Janet McKay-Williams watched ITV’s Post Office drama earlier this month with a rising sense of fury, instantly aware of the parallels between her family’s experience and the difficulties suffered by the post office operators. McKay-Williams has been fighting for justice for people affected by the Windrush scandal ever since her husband, Anthony Bryan, who had been living entirely legally in the UK since arriving here aged eight in 1965, was sacked from his job, arrested, wrongly held in an immigration detention centre for five weeks and booked on a plane back to Jamaica, a country he hadn’t visited in more than 50 years.
The parallels between the Post Office scandal and Windrush are stark. Both are systemic injustices that were ignored for years, despite victims’ persistent attempts to get politicians to pay attention. In both cases there were people who lost their jobs, their homes, were wrongly imprisoned, and some who were driven to suicide. Paula Vennells received a CBE for her work at the Post Office; one of the Home Office civil servants who helped design the “hostile environment” policies that saw thousands of people misclassified as illegal immigrants was made a knight commander of the order of Bath by Theresa May. Both scandals exploded into public consciousness unexpectedly, triggering sudden and startlingly effusive declarations of contrition from politicians and officials who, just days earlier, had exhibited zero interest in either matter.
