A reporter has penned a first person piece reflecting on his grandmother’s journey to Britain as part of the Windrush Generation – and her “far-from easy” experience of building a life here.

Josh Layton, a reporter at the Coventry Telegraph, published the article on Windrush Day, describing how his maternal grandmother Myrtle “borrowed everything she could to secure her passage”.

He also voices a “sense of betrayal toward the Home Office” in relation to the Windrush scandal, and suggests including more about this subject on the National Curriculum in secondary schools.

Josh’s grandmother Myrtle Lewars, pictured below before the voyage, travelled to Britain from Jamaica on June 15 1955.

He wrote: “Two weeks before stepping aboard at the Port of Kingston holding a small suitcase, my maternal grandmother had chanted at dawn “White rabbit, white rabbit, lucky white rabbit.”

“When the day came, she dressed impeccably, fixing a white rose to the lapel of her pressed suit jacket. It had been shipped to the island in the precious consignments of imported goods known as ‘the barrels’.

“An attractive young woman, Myrtle had once appeared in front of crowds to draw the sweepstake, with the moment captured on the front page of national newspaper, The Gleaner.

“But like the waves of finely turned-out Jamaican migrants before and after her, she had staked everything on the land of The Queen, Vera Lynn and double-decker buses.

“Myrtle would never again call Jamaica home.  She sailed from Kingston on the Ortega at 2.30pm, hoping that better must come in the promised land.”

“After arriving in South London, Myrtle struggled to settle in her adopted country. Despite her mental skills, application and willingness for hard work and self-improvement, assimilation into a cold and often hostile world was far from easy.

“Life began in the smallest rented room in a Brixton tenement, with any money left over from day-to-day survival sent back to a long list of people in Jamaica. But later generations of her family would step onto the groundstones she had laid for their education and career prospects.

“We owe these pioneers a lasting debt of gratitude.”