The so-called “Windrush Generation” are those Afro-Caribbean British who came to the United Kingdom from colonies in the West Indies in the late 1940s and 50s and their children. The name is derived from the ship Empire Windrush which carried the first group of British from Jamaica to London in 1948 who were to fill acute shortages of staff in hospitals and the transport system. The independence of their homeland and changes in various Immigration Acts deprived them of British citizenship unless they went through a naturalization process.
In 2013, the then Home Secretary, Teresa May instituted a policy of creating a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants which insisted on landlords, employers and the National Health Service requiring proof of legal residence. Many in the Windrush Generation were unaware of these changes until they started to lose jobs and be refused National Health treatment. Some have been threatened with deportation and others have been abandonded on places like Jamaica with advice to “speak like a Jamaican”.
Relentlessly, inexorably, any British citizen who has simply had the temerity to fall in love with a foreigner and wishes to live in the country of their birth with their family is finding themselves at the wrong end of an uncaring bureaucracy. As is anyone living in the UK without the right paperwork, even if that paperwork was given to them when they moved here as children. As is any foreign national who finds themselves accused of wrongdoing, even if they dispute the accusations and have been living an organised, tax-paying life here in the UK for many years. Or any EU national who, thanks to legislation last year, is found sleeping rough.
“The Conservatives seem hellbent on creating a hostile environment for anyone not from the UK,” says the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Ed Davey. “These scare tactics should be beneath any civilised government.”
The tactics, however, are multiplying: landlords are now required to carry out checks on tenants’ immigration status. Hospitals, community interest companies and charities receiving NHS funds must conduct ID checks on patients before treatment in order to bill them if they are found not eligible for NHS care. From January [2018], banks and building societies will be [were] compelled to carry out immigration checks on the owners of 70m current accounts.
Up to 1971, people born in other Commonwealth countries had the right to live and work in the UK. The Act removed that right but gave those already resident in the country “indefinite leave to remain”. It did not however require then to register or have their passports endorsed. Many rightly already considered themselves British because of their personal history. In recent years, more have started to apply to regularise their position, often because they had lost jobs or been refused free healthcare. They were required, in part, to show they had been resident in the UK from 1971.
To gain this official recognition, people must apply for an official stamp known as No Time Limit (NTL), at a cost of £229.
The Home Office has put the onus on the individual to provide evidence.
It has not been using central tax and pension records, which could prove someone has been working, to support people's applications. Instead, the current system relies on people having kept their own documentation including payslips and bank statements.
Many tried to use evidence of their arrival but the Labour government had approved the destruction of the landing cards from those times, although the shredding took place after the 2010 General Election. (This may be aleviated by the discovery of passenger manifests in the National Archives.)
Many M.P.s from consituencies with large numbers of the Empire Generation had started to see increasing numbers at their surgeries (meetings with consituents in a local office) bringing up their problems associated with the increasingly “hostile environment”. Various community and trades union based groups started to campaign for change. They took the opportunity of London hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) to bring matters to a head. The presidents and prime ministers of the affected countries were enlisted to provide pressure on May. The publicity of the problem caused consternation in the country. Virtually all had come into contact with one of that generation in healthcare or on public transport. Quite simply, it was unfair and unjust, not fair play.
Faced with trying to defend an untenable position, May caved in. She had to grovel to a meeting of the delegates from the affected Caribbean countries. The last week has seen a series of statements and concessions in the Commons, welcomed by all sides of the House. These started with rather vague “regrets” and promises to do something. A special telephone hotline and section of the Home Office were opened and on Thursday the first four to go through were told they were to get their papers (either a confirmation of their British citizenship or Indefinite Leave to Remain). One person who was about to be deported was saved and released. The latest came on Monday with the announcement that citizenship tests and fees would be waived and Amber Rudd, the current Home Secretary, confirmed the policy would be extended to those from other Commonwealth countries similarly affected and compensation would be paid to those who had “suffered loss”.
In a statement to Parliament, Ms Rudd said the citizenship offer would apply not just to the families of Caribbean migrants who came to the UK between 1948 and 1973 [*], but anyone from other Commonwealth nations who settled in the UK over the same period.
Ms Rudd apologised again for changes to immigration rules - dubbed the "hostile environment" policy - which she said had had an "unintended and devastating" impact on the Windrush generation.
While the public expected immigration rules to be enforced, she said, it had never been the intention for a crackdown on illegal immigration to affect those who were "British in all but their legal status".
"This should never have happened," she told MPs.
"We need to show a human face to how we work and exercise greater judgement where it is justified."
It’s now up to community groups, campaigners and MPs to ensure that the government’s feet are held to the fire and they make good their promises. Hopefully including generous recompense to those badly treated. There are however some positive things to come out of the debacle.
The whole situation has brought the problems caused by xenophobia into stark relief for the general public. This may soften atitudes towards “immigrants”. It will certainly mean much closer examination of changes to immigration and residency policies in future. The first of these will be the arrangements for EU citizens resident in the UK after Bexit. Other EU countries will be closely examining any promises and could insist on changes, like long term supervision by the European Court of decisions. This would be impossible to get past the extreme Brexiteers in her party.
The timing of CHOGM was fortuitous and in part the quick government action was informed by the need to foster Commonwealth trading links after Brexit. The face-to-face meetings between May and other CHOGs (and their being able to express their concerns to the Queen as Head of Commonwealth who could pass these on to May as her Head of State) helps reinforce Commonwealth ties and the influence of the smaller nations within it.
The campaign for justice for these valued members of society was a masterclass of community campaigns being taken up at a critical time in Parliament. In this case it was led by several MPs from the community affected, in terms of both constituency and heritage, like David Lammy. Labour MP for Tottenham. They effectively used the select committees and ministerial and Prime Ministerial questioning in the House to bring the matter to a head before the CHOGM.
When I first started thinking about writing about this, I was considering comparing the situation of the Windrush Generation to the Dreamers in the USA but there are some differences.
The most significant is that those affected were British when they entered the country, subsequent independence and legal changes caused their dilema. To some extent the critical mass of cases necessary to persuade the public of the injustice grew over five years. The changes made by Trump have already raised issues of fairness — although I am not sure if the concept of “fair play” is so deeply ingrained in Americans (brutal I am afraid but seems accurate.)
The impending presence of Heads of Government of nations with an equal say in an international organisation and with who the government wants to foster existing good relations is both unlikely to influence Trump and an unlikely scenario in itself. There is also far more mainstream media coverage of events like select committees and Parliamentary questions in the UK. There is often international coverage of some Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) so the ability to raise matters with the chief executive in public on a weekly basis is a powerful tool in the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy. That is not to decry the work of members of the House and Senate in the US but there is far less opportunity for them to raise an issue to the top of the agenda. As far as we know, nobody was affected prior to the 2013 policy changes so the situation has arisen and (hopefully) been corrected in five years. The all-party support help expedite the changes.
On the other hand most Americans will not know the intricacies of the cases so the Windrush Generation could be used as an example of what other countries do to those treated manifestly unjustly by immigration authorities.
[*] The relevant Immigration Act was passed in late 1971, as shown in its title, but its provisions did not come into effect until 1973.