It should have been a week of sheer festivity, to mark the contributions to life in Britain of people from the Caribbean. Seventy-five years after the HMT Empire Windrush docked in Essex, there is much for their descendants and communities to be proud of. Interviewed in advance of Thursday’s anniversary, Alford Gardner, one of the few remaining survivors of the hundreds who boarded the ship in the Caribbean in 1948, said he “wouldn’t change a damn thing” about his life. Having served with the RAF in the second world war, he left Jamaica aged 22, got married in Leeds and had eight children.
Because 75 is a special anniversary – the National Health Service will reach the same milestone next month – and thanks to dedicated funding for projects celebrating the Windrush generation, there will be a slew of commemorative events this summer. One of these, in Wolverhampton, will explore the entwined histories of the health service and the Caribbean migrants who worked for it. But National Windrush Day, as 22 June has been officially known since 2018, is a day of mixed emotions for many of those whose life stories it recognises. Pleasure in being the focus of attention, and in the fact that immigration is for once being celebrated, is mixed with bitterness at what it took to get this date on the national calendar.
That was the exposé of Home Office wrongdoing known by the shorthand of the “Windrush scandal”, even though many of those affected came to the UK from Commonwealth countries not in the Caribbean. Starting in 2017, this newspaper revealed that thousands of people who arrived as children were denied access to healthcare or other entitlements, because they could not prove their immigration status. After the introduction of a “hostile environment” policy in 2012, requiring public authorities, including employers, to run checks, more than 160 individuals were either deported or placed in detention. In April 2018 the then home secretary, Amber Rudd, resigned after the existence of numerical deportation targets was revealed.
Five years on, the government has not followed through on commitments made in the aftermath of these disgraceful events. Only eight out of 30 recommendations in Wendy Williams’s independent review have been fully implemented, while the compensation scheme has been plagued by delays and demands for documentation (the lack of which was what caused problems in the first place). The home secretary, Suella Braverman, has scrapped plans to strengthen independent oversight of immigration processes. This week it emerged that the unit set up to oversee changes is being disbanded.
Immigration is part of Britain’s past and should be remembered. Earlier this year a home was found in the City of London for a Migration Museum, marking the end of a 10-year search. The Windrush is one of the most widely recognised symbols of this history, and celebrations of its arrival should be enjoyed. But it is no wonder that they bring with them what some have described as a sour taste. The laws and processes governing immigration in the UK grow ever harsher, and earlier wrongs have not been put right. More are being uncovered. A BBC investigation showing that about 400 people were repatriated from UK hospitals between the 1950s and 1970s raises troubling questions about consent. The past is another country, but the unjust and racist treatment of migrants carries on.
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