like as if she's so frightened because she didn't expect to see a black man. I said probably she might know it was a foreigner by my accent, but I made myself quite clear to her, she could understand me and she said, "All right, come into the room." And then, just like that, she said, "No, I haven't got any room to let." No, first of all she say, you know, in that nice sugary way to say, "Oh, I'm so sorry. You are just five minutes late. The room is taken." So I said to her, I said, "Madam, do you see that telephone kiosk down there?" She said, "Yes." I said, "That's where I was phoning from and I did not see anyone come to you door like that." So she paused for a while and said, "Well, I don't want black people." I said, "Why not say so?" I said, "You'd have saved me all the trouble of making all my own way here." She said, " We don't want any black people." I say, "You should let me know." I said, "It's your place. I can't force you to let me your rooms," you see, and just like that. That's one thing I can never forget. Cecil Holness who came to Britain on the Windrush to re-enlist in the RAF

You're not thinking of your skin, but you feel other people are thinking of it. And every little thing that you do reflects on your reaction. Like, if you get on the bus, and there's an empty seat, you sit down, and somebody comes in, pass and go down the back and didn't sit with you, you're saying, maybe they want to sit on the back. But when the bus fills up and you find you're the last one to have somebody beside you, then you know something is wrong. Come on, be yourself, be strong.

I came from such a bright place, so much sunshine, so much colour, it was very depressing that time of the year. They didn't know anything about us. Some people ask you where you came from. Jamaica. And you could have come from the moon. They don't know where it is and you have to tell them, you know, it's in the Caribbean. And a lot of them would talk behind your back. Darkies, you know. You weren't a person, you were a darkie. After a while I became indifferent. Tryphena Anderson who arrived in Liverpool from Jamaica in 1952 and went to Nottingham to train as a nurse.