In the week of the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s disgusting Rivers of Blood speech, Britain finds itself detaining and harassing the children of the Caribbean migrants who came here, at our invitation, to help to rebuild the country and its industry after the Second World War.
Named after the first ship that brought them here, the Windrush generation made their lives here, paid their taxes here, and enriched our society.
They or their parents never applied for passports because they didn’t need them and they trusted Britain when, in 1971, they were promised they had “indefinite leave to remain” by a progressive Conservative Prime Minister who had courageously rejected Mr Powell and his fellow nativist populists.
Now, decades later, when these Windrush children apply for a new job, try to open a bank account, rent a property, get NHS treatment, seek support from the benefit system or travel abroad, they suddenly find they don’t have the right documents.
Some have been threatened with detention; a few may even have been deported — no one, including the Government, knows.
The Home Office is now in a panic, setting up emergency teams to help and promising assistance.
The Home Secretary has apologised and said her department “sometimes loses sight of the individual”. The Prime Minister today says “sorry” too.
Privately, Downing Street tells us she is “furious” that her chance to shine at the Commonwealth conference in London has been ruined.
But there is no escaping the simple truth. The treatment of the Windrush generation was not a mistake or an oversight by an unwieldy bureaucracy.
It results from a deliberate act of policy. It was Mrs May, as Home Secretary, who pursued a relentless drive to make life in Britain impossible for those who, her department believed, were here illegally — all in pursuit of an arbitrary and elusive target of reducing net migration to below 100,000.
Banks were required by law to see correct immigration documents. Landlords and employers were made to demand the same.
The Right-wing media railed against migrants coming here to use the NHS, so the Health Secretary announced, to Tory applause, new passport checks before patients were admitted to hospitals. A succession of welfare ministers made announcements about clamping down on benefits for foreigners.
Then the Brexiteers harnessed age-old hostility to immigrants to win majority support for their minority concerns about Parliamentary sovereignty.
Labour politicians anxious to reconnect with the angry populist mood said they too would act against so-called “uncontrolled immigration”.
Now Britain is reaping what it sowed.
A nation built by immigrants, from Angles and Saxons, to Huguenots and Jews, African-Caribbeans, South Asians, Chinese and Europeans, has allowed anti-immigration populists to dictate its politics.
It is a sight to behold, watching those who have spent a decade fuming about the ills of immigration now shedding crocodile tears about the mistreatment of the Windrush children.
They should have the self-awareness to realise that this is where they have led this country.
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comm ... 16056.htmlThis is good from the Evening Standard. Theresa May should not be allowed to run away from the mess she set up as Home Secretary.