Windrush scandal victims deliver petition to Downing Street – for all the good it will do
The Empire Windrush brought many people to the UK to help rebuild the country after World War II. If it had still been in service a couple of years ago, the Tories would have been trying to use it to deport them all again.
If ever you needed proof that your government tells you what to do, and not the other way around, it’s this.
The Windrush Scandal – and the “hostile environment” that spawned it – was created from a desire to rid the UK of huge numbers of citizens who came to the UK from Commonwealth nations, notably in the Caribbean, to help rebuild the nation after World War II.
Their job was done, you see, so racist politicians decided to destroy any information offering them a right to UK citizenship and then deport them on the grounds that they could not show a good reason to stay.
Of course, they were caught in the act. And in fairness, the Conservative Government apologised.
Only words.
When it came to actually providing compensation to the people they attacked – make no mistake, this was a deliberate attempt by a UK government to harm its citizens – our Tory administration has spent two years dragging its heels.
Yes – a recent docu-drama on the BBC has reminded us all of the extent of the crime here.
But I see no willingness to make recompense to people who, being poor, cannot exert any influence over the politicians who had all power over them.
Watch what happens and see if I’m right.
Survivors of the Windrush scandal have delivered a petition to Downing Street signed by 130,000 people calling on the government to speed up compensation payments and implement all the recommendations in the Windrush Lessons Learned review.
Paulette Wilson and Anthony Bryan – who were wrongly held in immigration detention centres and threatened with deportation to Jamaica, a country they both left as children in the 1960s and had not visited in more than 50 years – handed the petition to police officers at the gates of Downing Street on Friday.
They both expressed their anger that so few people affected had received compensation in the two years since the government first apologised for wrongly classifying thousands of legal residents as being in the country illegally.
They were joined by Michael Braithwaite, a special needs teaching assistant, who was sacked from the primary school he had worked at for 15 years; Glenda Caesar, who was sacked from her job as a GP administrator after more than 20 years working for the NHS; and Elwaldo Romeo, who was told by the Home Office he was facing detention and should return to Antigua, a country he left 59 years earlier as a four-year-old boy.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The home secretary has been clear that the mistreatment of the Windrush generation by successive governments was completely unacceptable and she will right those wrongs.” However, they added, Williams had recommended that the Home Office consider the review carefully before responding, “and we are committed to honouring that request”. Patel had said she would update parliament before the summer recess.
Officials in charge of organising the compensation scheme stressed that claimants should not feel discouraged by the difficulties experienced by others and should persist with making claims. A spokesperson said assistance in completing the claim form was available via the free Windrush helpline on 0800 678 1925.
Source: Windrush scandal survivors deliver petition to No 10 | UK news | The Guardian
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The 3 main players in the Windrush scandal were May/Johnson/Patell. I rest my case your Honour
Fascist dictator women hater boris’s huge rubbish bin is overflowing with petitions he’s discarded! Fascist dictator boris and his female puppet Piti Patel will do nothing concerning actually giving those ‘nasty Windrush expendible women and men’ any financial compensation.
Why the windrush women and men should pay the fascist tories for the privilege (sic) of working for a racist; women hating xenophobic fascist tory government!