MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
‘I cried like a baby the first week I was here’
PETER MASON is captivated by snapshots that build up a strong feel of what it was like to live and work in those now far-off times, when strong unionisation and an enlightened attitude from LT nurtured camaraderie
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New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
Legacies: London Transport’s Caribbean Workforce
London Transport Museum, Covent Garden
WHEN London Transport had a recruitment problem in the late 1950s and early ’60s, it turned to the Caribbean to find bus conductors, Tube station staff, maintenance workers and canteen assistants.
The initial target was Barbados, though recruiting sergeants were later sent to Jamaica and Trinidad, as well as some of the smaller islands such as Grenada and Dominica. Around 6,000 people were directly signed up from the Caribbean between 1956 and 1970, and many more came over on their own account, taking up work on the Tubes and buses once they arrived.
Now a new exhibition at the London Transport Museum is celebrating the contribution those willing hands made to London life – while also looking at the bittersweet impact of emigration on their own existence.
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