'I boarded a boat to UK - we were kept away from white passengers and our room was like a prison cell'

EastEnders' legend Rudolph Walker, who plays Patrick Trueman in the hit BBC soap, left his beloved Trinidad in 1960 - here he describes his harrowing journey to the UK

As EastEnders’ Patrick Trueman, Rudolph Walker is one of Britain’s best-loved soap stars. Now, as he approaches his 85 ^th birthday later this month, the actor is set to release his autobiography on September 26.

Here, in fascinating excerpts from his book, Walking With Dignity, he recalls his first journey from his childhood home in Trinidad to the UK.

Aged 20 and armed with homemade sweetbread, cake and ginger beer, he boarded the Oranje Nassau at the docks in Port-of-Spain on August 20 1960 for a new life in Britain….

“The first thing to hit me when the ship pulled out of the harbour, and the family and friends melted into one – becoming part of the landscape of the beautiful island of Trinidad – was the realisation that I was heading to a new life which could be for better or worse. ‘This is it!’ There was no turning back for Rudolph Malcolm Walker. I joined the group of other new passengers from Trinidad & Tobago, together with some who flew or sailed from Barbados, to make the journey to England.

We were then addressed by a ship’s officer assigned to that deck. His first statement that I recall was, ‘You are confined to this deck, you are not allowed above here.’ I looked up to see only white faces looking down. The officer then escorted us first to the dining room where we were to gather in an hour for dinner, then shown to our cabins.

They were small, with two or three bunk beds to each cabin. There were four or six passengers in each cabin. My cabin had three bunk beds for six of us. It looked like a prison cell, although I had never been in one, but I saw them in the movies, or maybe a slave ship minus the chains. Three or more weeks cooped up in there was a daunting prospect. On board the Oranje Nassau was a diverse group from various islands, fifty-three of us – all young black men – heading to carve out a new life in the United Kingdom.

I soon found common interests with several other passengers. The late Trevor Rhone from Jamaica also wanted to be an actor like me and was planning to enrol at the Rose Bruford Drama Academy. He was travelling with another Jamaican, Frank Cousins. Frank was in the Jamaican army, and hoped he would be able to get a better post or rank in the British Army by emigrating to the UK. Unfortunately, his dream didn’t materialise as his every application to join the British Army was rejected. Back in Jamaica he dabbled in the performing arts, so he turned to a life in the theatre as an actor and we ran into each other many times at casting calls or auditions.

The third of the Jamaican trio was Lloyd Gray, who was going to the UK to study engineering. We referred to him as ‘The Pastor’ as he was always ready and willing to offer a prayer before a meal or find a quote from the bible at any of our group chats. The four of us struck up a rapport. For all of us, it was the start of a journey of great expectation, of adventure and excitement.

The first day out to sea revealed that the passengers on the ship were divided. This was a merchant ship adapted to take some passengers, I believe, for the first time from the Caribbean, but all the black male passengers were on the lower deck with the white passengers above, out of bounds to us. There was just one exception - a black male passenger travelling above, but he made no attempt to communicate with us, so for the first time in my life I found myself being aware of racism. I’d had no real experience of it in Trinidad, sure, we all knew that those with lighter skin tended to have more opportunities than those of us who were darker, and there were some clubs, especially in Port-of-Spain, which were exclusive to the Europeans, but the two worlds seldom collided, it was just a way of life that existed from birth and most of us just got on with it.

Now racism, or what some of us believed was racism, was in my face. The journey was to last for about twenty-one days, and we realised that the fifty or so black passengers below might never see the rest of the passengers on the ship. As young men, we wanted to experience everything we could, have a real adventure on board. We were also soon aware that on a couple of evenings we’d hear big band music coming from the upper deck; it was a record player, and the white passengers, all decked out in dark suits and ties, were dancing on the deck. Some of us who loved dancing would do our version of the waltz and cha-cha-cha, sometimes mimicking the white passengers’ stiff upright stances, and we ended up in fits of laughter.

It was during one of those sessions that one guy from our group from Trinidad brought out his guitar and started playing and singing. Some of us joined in, either singing the popular calypsos, or negro spirituals, or imitating the black American singers – Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Paul Robeson, Johnny Mathis.

What started off as just a singsong mushroomed into evenings of great entertainment for us, poetry reading, storytelling, comedy sketches. The more laughs the better! We noticed one evening that two of the couples from the upper deck came down and stood watching what we were doing and seemed to be enjoying it, together with the crew member who was assigned to look after us. The following night when we performed there were about six couples who chose to leave their ballroom dancing and come down to watch us perform. The following day the purser asked if we’d agree to perform on the upper deck for those passengers.

And so, Trevor, Frank, Lloyd and I decided to devise a ninety-minute programme with a mixture of sketches, poems, folk songs, calypsos and storytelling – to entertain all passengers on board the ship. I recited two of the poems I had written as a teenager, ‘I was Born a Hero’, and ‘A Beggar am I’, and both appeared to go down well, while amongst the other passengers were guys who could sing, so in total there were about a dozen of us taking part.

It was just one performance almost ten days into the voyage. But the show proved quite a hit with passengers and crew alike, and for the rest of the journey, during the day many of us – especially the performers from the lower deck – were allowed to mix with the passengers above. The night before we docked, there was a huge dinner for the entire ship – a big British dinner. What a change of heart our gesture to entertain had evoked!

My first sighting of the English coastline was that of a grey still mass, which seemed lacking in life and movement. I had plenty of time to observe it as we docked on the south coast, but I remember the ship staying offshore for a couple of hours before we came into port. All I could see was greyness! And although I wasn’t cold – I had dressed for arrival in my grey suit, handmade especially for the journey, as were my shoes – it was damp and dull, and this was August, the height of the British summer. ‘What would the winter be like?’ I wondered.

To read more of Rudolph’s story you can buy his autobiography " Walking With Dignity " released September 26, by Chronos Publishing, priced £12.99 and available from all good bookstores.