[press release] [click on any of the pictures for larger versions]
New Stamps Celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Arrival of MV Windrush
The stamp images celebrate the contribution of the Windrush generation and their influence on life in the UK- The original artworks were exclusively designed by five Black British artists: Bokiba; Kareen Cox; Tomekah George; Alvin Kofi and Emma Prempeh
- The stamps are now available to pre-order at www.royalmail.com/windrush, by telephone on 03457 641 641 and at 7,000 Post Office branches across the UK
Royal Mail is marking the 75th Anniversary of the arrival of MV Empire Windrush to the UK on 22nd June 1948. Eight new stamps featuring vibrant illustrations, created exclusively to 
celebrate the occasion, were revealeded at a launch event at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton on 15 June.
The MV Empire Windrush arrived at the Port of Tilbury on 21 June 1948 and its passengers disembarked a day later. It carried several hundred West Indian migrants, many of them veterans of the Second World War. It has come to symbolise the mass migration of people from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom in the post-war era.
The original artworks were created by five Black British artists – all with Caribbean heritage: 
Kareen Cox, Bokiba, Tomekah George, Alvin Kofi and Emma Prempeh and Alvin Kofi. Cox, Bokiba and Prempeh designed two stamps each.
The artists were commissioned to create illustrations which celebrate the contribution of the Windrush generation and their influence on life in the UK.
The stamps depict the artists’ personal interpretations of the following themes: arrivals; education/Saturday schools; music/carnival; working life/everyday life in the UK; political activity/peaceful protests; sports; food/markets; and sound systems/dancehall scene.
For the wider product range, Royal Mail also worked with Colin Grant – a British writer of Jamaican origin who is the author of several books, a historian, associate Fellow in the Centre for Caribbean Studies and a BBC radio producer, and Sonia Grant, an independent historian, writer, researcher and photographic exhibition curator.
[That “wider product range” includes FDCs, postcards, presentation packs, framed stamps and three different coin covers: Uncirculated, silver proof, and gold proof. The 
latter is selling for £1,220, or about US$1,564. The gold coin is shown on the right. See other images below. — VSC]
Revealing the stamps at the Black Cultural Archives, Winnie Annan-Forson, Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Royal Mail, said: “As Britain marks the 75th anniversary of the 1948 arrival of the MV Empire Windrush, we are honoured to mark this key event with a set of Special Stamps, featuring vibrant illustrations from talented artists that celebrate the culture and contribution of the Windrush generation and those who followed. We are delighted to have brought their stories to life in this special way, passing their legacy on to future
generations.”
In addition to the stamps, Royal Mail will be applying a special postmark to stamped mail from 21 to 26 June. The postmark will read:
Port of Tilbury
22nd June 1948
Following the arrival of MV Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks in June 1948 the period between 1948
and 1972 saw over 500,000 Commonwealth citizens settle in the UK; they are often referred to as the Windrush generation. Peter Fryer, a young reporter who at the time was working for the Daily Worker, captured the spirit of the passengers who had disembarked at Tilbury as “five hundred pairs of willing hands”. Indeed, the newcomers were clear-eyed about what they had to offer the ‘Mother Country’. In so doing, they made notable contributions to every sphere of British life, including in the fields of entertainment, 
education and sport, as well as in the National Health Service (NHS). It can be argued that West Indian nurses paved the way for a multiracial and multicultural NHS, whose current workforce is made up of staff of more than 200 nationalities.
Despite numerous challenges – including race riots and discrimination in housing, employment and education – the Windrush generation left an indelibly positive mark on the UK, thanks 
largely to the character, fortitude and resilience of those early migrants. Their legacy can be felt in almost every sphere of life in today’s multicultural Britain. In June 2022, the National Windrush Monument, featuring a bronze sculpture by Basil Watson and accompanied by a poem by Professor Laura Serrant OBE, was unveiled at London’s Waterloo train station to offer a place of reflection and to celebrate the contribution of the Windrush generation to the UK.
The Official First Day Cover with Tilbury postmark:
The Gold Proof Coin Cover: 
