Windrush: The Trauma Continues

The Byline Podcast talks to Windrush campaigners, after Suella Braverman abandoned a series of key pledges made to the UK's Caribbean population

Suella Braverman. Photo: Imageplotter / Alamy

Members of the UK’s Caribbean population are still living in fear of being “sent home” - despite having lived virtually all of their lives in this country.

Campaigner Glenda Caesar told the Byline Times podcast that the Windrush Scandal, in which dozens of migrants were wrongly deported from Britain, had caused long lasting trauma in the community.

“I’m still coming across people who are ‘hiding’” she said. 

“They still have this belief that they're going to be deported.”

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The Windrush Scandal erupted in 2018 in the wake of the Theresa May’s “hostile environment” towards illegal migrants, but it had been brewing for a decade.

Glenda, who came to Britain at the age of three months in 1960, was profoundly affected herself.

As immigration rules tightened throughout the 70’s and 80’s she found herself wrong-footed by a lack of documentation. 

She was threatened with deportation after returning from holiday in Dominica, and sacked for “gross misconduct” by the NHS in 2009 because she couldn’t prove her UK citizenship.

“That's when I felt, ‘Oh, my God, I don't belong. I really don't belong,” she said.

Worse was to come when she was denied benefits for a decade, despite having contributed to the system throughout her working life, whilst her British born son was given two months to prove his status or face deportation as well.

“I contemplated suicide.  I thought perhaps it would make things easier for him” Glenda admits.

The same problem afflicted thousands of others from the Caribbean whose families had responded to the call from the ‘Mother Country’ in the post war era.

Ironically, it was publicity around the ‘hostile environment’ that drew the media to the family’s door, and after a round of interviews, both Glenda and her son were granted the citizenship they had been entitled to all along.

The bitter taste left by the affair hasn’t gone away though, and as preparations begin to mark the 75^th anniversary of the first voyage of the SS Empire Windrush from Jamaica to London, the government has now u-turned on three key recommendations of an independent report into the scandal.

The Home Office has confirmed that pledges to establish a Migrants’ Commissioner, to increase the powers of the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, and to hold reconciliation events have all been scrapped.

Jacqueline McKenzie, Head of Immigration with Leigh Day Solicitors condemned the decision:  “To say, ‘I don't want to have reconciliation events with people in that community’ says ‘I don't care about people in that community’. It's shocking.”

A Government spokesperson said, “We remain absolutely committed to righting the wrongs of Windrush and have paid, or offered, more than £64 million in compensation to the people affected.

“We are making progress towards the vast majority of recommendations from Wendy Williams’ report, and believe there are more meaningful ways of achieving the intent of a very small number of others. 

“Through this work, we will make sure that similar injustices can never be repeated and are creating a Home Office worthy of every community it serves.”