King Charles and Queen Camilla host Buckingham Palace’s 75th anniversary reception at Windrush

King Charles and Queen appeared in high spirits this afternoon as they hosted a reception in Buckingham Buckingham to celebrate the 75th anniversary of HMT Empire Windrush’s arrival in the UK.

The newly crowned King and Queen were joined by BBC News anchor Clive Myrie – whose parents were part of the Windrush generation and traveled to the UK in the 1960s.

Other high-profile guests at the event included veteran journalist Sir Trevor McDonald, former Loose Women panellist June Sarpong and Jamaican-born entrepreneur Levi Roots.

For the occasion, the Queen wore a stylish button-down dress with a green and white print by Samantha Sung.

The royal family completed her ensemble with a dainty gold necklace and some pearl earrings.

At this afternoon’s landmark event, the royal couple will unveil 10 new portraits of Windrush elders.

The King commissioned the artworks in 2022, when he was still Prince of Wales.

The subjects were carefully selected by the specially appointed Windrush Portraits Committee – chaired by Baroness Floella Benjamin.

The portraits will pay tribute to the Windrush Generation and the lasting impact they had on the UK.

King Charles is said to have personally selected black artists to paint the portraits.

The former troopship Empire Windrush landed in Britain on 22 June 1948, transporting people from all over the Caribbean who had responded to an advertisement offering £28 tickets (about £1040 in today’s money) for those who wanted to work in the UK.

Between 1948 and 1970, more than half a million Windrush migrants from the West Indies left their homes to emigrate to the UK.

Those who came from former and present British colonies had an automatic right to settle in the UK, as the country recognized that rebuilding the British economy required a large influx of labor from abroad.

Many of the migrants had fought for the UK in World War II and soon took up jobs as nurses, cooks, engineers, mechanics and more.

The call for new workers was mainly aimed at white Europeans, who had dominated immigration to Britain in the century before the Second World War and continued to play an important role after 1945.

Working-age adults and many children traveled from the Caribbean to their parents or grandparents in the UK or traveled with their parents without their own passports.

As these people had a legal right to come to the UK, they did not need and were not issued any documents upon entry into the UK, nor after changes to immigration laws in the early 1970s.

Many worked or attended schools in the UK without any official document proving they have done so, other than the same records as those of any UK-born citizen.

The Windrush scandal, triggered in 2012 by the government’s “hostile environmental policies,” saw migrants arriving from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1973 being wrongly deported, detained, or deprived of their homes and jobs.

After the fiasco came to light, the government promised compensation for all who suffered, but there has been criticism that the response was too slow.

In 2018, Levi Roots – who attended today’s reception – accused the government of ‘throwing out people who came to restore the country after two world wars’ during an appearance on Good Morning Britain.

Earlier today, Queen Camilla held an audience with Colonel Ruth Weir, Chief of the Royal Australian Corps of Military Police, at Buckingham Palace.

The Royal Family also attended the Bees For Development Garden Party to mark the charity’s 30th anniversary.

During the garden party, Camilla helped create a sculpture of a paper bee and also rubbed a drawing of the insect to symbolize their destruction.

The Queen also came face to face with a portrait of herself today – battling with a beehive on her head.

However, Camilla took to the interesting artistic take, commenting, “It’s actually quite flattering.”

The portrait on the postcard is one of the numbers being auctioned to benefit Bees For Development, a charity of which she chairs.

They were made by celebrity supporters including Grayson Perry, Charlie Mackesy, Hugh Boneville, Sir Lenny Henry and Dame Twiggy – with the twist that the buyer doesn’t know who they belong to.

Her Majesty viewed the exhibit at Bees for Development (BFD) Garden Party to mark the charity’s 30th anniversary year.

The Bee Garden Party aims to showcase its work by supporting and encouraging international communities to unlock the benefits of beekeeping to lift people in developing countries out of poverty, and to highlight the global threat to the species.

During the visit, Her Majesty — who wore a green patterned Samantha Sung dress with a bee brooch pinned to the waistband — met with BFD Commonwealth beekeeping partners from Ghana and Trinidad & Tobago.

She tasted some honey from India and declared it “tasty,” and tried some soothing organic honey “body butter” from Zimbabwe, which she smoothed into her hands.

She giggled as she then tried to shake hands with well-wishers covered in the moisturizer.

Guided by Martha Kearney, Patron of Bees for Development, Camilla also contributed to an art installation by artist Leonie Bradley.

First, she stamped a piece of paper with – appropriately – the words ‘Queen Bee’ and placed it on top of the statue that will also be up for auction.

“I don’t feel like I contributed that much,” she laughed.

She was shown hats made by couture fashion man Alison Tod and then came face to face with a beautiful bee pencil demonstrator titled Erasure l by artist Francis Gynn.

Guests were invited to erase a bee to raise awareness of global species loss.

“It feels like sacrilege,” the Queen said. “I’m going to choose a very small one. Before she left, she met The London Honey Company, who care for the beehives at both Highgrove, her husband’s home in Gloucestershire, and her own home, Ray Mill in Wiltshire.

She was told that they had just finished taking out her hives and that this year’s honey was ‘really dark’, which they believed was due to the Hawthorne being used by the bees.

There she met little Ota, nine months old, dressed in a bee costume with his father, Frantisek Zika, of the Humble Bee Gardeners.

Bees for Development is a specialist charity that ensures that people experiencing inequalities – often women and girls, people with disabilities, and minorities, indigenous peoples – have the opportunity to use beekeeping as a livelihood tool. and awareness of environmental issues. It works in more than 50 countries around the world.