On 26th September 2024, the Home Office published a remarkable report.
It is remarkable for two reasons:
- It was written and published by the Home Office – yet contains detailed evidence that racist Home Office policies over decades created the Windrush Scandal.
- It is thoroughly researched and well-written – by an anonymous author who had access to decades of internal government documents and interviewed dozens of staff.
Actually, the report was written for internal purposes, to educate Home Office staff. The Home Office resisted making it public for 3 years. It took a court order and then a new Labour government for it to get published.
The historical analysis goes back to 1066 and covers the formation of the Home Office in 1793 to implement the Aliens Act, the purpose of which was to control immigration. The analysis shows how the Windrush migrants, people from the Caribbean arriving after WW2, encouraged by job adverts for post-war reconstruction, were cruelly affected by racist policies and practices.
Two extracts give a flavour.
“Gradually, the politics of race and immigration became intertwined with one another to the extent that during the period 1950-1981, every single piece of immigration or citizenship legislation was designed at least in part to reduce the number of people with black or brown skin who were permitted to live and work in the UK.”
“The Windrush Scandal was caused by a failure to recognise that changes in immigration and citizenship law in Britain since 1948 had affected black people in the UK differently than they had other racial and ethnic groups. As a result, the experiences of Britain’s black communities of the Home Office, of the law, and of life in the UK have been fundamentally different from those of white communities.”
Although the focus is on the Windrush Scandal it is clear from the analysis that discrimination against non-white people intensified more broadly during British colonising in the 18th and 19th century and continued up to the present day.
You can read the report online here or via the PDF file here.
Mike Fitter