In June 2018, the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, commissioned the Windrush Lessons Learned review – a report reflecting on the causes of the Windrush injustices. The independent review was in response to mounting evidence that members of the Windrush generation were losing jobs, homes and access to benefits, as well as being denied NHS treatment, detained, and forcibly deported to countries they left as children.
The findings, alongside the testimonies of black British citizens affected by the hostile environment, are truly anguishing.
Wendy Williams, the HM inspector of constabulary appointed as the independent reviewer, has examined the key legislative, policy and operational decisions that led to the Windrush injustices, and spoken to those who suffered grave and catastrophic consequences from becoming entangled in the government’s hostile immigration policies.
Williams’ review draws a stark conclusion: the UK’s treatment of the Windrush generation, and approach to immigration more broadly, was caused by institutional failures to understand race and racism. Their failures conform to certain aspects of Lord Macpherson’s definition of institutional racism, enshrined in the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, published in 1999.
Macpherson defined institutional racism as: “The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.”
The Windrush Lessons Learned review pulls no punches in describing the failure of ministers and officials to understand the nature of racism in Britain. It shows how the government’s hostile environment immigration policies had devastating impacts on the lives and families of black citizens within the UK.
It is hard to forget the story of Michael Braithwaite, who came from Barbados to the UK as a nine year-old, more than 50 years ago. Thinking that he was British, Braithwaite never applied for a passport – but in 2017, after the implementation of the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts, he suddenly lost his job as a special needs teaching assistant in a school where he had worked for more than 15 years. Michael had been living in the UK legally his entire life, but he lost his much-loved job and livelihood because he could not prove his citizenship status.
Demonstrators protest against immigration policy outside the Home Office in London, April 2018. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
The fact that black British people who had spent much of their lives in Britain, working and paying taxes, were accidental victims of the government’s immigration policies, perfectly illustrates how the coalition and Conservative governments not only failed to adhere to existing race relations legislation, but also showed a complete lack of understanding about “indirect discrimination” – a concept accepted in legislation as far back as the 1976 Race Relations Act.
Neither that lesson of “unintended discrimination”, nor the definition of “institutional racism” from the Macpherson report, seem to have been learned by Britain’s policymakers and politicians. Not only is intent irrelevant for assessing whether policies are racially discriminatory, but race equality laws (including the 2000 Race Relations Amendment Act and the public sector equality duty) appear to have made little difference to immigration and citizenship policies affecting people from different ethnic groups.
This reveals a shocking lack of understanding of what racism is – namely that it’s not solely about intent. In April 2018, the dramatic apology by the then prime minister, Theresa May, showed a failure to understand this lesson, when she insisted it wasn’t her government’s intent to disproportionately affect people from the Caribbean in the operation of hostile environment immigration policy.
For policymakers and politicians to learn the profound lessons of the Windrush review, they must not only “right the wrongs” suffered by the Windrush generation (as well as those from other ethnic minority groups), but they must also understand how and why immigration and citizenship policies, and Home Office culture, have repeatedly discriminated against black and ethnic minority citizens over the decades.
The Windrush generation are owed a full apology – an apology that is based on understanding that their treatment wasn’t an accidental misfortune, but the result of institutional failure to understand the role of race and racism in Britain.