Windrush

Do you remember when the Nation clapped – for NHS workers, public transport workers, care home workers?

‘Windrush’ has come to refer to a generation of over half a million people whose ancestry includes former Empire Subjects arriving into the UK from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1971.

The moniker itself is taken from the name of

the first of the ships to dock, carrying the new arrivals – MV Empire Windrush – which sailed into Tilbury docks, Essex, on

June 22, 1948 with over 500 passengers from the Caribbean; many of whom journeyed in families, with children.

The British Nationality Act 1948 – Gave Citizenship of the UK to all people living in UK and its Colonies, and the right of entry and settlement in the UK.

As a result of the human losses during World War II, the British government began to encourage immigration from the countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth (Caribbean) to fill shortages in the labour market. Many Caribbean people were attracted by the better prospects being offered by the British government in what was often referred to as the ‘mother country’.

There was plenty of work in Post-war Britain and industries such as the NHS, British Rail and Public Transport recruited directly from the Caribbean.

BAME Comment: This then should be the starting point in time from which we should judge the later actions of successive British governments towards the Windrush generation.

Mother Country

An advertisement had appeared in a Jamaican newspaper offering cheap transport by ship for anybody who wanted to come and work in the UK.

Many former servicemen took this opportunity to return to Britain with the hopes of rejoining the RAF, while others simply wanted to try their luck in the Mother country. Even though African Caribbean people were actively encouraged to travel to Britain through immigration campaigns created by successive British governments, many new arrivals were to endure prejudice, intolerance and overt racism from some sectors of ‘white British’ society.

Barbadian and Trinidadian pilots in the Royal Air Force during World War II

The newcomers found private employment and housing denied them on the basis of race. Trade Unions were unwilling to help ‘black workers’, nor live up to their own socialist mantra: workers of the world unite. Pubs, clubs, dance halls and churches would bar ‘black people’ from entering.

No Blacks, No dogs, No Irish’

Housing, in short supply following wartime bombing led to the first clashes with the established ‘white community’. Clashes continued and worsened in the 1950’s, with ‘race riots’ erupting in major cities, particularly London. Tensions had reached a boiling point by 1958 with the national media reporting attacks in the London area of Notting Hill by ‘White youths stoked by fascists and anti-immigration movements’.

As a footnote to history, the following year 1959 saw – as a positive response by the Caribbean community – an indoor event organised by the West Indian

Gazette editor Claudia Jones taking place in St Pancras Town Hall, the forerunner of what would become the Annual Notting Hill Carnival.

Second largest street carnival on the planet; surpassed in size only by Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Demographer – Ceri Peach estimates that the number of people living in Britain – but born in the West Indies – grew from 15,000 in 1951 to 172,000 in 1961.
By 1962 the government of the day introduced the UK Common Immigrants Act, restricting the entry of immigrants, and by 1972 only holders of work permits, or people with parents or grandparents born in the United Kingdom, could gain entry – effectively stemming most Caribbean immigration.

Recession & Turbulence – 70’s / 80’s / 90’s

The decades of the latter part of the 20th Century saw periods of comparative turbulence in wider British society; The Oil crisis and industrial disputes preceded a period of deep economic recession and widespread unemployment which seriously impacted the economically less prosperous African–Caribbean community; with unemployment figures more than 3 times higher than for their ‘white’ counterparts.

Despite the restrictive measures, an entire generation of Britons with African Caribbean heritage now existed, contributing to British society in virtually every field.

Discrimination, poverty, powerlessness and oppressive Police engagement sparked a series of “Uprisings” (Ref: Bob Marley – Uprising1980) in areas of substantial African-Caribbean populations.

St Pauls, Bristol 1980 – Brixton, Toxteth and Moss Side 1981 – Notting Hill Gate 1982 – Handsworth, Brixton and Tottenham 1985.

The Civil disturbances – branded ‘riots’ by Police and Media – had a profoundly unsettling effect on British Society as it neared the 21st Century, and led the government to commission the Scarman report to address the root causes of the disturbances. When the report concluded it highlighted the extent of: ‘Racial discrimination’ and ‘Racial disadvantage’ existing in Britain.

Following the tragic murder of Stephen Lawrence in a racially motivated attack; while waiting for a bus in Eltham, London, on the evening of 22 April 1993, Sir William Macpherson led the Public inquiry into the murder and the allegedly corrupt police investigation that followed.

In his final report, published in February 1999, Macpherson labelled the Metropolitan Police response to the teenagers killing “Institutionally racist”. He defined Institutional racism as “the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin”

21st Century Britain

The Austerity years following the 2008 Global Banking collapse, like previous economic catastrophes would fall heaviest on the poor and particularly the African Caribbean communities, already marginalised by decades of discrimination and disadvantage.

However, nothing could prepare the Windrush generation for what was to come!

Hostile environment ‘a bad idea’

Theresa May was two years into her job as Home Secretary when she told the Telegraph (Newspaper) in 2012 her aim was “was to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration”. Right Hon -Teresa May 2012.

BAME COMMENT: What might well have started off as a gaff at a Home Office Policy level, quickly turned into a bureaucratic nightmare and more importantly into a predictable disaster for anyone with a ‘brown or a black skin’….Yes! A nightmare for some members of that very same community the nation would be clapping, on Thursday evenings in 2020.

‘Even in its infancy, the key planks of the hostile environment policy were met with scepticism within the Conservative party…The former Cabinet minister David Laws, describes in his memoir a now notorious heated debate in 2013.

It was Eric Pickles, then the Communities and Local government minister, who tipped the mood from tense to sour. Pickles told (David) Cameron that requiring landlords to conduct immigration checks on potential tenants was a bad idea….He (Pickles) warned that “anyone foreign – looking” would face challenges accessing private rented accommodation…….. It was a prescient point’. (J. GRIERSON – GUARDIAN 27/8/2018)

WINDRUSH – sCANDAL

November 2017 British newspapers begin reporting that the Home Office were threatening Commonwealth immigrants who had arrived before 1973 with deportation if they could not prove their right to remain in the UK.

In April 2018, Prime Minister Theresa May apologised to leaders of Caribbean countries over the way the Windrush community in the UK had been treated by her government, promising compensation to all those affected.

In what has come to be known as the Windrush Scandal, Home Secretary Amber Rudd initially denied the existence of, and later denied being aware of Aggressive Departmental Deportation Targets, but eventually she resigned on 29 April 2018; After it was revealed that Landing Cards relating to earlier Windrush passenger arrivals in the UK had been destroyed by the Home Office in October 2010.

Amber Rudd’s successor as Home Secretary – Sajid Javid clearly had repair work to do at the Home Office. Referring to the victims of the Windrush scandal, he told the Sunday Telegraph “that could be my mum…my dad… my uncle…it could be me!”

BAME COMMENT: Eureka! Is Sajid Javid finally starting to understand the impact of discrimination……What about that Compensation Theresa May promised in 2018?????

The damage

Anthony Bryan, who arrived in the UK from Jamaica aged eight in 1965, was twice taken into immigration detention in 2016 after applying for a UK passport.

While Bryan assumed his first detention was a mistake, only a last minute legal appeal prevented him being forcibly removed to Jamaica after he was taken into custody a second time.

“What was frightening was that the last detention centre was at the airport, so I could see planes leaving and taking off”, said Mr Bryan, sitting back in his back garden in Edmonton, N. London.

Bryan, the subject of Sitting in limbo, a BBC Drama (2020) complained that Home Office officials continuously called him, rather than his lawyer, to question small items of paperwork. “I say: why do you phone me with stupidness like that?” he said.

Some victims have yet to secure even basic documentation from the Home Office. Kingsley Irons, a 75 year old who recalls coming to the UK from Jamaica in the 1950’s as a child, was referred to Crisis, the homelessness charity in early 2018, because he had been sleeping rough for around 20 years.
The experience left him confused. “I had it rough, so rough”, he said.

A review published in March 2020 by Wendy Williams, a solicitor commissioned by HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, said it was still unclear how many people had been forcibly removed from the UK or had lost their jobs or access to healthcare because of the issue. The Home Office said it has so far issued identity documents to 12,000 people.

BAME COMMENT: But what about the compensation promised back in 2018?

‘As of the end of March 2020, which is when the last figures were released, 1,275 claims for compensation had been submitted but just 60 payments had been made, fewer than 5% of the total.

Only around £360,000 had been paid out of a compensation pot that officials estimated could be required to pay out up to £500 million pounds’.
(Amelia Gentleman – Guardian 7 July 2020).

BAME COMMENT: ‘Compare the risible compensation of £360,000, paid out by the government so far to the Windrush generation with that of the mind boggling £20 million pounds paid out by the government in1835 to the British Slave owners.

Less than a month after the government of 1835 set up the National Debt Office, slave owners began their feeding frenzy – to the tune of Twenty million pounds of tax payers money- (See: BAME News June/July).

Responding to a parliamentary question put by Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire – the current Home Secretary, Priti Patel – wrote in reply that she was “aware of 5 unfortunate cases to date where the claimant has passed away after having submitted a claim but before receiving compensation”.

The government has also previously acknowledged that at least 13 people who were wrongly deported from the UK died before the government was able to inform them that a mistake had been made, and that they were free to return home.

BAME COMMENT:

Most of those affected are in their 60’s and 70’s or older. They were asked by successive British governments between 1948 and 1971 to leave their islands and come to Britain ‘the mother country’ to Support our newly formed NHS, drive our buses and trains, and to care for our elderly.

And they did that willingly, despite rampant discrimination. Even today their adult sons and daughters, grand-sons and grand-daughters do many of those same jobs, willingly.

So, what right do a callous and craven bunch of millionaire politicians, sitting around a government cabinet table have, to forget all their obligations to their citizens by discriminating against some of the poorest people in our society, simply to suit their own political ambitions?

To the reader…

It doesn’t matter whether or not you vote Conservative, Labour, Liberal, or for that matter are environmentally Green. Nor does it matter whether you are pro-Brexit or anti-Brexit, or even if you couldn’t care less; But If you do not see that a shameful injustice is taking place in our Country, when it comes to racial discrimination, then you are in denial my friend!

Rule Britannia ?

If you are tired of racial injustice please help us to bring to account those guilty of allowing racism to exist in our country. Whoever they are!

We ask you to support us by adding your name to our petition to conduct an Independent Public Inquiry into the Windrush scandal.

http://chng.it/gbbdwZpH2D

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