[0:00]I could never forgive them for what they've done to me. Thousands of lives were ruined. I could never forgive them for what they've done to other people of color. and I want to apologize to you today. All of a sudden, they were not British citizens anymore. They were fired from their jobs without knowing why. denied their basic rights - access to healthcare, housing. How many have been denied health under the National Health Service? How many have denied pensions? How many have lost their job? This is a day of national shame. They are the Windrush generation. They came to the UK from the Caribbean. The British government invited them. Citizens of the British Empire coming to the mother country with good intent. Many are to be found jobs. But decades later, it hunted them. London is the place for me.
[0:52]London, this lovely city. In the late 1940s, post-war Britain is marked by a crumbling economy and is trying to recover from World War II, but doesn't have enough men to carry out the heavy manual labor involved in rebuilding. So, what does Britain do? It turns to its former colonies and makes a call to the people it once enslaved to fill its labor shortage, offering them paid jobs and a future for their family in the motherland. Some will go into industry, others intend to rejoin the services. Around half a million people from the Caribbean arrived in the UK under this context. Now the end of their journey is near. What will they find in the land they regard as El Dorado? I arrived in the UK at the age of 6, in 1960. I believe it was coming to the end of November into December that particular year. It was strange. It was the first time I was seeing snow. As years passed, these migrants raised their kids and integrated into the British system. They went to British schools, worked British jobs, paid taxes to the British government. They had the right to work and live across the country under the 1948 Nationality Act. and their right to stay was made permanent by the Immigration Act of 1971. They had no reason to believe that this could ever be taken away from them one day.
[2:24]Richard was on a family holiday when it happened. We went on vacation to Trinidad to meet my then in-laws. My wife at the time wanted to go back and spend some time with her parents because they were living on a 10-acre farm and they wanted some help. So we decided to go on vacation and that is where the problem started, right? When Richard wanted to return to the UK at the end of his holiday, his British passport was declared invalid and his right to return was denied. When my passport expired, right, um, I made three attempts to go to the British High Commission in Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago. I was met with typical British avoidance. "Well, you're no longer British. You are Santa Lucian and Saint Lucia got independence in 1979." They were telling me to apply for a Saint Lucian passport. But at the time, there was no Saint Lucian high commission or anybody in terms of immigration who could have handled or get me a passport. So I was stuck. 41 years I was stuck. I must be one of the longest serving or longest persons kept out of the country. Born in Saint Lucia and raised in the UK, Richard was left stateless in Trinidad. His marriage broke down. He lost contact with his loved ones, including his daughter. He was refused entry after multiple attempts, even when his mother died. When my mother passed away in 2003, I went back to them. They made me feel less than a person. I left the High Commission in British High Commissioner with tears in my eyes. I was crying. That is the woman who gave life to me, who is sick, critically ill and has passed away. And you guys denied me the opportunity to pay respect to my mom.
[4:33]How can I forgive you for that? I mean, things were so bad that I actually made three attempts at suicide. Imagine this, right? I'm in this dilapidated structure, sheltering because in the Caribbean during the rainy season, it's just pure pure rain and you can't be outside. So myself and some other homeless people in this abandoned building. I have a piece of rope. I take the rope, swing it over a rafter, tie it on my neck on a broken chair. The chair is broken, the roof is leaking, right? And I have to say that it just wasn't my time because when I jumped off the chair, the rafter came down, I came down and that was it. Lucky for me, right? And I put that at the feet of the Home Office.
[5:40]Unaware that his case would make headlines as part of a bigger story. Richard carried on with his battle to return home. Meanwhile, tougher days for the Windrush community were looming in the UK. Only legal migrants have access to the labor market, free health services, housing bank accounts and driving licenses. And this is not just about making the UK a more hostile place for illegal migrants. It is also about fairness. In 2012, the British government introduced a controversial immigration policy known as the "hostile environment" to expel irregular immigrants. The policy ended up targeting immigrant communities far and wide, branding many in the Windrush generation as "illegal", even though their parents or grandparents had formally been invited to live in the UK decades earlier.
[6:33]When the truth behind the policy was finally exposed in 2018, the Home Office's cruelty was laid bare. Shocking stories hit the headlines: those of people being denied basic rights, detained in immigration centers, even deported. A review of historical cases also found that many people like Richard were already caught in the dragnet and have been struggling for years. This is because the Home Office kept no records of those who arrived between 1948 and 1973. It even destroyed their landing cards, making it practically impossible for the Windrush community to prove their right to stay. At least 57,000 people were affected, but the full extent of the impact remains unknown. In 2018, the government acknowledged its mistake and launched a compensation program for victims. Home Secretary, will you resign over Windrush? The Home Secretary apologized to the House of Commons yesterday for any anxiety caused and I want to apologize to you today. However, many see the Windrush compensation scheme as a failure. The offers were insultingly small, with victims receiving less than 10,000 pounds on average. In 2023, Richard returned to claim his rights and compensation. These structures I can't remember them being here. Wow. Major transformation.
[8:08]You see my apartment, which is then apartment when we left it to go on a vacation, and I guess every all our stuff got chucked out or whatever, right? And yeah, we lost we lost out on that. They've given me back my British passport, they've given me back citizenship. I'm going to get compensation, but I have to fight, my lawyers have to fight to get me a fair compensation. I am 71. When I left it to go on vacation, I was 29. You can't get back those years. You can't get back those years. The Windrush scandal is regarded as part of a longer history of racial injustice in the UK. For Richard and others like him, justice is far from served and what they rightly deserve is long overdue. You cannot invite people to your home to assist you, and once you get through with your business, once you're okay, you want to kick them out and treat them in an inhospitable manner, right? You know, who does that? I just became a victim of that hypocrisy, of that racism. I may sound hostile, I may sound angry, but I had that because that's what you made, that's what you gave me. That's what I'm left with.
