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The floral tribute at the Chelsea Flower Show
is designed to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the arrival of
the HMT Empire Windrush ship, bringing the first in a wave of
immigrants who were invited to Britain after World War Two to
plug job shortages.
Although fully entitled to live and work in Britain, an unknown
number of Windrush descendants have been wrongly identified as
illegal immigrants and denied basic rights such as healthcare.
Some have been detained and up to 63 immigrants wrongly deported
to the Caribbean in a scandal that engulfed the government and
led to the resignation of the government's Home Secretary, the
interior minister.
The exhibit at the Royal Horticultural Society's annual Chelsea
Flower Show depicts the moment that the HMT Empire Windrush
arrived in Essex, southeast England, in 1948. It features a
model of the ship and its passengers and includes flowers and
plants from both sides of the Atlantic.
It was designed by the former television presenter and now life
peer Baroness Floella Benjamin, who arrived in Britain from
Trinidad and Tobago in 1960 aged 11 and worked on the project
with the Windrush Foundation and the Birmingham City Council
gardening team.
Prime Minister Theresa May was one of the guests to the show in
the grounds of London's Royal Hospital Chelsea on Monday ahead
of its official opening on Tuesday with Queen Elizabeth also
expected to attend.
(Reporting by Ana de Liz; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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