How the Windrush scandal changed a generation

Hello and welcome back!

Happy new year! I’m sure I’m not the first to say that, but I don’t think I’ll be the last. And I thought I’d start The Spark off this year with one of the most impactful political stories the UK has seen in the past decade. 

Last year, I told you about a couple of the scoops my old boss, Meirion Jones, brought into the public eye – the Jimmy Savile expose, and subsequent BBC cover up, and the fake sheikh story. (If you’re a recent subscriber, you can catch up on that edition here.) 

When he was the editor here at TBIJ, Meirion always encouraged ambitious, headline-grabbing investigations. There was one word that came up again and again when he talked about the stories he wanted: Windrush. 

The Windrush investigation, spearheaded by Amelia Gentleman at The Guardian, brought together the stories of Commonwealth citizens unjustly targeted by Theresa May’s “hostile environment” immigration policy. Hundreds of people had been affected – people who’d been in the UK since they were children suddenly found themselves denied access to services and threatened with deportation.

Many had arrived as children in the waves of migration from Commonwealth countries that the UK encouraged after the Second World War. The name “Windrush” comes from HMT Empire Windrush, one of the first boats to carry migrants from the West Indies to the UK. The Windrush generation in turn became the name for thousands of Caribbean-born Brits who came to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Under the rules at the time, they were British citizens, free to live and work in the UK. And they and their families were instrumental in building the UK as we know it today; they worked in the NHS and industries that had been decimated by war. 

But two things happened to change their citizenship and upend their lives. First, many of those Caribbean countries at last became independent nations. Suddenly, someone born in Jamaica no longer was a “Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies” but a citizen of Jamaica. Laws were passed to guarantee the rights of those who’d already emigrated. It was automatic, but that had its own pitfalls: many of those affected had no idea their citizenship had technically changed. After all, nothing had changed in how they lived their lives.  

In 2012, the then-home secretary Theresa May introduced the hostile environment policy, designed to “persuade” anyone in the country illegally to return home under their own power. Employers were forced to check their staff’s immigration status; landlords had to do ID checks, as did charities and the NHS, to ensure they offered services only to those in the UK legally.  

The Windrush generation was in the UK legally – anyone from the Commonwealth who arrived before 1973 was free to spend the rest of their lives here. But the new crackdown meant that suddenly they had to prove that. 

And the burden of proof was high. Officials wanted at least one, but sometimes as many as four documents for each year someone had lived in the UK. Each and every year, for people who had emigrated at least 40 years earlier. 

Oh, and the Home Office had destroyed thousands of landing cards, filled out when families arrived in the UK for the first time – the only records many had of their arrival. So on the one hand, the department wanted people in their sixties and seventies to document their entire lives; on the other, it couldn’t keep hold of the one bit of evidence that could have made the entire process redundant. 

The warnings started early. In 2013 at a meeting of the Commonwealth, and again in 2016, Caribbean leaders tried to raise the issue, as people who’d spent their entire lives in the UK found themselves deported to “homelands” they’d never known. Other Windrush victims, although still in the UK, were threatened with deportation and lost their jobs, their benefits, and even access to healthcare. 

It was only when The Guardian took up the case that the scandal forced the government to act. The first story came in November 2017, when Amelia covered the case of Paulette Wilson. The 61-year-old grandmother had endured two years of near-destitution after her benefits were cut off because the Home Office mistakenly thought she had no right to be in the country. Then she was detained in Yarl’s Wood, a notorious immigration detention centre, for a week and very nearly deported.

Looking back, it’s incredible to see the grace those supporting Paulette offered to the Home Office:

The lack of understanding went well beyond junior staff. That much became clear in the months afterwards when Amelia laid out, in story after story, how people from Sierra Leone, Canada, Kenya, Cyprus, as well as the Caribbean were all at risk. A story became a scandal. But finally, the wheels were turning.

Questions were asked in Parliament. By the end of April 2018, the home secretary Amber Rudd had resigned. Her replacement promised to identify anyone who’d been wrongly deported. The Home Office put together a special team to resolve citizenship applications and other immigration rights issues for those affected by the scandal. Eventually, compensation schemes were set up.  

Now, those schemes had their flaws – it was, after all, being run by the same government who made the mess to begin with, and payments were slow. Some victims died before they could be compensated. But for many others, the compensation was at least a small step towards justice, and regaining what had been taken from them. 

In the seven years since the story broke, the legacy of the Windrush investigation has grown – and reporters have continued holding the government accountable. There have been inquiries, reports and reviews, and somewhere among all that, lessons learned. 

The key thing for me is that it didn’t all come from that first story. Paulette’s ordeal should have been enough to prompt action, but sometimes the world doesn’t work that way. Yet Amelia and The Guardian kept reporting for six months, until the injustice she’d uncovered became impossible to ignore. That tenacity is inspiring, I think. 

So, here’s to another year of sticking with stories until they get results. 

This year, I’m excited to get to grips with more stories for you, and bring you the best journalism changing the world from my colleagues at exciting newsrooms across the globe. I want to dig into some of the best investigations from the history books, and tell you about the latest developments in the stories I’ve already written about. 

And I want to hear from you about what matters most to you, so this newsletter can be one that lifts your spirits and inspires you towards change as well, every week. 

I know, I know. A lot of people talk about change in January. But real, lasting, long-term change? That’s what The Spark – and us Sparkies – are all about.

See you next week!

Lucy