Windrush Act, A Letter to your MP

For Immediate Release

Template letter to MPs

Dear  _________MP

As you are aware in April 2018 the Windrush Scandal broke in the media with harrowing stories of people having to prove their legal status, despite living here all their lives.

As a direct result of the hostile environment, and even before, people were:

·        losing their jobs,

·        losing their homes and accommodation,

·        being denied access to the NHS,

·        being denied entitlement to benefits,

·        having to prove that their children were rightfully theirs,

·        unlawfully incarcerated,

·        unlawfully detained or deported, and

·        refused re-entry to the UK after a holiday.

Furthermore, because of intense stress related to his ordeal with the Home Office, the hostile environment caused the death of Windrush Scandal victim, Dexter Bristol.

This is just one case of thousands; there are many others like him.

People who are STILL suffering from:

·        ill health

·        post-traumatic stress disorders

because of the aggressive nature of the hostile environment the which has included the nature of the enquiries by Home Office officials and the British government’s policies.

The wrongs are still being done.

People are still having to:

apply for status and because of this, fear making any contact with the Home Office because of the potential consequences, despite the reassurance that has already been given that those making applications to the Windrush Taskforce will not have their details passed on to Immigration Enforcement.

Organising charter flights of Jamaicans to deport did not help that perception and made the job of getting people to come forward to rectify their status much harder.

Only 12,030 people have been given documents confirming their legal status according to your report of 29th April 2020 to the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Of the 12,030 people granted documents 3,613 have been granted Indefinite Leave to Remain. So far, proportionately, very few people have applied or been granted British citizenship (5,913) when compared to the 50,000 people estimated to have been affected by the Scandal.

The Windrush Generation, by virtue of section 4 of the British Nationality Act 1948, all at one time, had Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies status:

“Citizenship by birth

s.4 Subject to the provisions of this section, every person born within the United Kingdom and Colonies after the commencement of this Act shall be a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies by birth.”

It is only because of independence legislation, which was passed by the UK government, mostly without the knowledge of Section 2.2 of the Independence Acts and certainly without any consultation with the Windrush Generation, that they were stripped, at various times, of their CUKC status. With the exception of people from Antigua and Belize, people were given no opportunity to opt out or to retain their CUKC status, regardless of whether they were living in the UK at that time.

The Immigration Act 1971 made them “subject to immigration control” in Britain, the place that they had freely entered with the same rights as persons born in the UK. Britain was their own country, which they had built and defended in two world wars and which their ancestors had been enslaved to create wealth for. 

Since 2018, after two years and a 2nd Windrush Day, there are many who find it hard to celebrate with so much work still to be done to right the wrongs done to the Windrush Generation.

The Windrush Generation and their descendants, Parliament and the British public demand that the historical wrongs be righted.

Legislation brought in between 1962-1973 was intentionally discriminatory and designed to limit the ability of black citizens to come to the UK and live, study and work here freely when those were rights and entitlements that they had been born with. Whilst it has been widely acknowledged that legislation from this time was discriminatory, nothing has been done by Parliament to rectify it.

The UN General Assembly proclaimed by Resolution 68/237 the International Decade for People of African Descent commenced on 1 January 2015. Its recommendations include the following:

• Introducing measures to ensure equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of the right to equal treatment before the tribunals and all other organs administering justice;
• Designing, implementing and enforcing effective measures to eliminate the phenomenon popularly known as “racial profiling”;
• Acknowledging and profoundly regretting the untold suffering and evils inflicted on millions of men, women and children as a result of slavery, the slave trade, the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, apartheid, genocide and past tragedies, noting that some States have taken the initiative to apologize and have paid reparation, where appropriate, for grave and massive violations committed, and calling on those that have not yet expressed remorse or presented apologies to find some way to contribute to the restoration of the dignity of victims;
• Inviting the international community and its members to honour the memory of the victims of these tragedies with a view to closing those dark chapters in history and as a means of reconciliation and healing; further noting that some have taken the initiative of regretting or expressing remorse or presenting apologies, and calling on all those that have not yet contributed to restoring the dignity of the victims to find appropriate ways to do so and, to this end, appreciating those countries that have done so;

To date the British Government does not appear to have signed up to this UN resolution. The wrongs done to the Windrush Generation began with independence legislation ending CUKC status for people from the Caribbean. The time is now for the UK government to restore the dignity of the victims of the Windrush Generation.

The following actions should now be taken:

1)     All people who were born as either British Subjects prior to 1948 or as Citizens of the UK and Colonies post-1948 and who had been settled in the UK for a period of 5 years by 1 January 1983, should, for the purposes of the Immigration Act 1971 and the British Nationality Act 1981, be treated as having continued to be Citizens of the UK and Colonies throughout this period irrespective of the impact of any independence legislation passed in relation to their countries of origin.

It is to be commended that the Windrush Taskforce has been placing less of a burden on the individual to provide documentation from every year of their residence and has been proactive in assisting people by collaborating with HMRC and other government departments to establish their lengths of continuous residence. However, there continue to be disparities in the outcomes for individuals where some have been granted British Citizenship and others have been granted or provided with evidence of their existing indefinite leave to remain.

The Windrush Generation were born with the same rights and entitlements as people born in the UK should not now be subjected to ‘good character’ and/or ‘close ties’ tests in order to be registered as British. They should be British Citizens as of right. The burden to provide documentation to meet the ‘close ties’ test still rests on the individual and many are being refused or give up. So the wrongs are still being continued in this aspect of the Windrush Scheme.

13,745 applications have been refused: 2,413 from inside the UK and 11,332 from overseas.

The reason for such high levels of refusals is unclear.

The Windrush Generation were not informed of the loss of their CUKC status on the independence of their country of origin and they were provided with no documentation when the 1971 Act came into force, despite their continued lawful right to indefinitely remain in the UK.

They were not informed about the risk that they might lose that indefinite right to remain in the UK if they spent a period of more than 2 years outside of the UK.

The impact on the Windrush Generation has been well-documented in the Wendy Williams Windrush Lessons Learned Review. To right this wrong, and the devastating impact that the hostile environment has had upon people who were never supposed to be affected by it at all, is to now:

put those people back into the position they would have been in, had they never been stripped of their Citizenship of the UK and Colonies.

2)     An additional payment should be made on top of any compensation to everyone that successfully applies to the Windrush Scheme from the Caribbean who came before 1st January 1973 of ￡10,000 automatically as a symbolic payment of reparation for the harm cited in recommendation (1) of the Wendy Williams Windrush Lessons Learned Review.

There was a serious loss; Citizenship of the UK and Colonies, and the later ability to automatically acquire British Citizenship, was lost to all those who didn’t have a father or grandfather born in the UK.

Cabinet papers of the time show that there were racist motivations for the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 and the Immigration Act 1971. The impact of this legislation continues to affect those in the UK today.

The racial motivations of this legislation require that any compensation be uplifted to reflect the abhorrence of racial discrimination.

The Home Office has committed to right the wrongs done to the Windrush Generation but the legal position as it currently stands is failing to do that.

We continue to call for a fair and effective remedy.

The Windrush Scandal has not only impacted in the immigration field but also in education, in health, in work and criminal justice.

This has damaged community cohesion and public trust which must be repaired through a “Windrush Act” which places a legal duty on public bodies and large private organisations to tackle race disparities in these areas.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,