ABSTRACT
The family is the primary site of socialisation. Black families in Britain are considered to be in crisis, and described in response to their dysfunction, often in respect to absent-father paradigms and female-headed family units. However, this view is frequently myopic and not placed within an indomitable and robust structure, which would see West Indian family destabilisation as a by-product of Commonwealth migration, which is the legacy of chattel enslavement, colonialism and empire. What is important in the final analysis of West Indian family configuration in Britain is the significance of these historical epochs. Some suggest black people ought to move on from reflective analysis of these events, as they are no longer relevant and were a ‘long time ago’. However, those making such assertions should be reminded that the grandparents and great-grandparents of a sizable number of the post-Windrush generation (who are now grandparents themselves) were born, or were alive, during the time the slave trade was officially abolished in the West Indian territories. It is particularly important to acknowledge this when we unearth some of the more barbed and often unmentionable features within black family life in Britain, such as intergenerational conflict and domestically disseminated corporal punishment.
