Cuisine peppers imported from the Caribbean on sale at London's
Brixton Market. The peppers are a key ingredient of "
Jerk" dishes The earliest Jamaican immigrants to post-war Britain found differences in diet and availability of food an uncomfortable challenge. In later years, as the community developed and food imports became more accessible to all, grocers specialising in Caribbean produce opened in British
high streets. Caribbean restaurants can now also be found in most areas of Britain where Jamaicans and other such groups reside, serving traditional
Caribbean dishes such as
curry goat, fried
dumplings, and
ackee and saltfish (the national dish of Jamaica). "
Jerk" is a style of cooking from Jamaica in which meats (including pork and chicken) are dry-rubbed or wet marinated with a very hot spice mixture. The best known Caribbean food brands in the UK are Dunn's River, Walkerswood and
Grace Foods. Grace Foods is originally from Jamaica but is now a multi national conglomerate. In March 2007, Grace Foods bought ENCO Products, owners of the Dunn's River Brand, as well as "Nurishment", a flavoured, sweetened enriched milk drink, and the iconic Encona Sauce Range. Grace Foods supplies around one third of products in the UK and has global headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica. Walkerswood, also of Jamaican origin, is now owned by New Castle Limited and has a range of sauce and marinade products. In 2001, Port Royal started manufacturing
Jamaican patties in London, which are available in supermarkets and Caribbean takeaways across the UK. A patty is the Caribbean version of a Cornish Pasty, pastry with a meat filling. Following its success in 2007 on TV show ''
Dragons' Den, the Levi Roots brand has grown into a multi-million pound enterprise. Reggae Reggae Sauce and other Levi Roots products are now stocked in all major UK supermarkets. In 2021, Grace Foods launched its Irie Eats Caribbean'' street food range at
Tesco. This came in response to 2021
Mintel data, which revealed that nearly half (49%) of Brits would like to try Caribbean cuisine at home. Various other Jamaican brands have expanded their presence in the UK food and grocery market. Jamaican and Caribbean cuisine is becoming increasingly popular in the UK. Caribbean food topped a (2015) list of cuisine types that British diners want more of on menus. According to a report by the Caribbean Export Development Agency (Caribbean Export), the number of Caribbean restaurants in the UK tripled in the 12 months leading up to August 2019.
Jerk chicken has been named as the UK's favourite Caribbean dish.
Fashion There have been a number of British Jamaicans who have made their mark in the
world of fashion.
Supermodel Naomi Campbell was the first black model to appear on the front cover of
Time,
French Vogue,
Russian Vogue and the September issue of
American Vogue. Dunn became the first black British model to enter the
Forbes model rich list and is considered an icon and supermodel.
Munroe Bergdorf has walked several catwalks for brands including
Gypsy Sport and was the first
transgender model in the UK for
L'Oréal.
Leomie Anderson has walked in various
Victoria's Secret Fashion Shows and became first black British
Victoria's Secret Angel.
Bruce Oldfield is best known for his
couture and
bridalwear designs and has a client list that includes
Queen Rania of Jordan,
Jerry Hall,
Samantha Cameron,
Charlotte Rampling,
Jemima Khan,
Sienna Miller,
Rihanna,
Catherine Zeta-Jones and the late
Diana, Princess of Wales. Oldfield collaborated with
McDonald's in 2008 and received an
OBE for his services to the British fashion industry. Another notable contributor is
Grace Wales Bonner who founded the London-based label Wales Bonner. Originally specialising in menswear, her designs have earned several prestigious awards. Bianca Saunders is the British holder of the
ANDAM Fashion Award for young talent and her designs have been picked up by
Ssense,
matchesfashion.com and Machine-A. Other notable contributors include Nicholas Daley and
Martine Rose.
Literature British Jamaicans have made significant contributions to British literature. Poet
James Berry was among the first Caribbean writers to come to Britain after the 1948 British Nationality Act. Berry's writing often explored the relationship between black and white communities and he was in the forefront of championing Caribbean/British writing. In 1981, he won the
Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition, the first poet of Caribbean origin to win the prestigious prize.
Andrew Salkey was another leading figure of the first wave of post-war Caribbean writers who settled and worked in London. He was the main presenter of BBC's
Caribbean Voices and was a key figure in the formation of the
Caribbean Artists Movement. Berry, Salkey,
Hall and other first wave writers gave
Caribbean literature an international audience for the first time and helped establish Caribbean writing as an important viewpoint within
English literature. More contemporary contributions come from authors including
Andrea Levy whose novel
Small Island won the
Whitbread Book of the Year and the
Orange Prize for Fiction, one of Britain's highest literary honours. The book also earned Levy the 2005
Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was voted Best of the Best Orange prize novel
Small Island tells the tangled history of Jamaica and UK through the eyes of characters who in 1948 arrive at Tilbury, London, on the
HMT Empire Windrush.
BBC News included
Small Island on its list of the
100 most influential novels and it was made into a two-part
television drama of the same title. Levy became the first writer of colour whose pen would join the
Royal Society of Literature's historic collection, which includes pens belonging to
Charles Dickens,
George Eliot,
T. S. Eliot and
Lord Byron.
Zadie Smith won the
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the
Commonwealth Writers' Best Book Award (Eurasia Section) and the Orange Prize for
On Beauty. Smith's acclaimed first novel,
White Teeth (2000), was a portrait of contemporary multicultural London, drawing from her own upbringing with an English father and a Jamaican mother.
White Teeth was an international best seller and won multiple accolades, including the
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, the
Whitbread Book Award in category best first novel, the
Guardian First Book Award and the
Betty Trask Award.
Time magazine included the novel in its
list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 and
the novel was adapted for television in 2002. At the 2020
British Book Awards,
Candice Carty-Williams became the first black woman to win the "Book of the Year" accolade, for her novel
Queenie. The novel, which describes the life and loves of Queenie Jenkins, a vibrant, young British-Jamaican, received positive reviews and was marketed as "a black
Bridget Jones".
Queenie entered the
Sunday Times Bestseller hardback chart at number two and went on to win numerous accolades. A TV adaptation of
Queenie has been announced as being in development for
Channel 4. In July 2020,
Linton Kwesi Johnson received the
PEN Pinter Prize and was described as "a Living legend", "a poet, reggae icon, academic and campaigner, whose impact on the cultural landscape over the last half century has been colossal and multi-generational". Other notable contributors include
Ferdinand Dennis,
Winsome Pinnock,
Victor Headley,
Benjamin Zephaniah and
Raymond Antrobus, who became the first poet to win the
Rathbones Folio Prize for his collection
The Perseverance.
Media An investigation by the
IOM found that in general Jamaicans in the UK don't have a particular preference of favourite newspaper, many choose to read local newspapers and the national British press (such as
The Guardian the
Daily Mail and
Metro), however the investigation also showed that some 80% of British Jamaicans show an interest in Black or ethnic minority newspapers. The
Weekly Gleaner which as its name suggests is a weekly publication distributed in the UK and contains specific news from the
Jamaica Daily Gleaner. The genre which combines elements of
Caribbean mento and
calypso with American
jazz and
rhythm and blues became a major part of Jamaican mid-20th-century culture, and the popularity of it also became evident in the Jamaican expatriate community in the UK. Despite the presence of Jamaicans in a number of countries at that time (such as the United States), ska music only really triumphed in the UK. Significantly, this led to new genres of music coming out of
London,
Birmingham,
Coventry and
Bristol. In Birmingham in the 1970s and '80s, reggae was very popular and three of the leading British reggae groups of the time hailed from the city;
UB40 (who have now sold over 70 million records worldwide),
Musical Youth and
Grammy Award winners
Steel Pulse. The large Jamaican population was also a massive influence on the emerging Indian genre
bhangra that grew out of the city's large South Asian community. Off the back of punk and reggae came
"Two Tone". Often regarded as the second wave of Ska, many of the Two Tone bands had been inspired by Jamaican Ska records of the 1960s. With a faster tempo than Jamaican Ska, Two Tone "Ska" was commercially successful in the UK from 1979 until the early eighties.
The Specials from Coventry,
The Beat from Birmingham,
The Selector from Coventry, and
Madness from Camden in London, are the best known examples of Two Tone bands. In late 1970s London, a fusing of Jamaican reggae with a more British pop sensibility led to "
lovers rock", a melodic but distinctively British version of reggae. In Bristol, a decade later, sound-system culture combining with the emerging digital sampling technology led to the emergence of
trip hop. A distinctive mixture of heavy basslines and sometimes complex arrangements and samples, trip hop was born in the
St Paul's area of Bristol from the likes of
Smith and Mighty,
Massive Attack and
Portishead. After the first wave of house music in the early 1990s, the rhythmic influence of reggae produced the dance music genre "
jungle", in which sped-up beats became popular in clubs combined with reggae sounding "dub" basslines and MC chants. This genre of music became more widely known as "drum 'n bass" by the close of the decade, with the former incarnation now being referred to as "oldschool jungle". Other British music genres spawned through the influence of Jamaicans living in the UK are
grime,
funky house and
dubstep. The influence London-born
Julian Marley son of legendary
Bob Marley and member of the
Rastafari movement and
David Hinds lead singer of the reggae band
Steel Pulse is just one of the musicians who helped popularise reggae and Jamaican music in general in the UK. A number of other British Jamaican musicians specialise in reggae and traditional Jamaican music, including
Grammy Award nominees Maxi Priest and
Musical Youth. It should however be noted that although reggae music originated in Jamaica, reggae musicians and reggae-influenced musicians now belong to a variety of ethnicities and nationalities in the UK (see
white reggae and
mixed race reggae). Second-, third- and fourth-generation British Jamaican musicians have helped bridge the gap between traditional Jamaican music and contemporary global music.
The X Factor Series 5 winner
Alexandra Burke focuses mainly on the
R&B, pop,
soul genres,
Chip primarily focuses on the
hip-hop,
grime,
R&B and
pop rap genres whilst
Goldie is a popular
electronic music artist. This shows the diverse array of music produced by the current generation of British Jamaican musicians. Amongst some other current contemporary British musicians of Jamaican ancestry are
Keisha Buchanan,
Academy Award nominee Celeste,
Alesha Dixon,
Jade Ewen,
Jamelia,
Kano,
Beverley Knight,
Lianne La Havas, Grammy Award nominee
Mahalia, Grammy Award Winner
Ella Mai, Grammy Award nominee
Nao,
Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Grammy Award nominee
Jorja Smith, and double Grammy Award winner
Caron Wheeler.
Sport and
England striker
Daniel Sturridge, who was born in
Birmingham to Jamaican parents British Jamaicans have contributed significantly to UK sporting successes.
Tessa Sanderson won
javelin gold at the
1984 Summer Olympics and is the only British athlete to win an Olympic throwing event.
Denise Lewis won
heptathlon gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, a feat that was repeated by
Jessica Ennis-Hill at the
2012 Summer Olympics.
Kelly Holmes was one of the success stories of the
2004 Summer Olympics having won multiple gold medals and still holding numerous British records in distance running. Another 2004 success story was
Jason Gardener and
Mark Lewis-Francis, who won the gold medal in the
4 × 100 metres relay with
Darren Campbell and
Marlon Devonish.
Louis Smith won bronze in the men's
pommel horse event at the
2008 Beijing Olympics, Britain's first Olympics gymnastics medal since 1908. Other notable British athletes of Jamaican origin who have successfully competed in the Olympic Games include Olympic silver medalist
Colin Jackson, Olympic bronze medalist
Tasha Danvers and the fastest woman in British history, Olympic bronze medalist,
Dina Asher-Smith. Besides athletics and gymnastics, British Jamaicans have also become heavily associated with the sport of
boxing.
Frank Bruno is one of the more notable individuals, he won 40 out of 45 of his contests and held the title of
WBC heavyweight champion in the mid-1990s.
Chris Eubank also held world boxing titles including
middleweight and
super middleweight champion (his son,
Chris Eubank Jr. is also a boxing champion).
Lennox Lewis of dual British/Canadian citizenship is one of the most successful boxers in the sports history, he is one of only five boxers who have won the heavyweight championship three times.
Errol Christie is also a former boxer, he is the Guinness World Record holder for achieving the most amateur title wins. At the
Sydney Olympics of 2000,
Audley Harrison became Britain's first
heavyweight gold medalist. In more recent times
David Haye has become the new face of British Jamaican boxing, Haye has won numerous titles and in 2009 beat
Nikolai Valuev to become the WBA Heavyweight Champion (the fifth Briton to do so, and the third British Jamaican – the other two being
Britons of Nigerian origin).
Dillian Whyte, another well established British boxer who was born in Jamaica, has held the
WBC interim heavyweight title since March 2021.
Clive Sullivan was the first black captain for a Great British team, in
any sport, and captained the
Great Britain team to victory in the
1972 Rugby League World Cup. He is the only player to win the coveted
Man of Steel award on three occasions and is widely considered to be one of the greatest players in rugby league history. Other notable rugby players of Jamaican heritage include
Jimmy Peters, who was
England's first black
rugby union international, and
Jeremy Guscott.
Viv Anderson, became the first Black player to represent the England senior men’s team in a full international match on November 29, 1978,
John Barnes is the most capped English Jamaican to have played for the
England national football team, and a number of the current national team players have origins in Jamaica, including
Darren Bent,
Aaron Lennon,
Raheem Sterling,
Theo Walcott,
Daniel Sturridge,
Kyle Walker,
Danny Rose,
Ashley Young and
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. In turn,
Nottingham born and raised
Wes Morgan chose to represent the
Jamaica national football team which he captained. In 2021 alone in the Jamaican squad there were 11 British born and raised players:
Amari'i Bell,
Liam Moore,
Ethan Pinnock,
Wes Harding,
Michael Hector,
Adrian Mariappa,
Kasey Palmer,
Andre Gray,
Jamal Lowe,
Greg Leigh, and
Bobby Decordova-Reid. There have been a number of British Jamaican
wrestlers and
weightlifters who have made their mark on the sport. Hailed as Britain's greatest-ever weightlifter,
Louis Martin won Olympic medals in weightlifting at
Rome 1960 and
Tokyo 1964 and claimed four
World Championship titles, three
Commonwealth golds and set two official world records. Ralph Rowe was Britain's first black
Paralympian and won
weightlifting gold at the Heidelberg 1972 Games.
Fitz Lloyd Walker was the first black wrestler to represent Great Britain at the Olympic Games and achieved a bronze medal for
England at the
1986 Commonwealth Games. Walker is in the
Guinness Book of World Records for winning the British Wrestling Championships 14 years in a row.
Cricket has long been a popular pastime among British Jamaicans (though interest has waned since the 1980s). Several British Jamaican cricketers have represented
England, making some pivotal contributions to the side.
Norman Cowans was the first West Indies-born fast bowler to play
Test cricket for England and was instrumental in England's victory at the
MCG in 1982. Cowans took a match-winning 6 for 77, following his first innings 2 for 69, in England's dramatic 3 run victory. This victory sent
The Ashes series to
Sydney for the deciding Fifth Test, which ended in a draw.
Devon Malcom played in 40
Test matches for England and took part in 30
One Day Internationals. On
the West Indies tour in 1989/90, Malcolm made a major impact and excelled as England won the First Test. He then took ten wickets in the Second Test and was named man of the match in the Third Test. At
The Oval, against
South Africa, Malcolm would go on to record figures of 9/57- propelling England to a series-levelling eight-wicket victory in August 1994. It remains one of the best bowling figures in Test cricket history.
Mark Butcher,
David Lawrence and
Dean Headley all represented England, making contributions to the side. 31% of respondents claim-ed to favour the original terrestrial commercial channels such as
ITV1,
Channel 4 and
Five, whilst 23% of people stated a preference to satellite and cable channels such as
MTV Base, the
Hallmark Channel and
Living.
Michael Ward who won the
2019 BAFTA Rising Star Award,
Colin Salmon and
Ashley Walters, whose role in
Bullet Boy earned him a
British Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Performance. Numerous British Jamaican actors have become successful in US film and television.
Antonia Thomas is famed for her role as
Dr. Claire Browne in the award-winning drama series
The Good Doctor. Manchester-born
Marsha Thomason is noted for her roles in the US shows
Las Vegas and
Lost, whilst
Oxfordshire-born
Wentworth Miller of
Prison Break fame is also of partial Jamaican descent. Miller earned a
Golden Globe Award nomination for his
Prison Break role and won a
Saturn Award for his guest appearance in the critically acclaimed
The Flash.
Stephen Graham featured in three
Martin Scorsese productions and won two
Screen Actors Guild Awards as part of the cast of the much lauded
Boardwalk Empire.
Delroy Lindo earned a
Satellite Award for his role in American
docudrama television film Glory & Honor. Lindo also won numerous accolades for his role as Paul, in
Spike Lee's highly praised
Da 5 Bloods. Some British Jamaicans who have starred in Hollywood blockbusters include
Naomie Harris in
Miami Vice and
Pirates of the Caribbean. She also starred in the critically acclaimed film
Moonlight, a performance that earned her a number of accolades, including nominations for the
Golden Globe,
BAFTA, and
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Adrian Lester appeared in
The Day After Tomorrow and the political blockbuster
Primary Colors, directed by
Mike Nicholls and co-starring
John Travolta,
Kathy Bates,
Billy Bob Thornton and
Emma Thompson. The role earned Lester a
Chicago Film Critics Association award nomination for "Most Promising Actor".
Lashana Lynch featured opposite
Brie Larson in 2019's
Captain Marvel and played the role of Nomi, the secret agent who replaces
Craig's retired
Bond in
No Time to Die. Lynch won a BAFTA for her role in
No Time to Die, thanking her Jamaican parents while accepting the award. The
James Bond series and Jamaica are inextricably linked. British author
Ian Fleming, creator of the super spy, resided at
GoldenEye for many years, where he wrote all his James Bond novels. The first Bond film
Dr No (1962), and
Live And Let Die (1973) were both shot mainly in
Kingston, Jamaica.
Notable people See Main article: List of Jamaican British people Notable trailblazers: •
Diane Abbott - Britain's first black female
Member of Parliament, the first black female
Shadow Home Secretary and the longest-serving black MP in the
House of Commons •
Sislin Fay Allen - Britain's first black
woman police constable •
Kehinde Andrews - Professor of
Black Studies at
Birmingham City University. He is the first black studies professor in the UK and led the establishment of the first black studies programme in Europe at Birmingham City •
Barbara Blake-Hannah - Author and journalist. British television's first black on-camera reporter and interviewer •
Aggrey Burke - Psychiatrist and academic. Britain's first black
consultant psychiatrist, appointed by the
National Health Service •
Dawn Butler - Member of Parliament and the first black female to speak from the
despatch box in the House of Commons •
Betty Campbell - Community activist and
Wales' first black head-teacher •
Naomi Campbell -
Supermodel, the first black model to appear on the front cover of
Time,
French Vogue,
Russian Vogue and the September issue of
American Vogue •
Candice Carty-Williams - Writer, the first black female to win the
British Book Awards "Book of the Year" accolade. •
Nira Chamberlain - President of the
Institute of Mathematics and its Application. The first black
mathematician to feature in the biographical reference book ''
Who's Who'' •
William Robinson Clarke -
World War I airman and Britain's first black
pilot •
Joe Clough - London's first black
Bus driver •
Yvonne Conolly - Britain's first black female
headteacher •
Garth Crooks - Footballer, pundit and the first black chairman of the
Professional Footballers' Association • Dyke, Dryden and Wade - Britain's first black multi-million-pound business enterprise •
Michael Fuller - Former
Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of the
Crown Prosecution Service and former
Chief Constable of
Kent Police. He was the first (and so far only) ethnic minority chief constable in the United Kingdom •
Henry Gunter - Civil rights leader and the first black delegate to be elected to
Birmingham Trades Council •
Paulette Hamilton - District nurse and manager for the
Royal College of Nursing.
Birmingham's first black Member of Parliament •
Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin - The
Church of England's first black female bishop. Also the first woman and the first black person to serve as
Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons •
Eric Irons - Equal rights campaigner and Britain's first black
magistrate •
Wilston Samuel Jackson - Fireman and Britain's first black train driver •
Neil Kenlock - Co-founder of
Choice FM, the UK's first and only licensed, independent black music radio station. Co-founder of the first black British
glossy magazine,
Root •
Sam Beaver King - Campaigner and
Southwark's first black Mayor •
Les Ballets Nègres - Europe's first black dance company, founded in 1946 •
Una Marson - Writer, the first black female radio producer at the
BBC •
Caroline Newman - Best selling author and lawyer, the first black
solicitor to be elected to the
Council of the Law Society of England and Wales • Bill Morris - Britain's first black trade union
General Secretary •
Geoff Palmer - Scientist and inventor of the Barley Abrasion Process. Scotland's' first black university professor •
Jimmy Peters - Rugby player,
England's first black
rugby union international •
Heather Rabbatts - Solicitor, businesswoman and broadcaster. The first female and ethnic minority person to serve as a
Football Association director •
Marvin Rees - Britain's first
directly elected black
Mayor •
Jason Robinson - Rugby international, the first black captain of the
England national rugby union team. Also the first former professional
rugby league player to captain the England rugby union team •
Tessa Sanderson - Athlete, the first and only British woman to win gold at an
Olympic throwing event, and the first black British woman ever to win Olympic gold •
Mary Seacole - Nurse and businesswoman, voted number one in the list of
100 Great Black Britons •
Alex Scott - Sports presenter, pundit and footballer. The first female football pundit at a World Cup for the
BBC, the first female pundit on
Sky Sports Super Sunday, and the first female to be a permanent presenter of
Football Focus •
Ethel Scott - Athlete, the first black woman to represent Great Britain in an international athletics competition •
Clive Sullivan - Rugby league player, the first black captain for a Great Britain team, in
any sport •
Dame Sharon White - Businesswoman, the first black person, and the second woman, to become a
Permanent Secretary at the
HM Treasury •
James (Jim) Alexander Williams - Bristol's first (
ceremonial) black
Lord Mayor ==See also==