Tuesday 28 November 2017 Paulette Wilson, who has lived in the UK for more than half a century, speaks to the Guardian about her treatment at the hands of the Home Office. The government had threatened to send her to Jamaica – a country she has not seen since she left it at the age of 10.
Friday 1 December 2017 Anthony Bryan becomes the second of the Windrush generation facing deportation under Theresa May’s hostile environment policy to tell his story to the Guardian. Bryan’s deportation to Jamaica was only cancelled at the last moment after a legal intervention. “They don’t tell you why they are holding you and they don’t tell you why they let you out. You feel so depressed,” he said.
Thursday 11 January 2018 The government relents in Wilson’s case, finally giving her official leave to remain in the UK. During her more than 50 years in the UK, Wilson had served food to MPs as a cook in the House of Commons and raised a family. But the Home Office did not initially believe she was in the country legally.
Wednesday 21 February 2018 “It’s an appalling place to live. I’m a proud man; I’m embarrassed at my age to be living like this,” Renford McIntyre tells the Guardian as the former NHS driver, who arrived in the UK in 1968, details how he has been left homeless, living in an industrial unit after being told he was not allowed to work and was not eligible for any government support.
Thursday 22 February 2018 The issue begins to snowball, as senior Caribbean diplomats urge the Home Office to adopt a “more compassionate” approach towards retirement-age Commonwealth citizens. “In this system one is guilty before proven innocent rather than the other way around,” the Jamaican high commissioner to London, Seth George Ramocan, says.
Saturday 10 March 2018 There is widespread outrage as it emerges a man who has lived in London for 44 years is told to produce a British passport or face a bill of £54,000 for cancer treatment – forcing him to go without. Official suspicion about his immigration status also led to Albert Thompson – not his real name – being evicted and spending three weeks homeless.
Thursday 22 March 2018 May refuses to intervene in Thompson’s case, having promised to do so when confronted by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, at prime minister’s questions. She says the decision lies with the hospital under her government’s new rules, which place a responsibility on clinicians to decide whether or not a case is urgent and demand documents before giving treatment where they are thought not to be.
Monday 26 March – Monday 9 April 2018 Three more similar cases emerge: those of Sarah O’Connor; Elwaldo Romeo and Michael Braithwaite, who have each lived in the UK for more than 50 years. O’Connor was challenged to prove she was in the country legally by the benefits agency and Romeo received a letter from the Home Office saying he was “liable to be detained” because he was a “person without leave”. Braithwaite, an experienced special needs teaching assistant, lost his job after his employers ruled he was in the country illegally.
Thursday 12 April 2018 International anger at Britain’s treatment of the Windrush generation grows as Caribbean diplomats condemn the Home Office. “I am dismayed that people who gave their all to Britain could be seemingly discarded so matter-of-factly,” says Guy Hewitt, the Barbados high commissioner to the UK.
Friday 13 April 2018 Voices of opposition are also raised domestically, as four Church of England bishops join a call for an immigration amnesty for those people who moved to the UK from the Caribbean decades ago. They start a petition that is backed by more than 140,000 signatories by Monday.
Sunday 15 April 2018 Downing Street refuses a formal diplomatic request to discuss the issue at this week’s meeting of the Commonwealth heads of government, leaving Caribbean diplomats with the impression the UK is not taking it seriously.
Monday 16 April 2018 Events begin to move quickly. The Labour MP, David Lammy, calls this a “day of national shame”, telling the Commons: “Let us call it as it is. If you lay down with dogs, you get fleas, and that is what has happened with this far right rhetoric in this country.”
The home secretary, Amber Rudd, announces the creation of a team dedicated to ensuring no more Windrush-era citizens be classified as illegal immigrants and acknowledges Home Office failings. She also promises none of them will be deported because of lack of paperwork.
More than 140 MPs from all parties sign a letter to the prime minister, demanding she find a “swift resolution of this growing crisis”. The same day, it emerges that a man who moved from Jamaica in 1955 has spent the last seven years fighting the Home Office over his immigration status. Richard Stewart cannot afford the £1,400 fee to naturalise in the UK.
Tuesday 17 April 2018 A former Home Office employee tells The Guardian that the department destroyed thousands of landing card slips in 2010 which recorded Windrush immigrants’ arrival dates in the UK.
The anonymous whistleblower says the records were destroyed when the Home Office’s Whitgift Centre in Croydon was closed and staff were moved to another site despite employees telling their managers it was a bad idea.
Photograph: WPA/Getty Images
May apologises to the 12 Caribbean heads of government during a meeting for the treatment of Windrush citizens and promised that no one would be deported.
Wednesday 18 April 2018 May promises that Thompson, will get the care he requires. The prime minister tries to blame Labour for the decision to destroy the landing card slips, but it emerges that one of the decisions to do so took place in 2010 when she was home secretary.
Friday 20 April 2018 May tells Commonwealth leaders that members of the Windrush generation who had suffered “anxieties and problems” as a result of the government’s immigration rules would receive compensation.
Monday 23 April 2018 Rudd pledges that the Windrush generation will be granted British citizenship and the Home Office will waive citizenship fees for those affected and their families, as well as any charges for returning to the UK for those who had retired to their countries of origin. It will also scrap language and British knowledge tests for the Caribbean immigrants involved.
Wednesday 25 April 2018 Rudd gives evidence to the home affairs committee and says she “deeply regrets” not spotting the Windrush scandal. She rejects claims the Home Office had targets for the removal of immigrants in the country illegally. But her claim is contradicted by Lucy Moreton, the general secretary of the ISU, the union for immigration service workers.
Thursday 26 April 2018 Rudd is brought in front of the Commons after a document shows officials did have targets for departures. She admits the targets existed, but says they were local and she did not approve them. After her Commons statement, she announces that the targets will be ditched.
Friday 27 April 2018 A memo emerges that was sent to Rudd giving details of targets, apparently contradicting her earlier claims. When she finally responds to the revelation, she says on Twitter that she had not seen the leaked memo, “although it was copied to my office, as many documents are”. She repeats her claim that she “wasn’t aware of specific removal targets”, adding: “I accept I should have been and I’m sorry that I wasn’t.”
Sunday 29 April 2018 Leaked letters published in the Guardian reveal that in a 2017 letter to May, Rudd had told the prime minister of her intention to increase deportations by 10%. This appears at odds with her claims she was not aware of deportation targets.
Monday 30 April 2018 Rudd resigns as home secretary and admits she “inadvertently misled” MPs over targets for removing immigrants in the country illegally. In her resignation letter, Rudd says she takes “full responsibility” for the fact she was not aware of “information provided to [her] office which makes mention of targets”.
Wednesday 3 April 2019 The new home secretary, Sajid Javid, announces a compensation scheme for the Windrush victims. No cap is place on the fund, making it impossible to estimate how much money will eventually be paid out. Announcing the scheme, Javid says: “Nothing we say or do will ever wipe away the hurt, the trauma, the loss that should never have been suffered by the men and women of the Windrush generation, but together we can begin to right the wrongs of Windrush.”
Thursday 19 March 2020 An independent inquiry into the scandal concludes that the Home Office demonstrated “institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race”. The report, chaired by Wendy Williams, an inspector of constabulary, has 30 recommendations for the Home Office and prompts an official apology to the victims by the new home secretary, Priti Patel.
Thursday 24 July 2020 Paulette Wilson, a prominent Windrush campaigner who was wrongly detained and threatened with deportation, dies unexpectedly at the age of 64. Her death came just over a month after she and five other survivors of the scandal delivered a petition to Downing Street calling on the government to speed up compensation payments and introduce all of Williams’ recommendations. Four days after the petition was delivered Patel agreed to Wilson’s demands.
Wednesday 18 November 2020 The Guardian reveals that complaints of racism and discrimination within Home Office teams set up to address the Windrush scandal have prompted the launch of an internal investigation. Alexandra Ankrah, the most senior black Home Office employee in the team responsible for the Windrush compensation scheme had resigned in protest, describing the the scheme as systemically racist and unfit for purpose.
Wednesday 19 May 2021 The Home Office reveals that 21 people have died while waiting for Windrush compensation claims to be paid. The admission reinforces concerns that the scheme is taking too long to make payments to older people affected by the scandal.
Wednesday 24 November 2021 The home affairs committee finds that only 5% of Windrush victims have received compensation four years after the scandal emerged. The committee’s damning report is the fourth in six months to criticise the speed of compensation, following similar frustrations expressed by the legal charity Justice, the National Audit Office and the public accounts committee.
Thursday 31 March 2022 An inspection report finds the Home Office has failed to transform its culture or to become a more compassionate department, as it promised to do after the Windrush scandal. The independent expert, Wendy Williams, who was appointed to advise the Home Office on how to make changes to avoid any future crisis, says she is “disappointed by the lack of tangible progress or drive to achieve the cultural changes required”.
