Black Britons are asking if the UK is “going backwards”, the Windrush commissioner has warned in an interview marking his 100th day in office.
The Rev Clive Foster said Windrush scandal survivors were questioning whether “history is repeating itself” as UK politicians target legal migrants.
Foster, whose parents came to the UK from Jamaica in 1959, called for empathy and compassion in Home Office decision-making, adding: “I don’t want to live in a country where I’m made to feel I don’t belong.”
The commissioner, recruited to speak for survivors and oversee the government’s work to address the scandal, has met 700 survivors during a UK tour since taking office in June. This week, the Home Office announced they had adopted a series of his recommendations for reforming the underperforming Windrush compensation scheme.
Foster is now calling for “proper stress testing” of any proposed changes to immigration policy to ensure there is “a clear understanding of the human impact”, suggesting legislation could be needed to ensure no future government rowed back on promises made after Windrush.
In the Windrush scandal, Commonwealth Britons who had entered the country legally as British subjects were wrongly classed as illegal migrants years later.
In parallels with the rhetoric of the 1970s, the UK’s migration debate reached another low point this week when Katie Lam, a Tory MP, said legal migrants should “go home”.
Reform UK has said it would scrap indefinite leave to remain – the pathway to settlement for legal migrants. Meanwhile, the Labour government plans to double the standard qualifying period for settlement.
Foster did not refer to individual politicians, but said “rhetoric which is demeaning” needed to be challenged, as the UK’s “resilient” Black community heard echoes of the past.
“People have been telling me how they are fearful, they feel fragile, that with the current debate, they feel less secure,” Foster said.
He added: “I think people are also concerned that the hard-fought commitments around integration and identity in this country are going to get lost.
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“I’ve been hearing people talk in terms of, ‘could this be history repeating itself? This is the kind of language I was hearing years ago.’ There’s a cold chill. I’ve heard people say to me: ‘are we going backwards, Clive?’”
Foster said people he had met during his tour felt huge pride in being British, saying he was “humbled” to see Black “veterans coming out wearing their medals” in Wales.
But he said the Windrush scandal was “bigger than we first realised” and that more needed to be done to reach people from across the Commonwealth whose status had been denied, Foster said.
“In going around the country, people have spoken to me about their fears about losing some hard-won commitments around this,” he added. “People have been talking to me about how we are securing progress beyond the lifetime of a government. So I will be working in my office and with ministers, to be looking at how we can achieve that through legislation.”
This week, the Home Office announced survivors would get 75% of their compensation award in advance; would be compensated for lost contributions to a work or personal pension for the first time, and that applications would be prioritised for claimants 75 and over and people with serious health conditions, after recommendations from Foster. Earlier this year, Foster said people had told him they believed the “Home Office is waiting for us to die off”.
“I think what people are most afraid of is the lack of justice or healing,” he added. “They want to see action now, justice now.”
Foster said one “byproduct” of the Windrush scandal had been “more dialogue and knowledge” of the wartime and postwar Black British story. On Tuesday, Foster met campaigners after the Home Office moved portraits from Brixton’s “Windrush Untold Stories” exhibition to display in its buildings.
“We don’t want to be defined by a scandal,” Foster added. “That’s why the gentleman comes out in his medals, proudly and says, ‘look, this is the contribution that I have made’. People want to be defined by their dignity and what they’ve given.”
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