Victims of Windrush era still waiting for reparations after 75 years

They came in thousands, men, women and children from the ex colonies who were answering the call of the British government to help in the country's post war reconstruction efforts.

Amongst the throng on the Tilbury Docks disembarking the Empire Windrush was passenger number 830, an RAF World War II veteran, Simeon George Rowe.

His son, the author and journalist Marc Wadsworth, recounts his story,

My father signed up to be on that ship. And to return to this country on June the 22nd 1948 ... went straight to Birmingham, to find work in Britain's second largest city and is quoted in the Birmingham Gazette talking about the unfriendliness of the people there, the fact that there was a great “colour bar”.

You see, under uniform, as liberators for this country against Hitler's Nazis, they were welcomed, and then returning, out of uniform, they face the colour bar and hostility.

Isn't that disgusting?

Marc Wadsworth, Author and Journalist

• Victims of Britain’s Windrush era, still waiting for justice after 75 years.
  

  Victims of Britain’s Windrush era still waiting for justice

  Commemorative events are taking place across the UK to mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the vessel HMT Empire Windrush.

For thousands the news only got worse because in 2018, the then Prime Minister, Theresa May, admitted the government's hostile environment meant thousands from the Windrush era, and their descendants, had been mistakenly caught up in the immigration crackdown.

People who come [sic] here on their parents passports as children, they didn't know Jamaica, they didn't have anybody that grew up in Jamaica, being deported.

After they had served their usefulness, paid their taxes, worked in factories, on the transport system, on buses; forcibly removed from this country.

Marc Wadsworth, Author and Journalist

• Racist British Immigration policy and The Windrush scandal.
  

  Racist British Immigration policy and The Windrush scandal

  Unjust laws that deliberately target people from minority ethnic backgrounds are to blame for the Windrush scandal, which saw hundreds wrongly detained, denied legal rights and, in some cases, deported from the UK.

Events across the country are marking the contribution of the Windrush pioneers, but there is still much that demands attention when the celebrations conclude.

The aptly named Windrush square in Brixton, in South London, was formerly the epicenter of the black and minority ethnic community in the United Kingdom.

And there's growing anger in communities like this, because despite all the political pledges that have been made, the current administration has done very little to provide recompense to the Windrush generation and their descendants.

• Public outcry over further deportations of Jamaicans from UK
  

  Public outcry over further deportations of Jamaicans from UK

  The move to deport a further group of Jamaicans from the UK has caused an outcry among migrant rights advocates who say the move is unfair and politically motivated.

Race relations campaigners feel the actions of the government are deliberate.

This government is the most extreme racist government that we've had in post war Britain and you can see the evidence of that in everything they do.

You know, the fact that British citizens we’re treated as criminals. You're descendants of the Windrush pioneers. You're a third class citizen living in a supposedly first class democracy. Your rights are not respected; they are violated by immigration services, by police services, by social services.

Racial inequality is something that is growing in 2023. … Vast differences have opened up between the experience of black people and white people in reading in terms of health, education and employment.

Lee Jasper, Race Equalities Campaigner

The government has promised to learn lessons from the scandal that destroyed so many lives. But campaigners say there is still a long way to go.

• Study reveals UK far from ‘racially just society’
  

  Study reveals UK far from ‘racially just society’

  A major survey into race equality reveals, ethnic and religious minorities in the UK are suffering from “strikingly high” levels of abuse.

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