{"id":28703,"date":"2026-05-05T06:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T06:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/28703\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T06:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T06:10:09","slug":"book-review-oceans-of-feeling-an-emotional-history-of-caribbean-migrants-in-postwar-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/28703\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review – Oceans of Feeling: An Emotional History of Caribbean Migrants in Postwar Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This is an excerpt from\u00a0an article\u00a0<\/a>in\u00a0The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs and Policy Studies.]<\/p>\n

There has been a recent trend in the publishing world to present books, both fact and fiction, describing the West Indian\/Caribbean experience in post-war Britain. However, the book\u00a0Oceans of Feeling An Emotional History of Caribbean Migrants in Postwar Britain\u00a0by Ryan Walmsley takes a different approach. As part of Bloomsbury\u2019s\u00a0History of Emotions\u00a0series, this is history from a personal perspective. It uses letters sent home, interviews and other observations to chart how it actually felt to be part of the 1940s, 50s and 60s generations of Caribbean people in Britain.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that this book scrimps on the historical facts. It is solidly researched and detailed. It is so accurate that, as a child of migrants, I couldn\u2019t stop personally identifying with some of the experiences of being born and brought up in a 1960s and 70s Britain, where you could often have to choose where to walk on a city pavement to avoid racial confrontation.<\/p>\n

What this book brings to the Caribbean migrant narrative is the detailed description of what it FELT like to come to Britain in the 1950s and 60s. Ryan Walmsley explains in his introduction how he seeks to fill the gap between official narratives and the reality of what it felt like to be there. The excerpts outline people\u2019s expectations of travelling to the \u2018Motherland\u2019, how they felt during their journeys and their joys, sorrows and steep learning curves as they forged a place in post-war Britain.<\/p>\n

Walmsley writes:<\/p>\n

Many of these early trailblazers, then, were captured by a feeling that they \u2018were doing a service\u2019. These feelings were simulated by a commensurate discursive narrative in the Caribbean. No doubt aware of the way these feelings of belonging could be instrumentalized, an assortment of organisations with vested interests in driving this migration flow manipulated the region\u2019s pre-existing value system to create a symbolic landscape rich with the familial allegorization of Empire and its requisite notions of service. (p. 30)<\/p>\n

At \u201ctipping point\u201d: New report signals limited drive within Home Office to address Windrush scandal<\/a>
The 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the Windrush Scandal and the Legacies of Empire<\/a>
UK CHOGM eclipsed by Windrush scandal<\/a><\/p>\n

The book also moves beyond many of the usual Windrush-plus narratives, charting the reasoning behind the safe spaces Caribbean people built for themselves in Britain. Rather than stopping at the Windrush experience, the racism of the 50s and the outcomes in 60s and 70s Britain, the book also looks at the cultural safety nets these communities developed. It charts the setting up of \u2018social spaces which Caribbean migrants constructed for themselves\u2019 and \u2018alternative Caribbean leisure spaces\u2019. It outlines how house and blues parties morphed into Lovers Rock\u2019s use of reggae rhythms and onto the sound system culture.\u00a0Oceans of Feeling\u00a0charts in detail the coming together of black music and punk in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

As one person said:<\/p>\n

When people say safety in numbers it\u2019s not just from a physical point of view. That is one format. There\u2019s safety in feeling safe from the hostile environment around here. (p. 163)<\/p>\n

The book tidily packs decades of experience into sections.\u00a0Migrant emotivations (pp. 17-55) explores what motivated people to travel to Britain in the first place. Departures, journeys, arrivals\u00a0(pp. 57-84) follows the diaries, letters and other personal records of life for this generation upon arrival in Britain. It portrays that abiding sense, as my own parents often described to me, of surprise at coming across poor white people for the first time in Britain.<\/p>\n

Historically situated conceptions of class and race had to be reconfigured \u2013 reconfigured quickly \u2013 and this produced certain and distinct emotional states. (p. 77)<\/p>\n

Where the\u00a0History of Feelings\u00a0approach to the historical narrative excels is in the section on\u00a0Romance, family, childhood\u00a0(pp. 85-112). It offers up an often painful description of the choices migrants faced. Did they stay and deal with the racism and the cold weather for the sake of romance, marriage and providing the best for British-born children or should they return home.<\/p>\n

Debbie Ransome<\/a> is the Web Editor for The Commonwealth Round Table and former head of BBC Caribbean.<\/p>\n

Oceans of Feeling: an Emotional History of Caribbean Migrants in Postwar Britain by Ryan Walmsley, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This is an excerpt from\u00a0an article\u00a0in\u00a0The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs and Policy Studies.] There…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2227,401,432,674,12563,5,6,12564],"class_list":{"0":"post-28703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-caribbean","9":"tag-history","10":"tag-migration","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-oral-history","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-west-indies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116520486359983349","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}