Windrush and Deportations

On 14 August 2021, by an overwhelming majority, Pavilion Labour’s GC adopted this resolution calling for legislation to end the Tories’ hostile environment, to oppose deportations, to campaign for a Windrush Act and a public inquiry into the Windrush scandal.

WINDRUSH AND DEPORTATIONS

This Party notes that:

  1. The 2014 Immigration Act has had a huge negative effect on the Windrush Generation and their descendants.
  2. People have been affected by the Windrush scandal even if they had legal status, such as those who came to Britain from Commonwealth countries before 1973 and their descendants.
  3. They and their descendants have been subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment including deportation, loss of employment, housing and services including the denial of prompt medical treatment.
  4. Lord Kerslake, the former head of the Civil Service, told BBC’s Newsnight that some in government had warned that the way the 2014 Act worked was ‘almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany’.

This Party believes that:

  1. Home Office officials have frequently used the Hostile Environment legislation to deprive migrants of their right to live and work in the UK even if they have legal status.
  2. The Windrush Compensation Scheme was set-up by the Tory Government with a remit deliberately limited to inadequate amounts of compensation, may not compensate all victims for all their losses and is being unreasonably slow to pay out.
  3. Many of the current problems have their roots in the racist 1971 Immigration Act which ended the right of people from the British Commonwealth to obtain UK citizenship unless they had a parent or grandparent with UK citizenship. This ensured that many white people in the Commonwealth could come to the UK but denied the same rights to most Black people, even from the same countries. The right of abode should be restored to the Windrush Generation who lived in the UK and their descendants.
  4. The use of the UK Borders Act 2007 to automatically deport people lacking EU citizenship papers who have served prison sentences is racist, applying a higher standard to Black immigrants (who already suffer longer sentences than white people), and has led to people being deported to countries they left as children and where they have no connections, often leaving behind their family, including their own children.

This Party resolves:

  1. To campaign for a Windrush Act which:
    a. Places a duty on public bodies to reduce race disparities for outcomes in their work as exposed by the Government’s Race Disparity Audit
    b. establishes a commonwealth community cohesion fund for the development of projects in the UK and the Commonwealth to tackle disparities and rebuild social and economic ties of communities damaged by the Windrush scandal.
  2. To campaign for legislation ending the Hostile Environment.
  3. To campaign for a judge-led independent Public Inquiry into the circumstances which led to the treatment of the Windrush Generation.
  4. To campaign against the deportations resulting from racist immigration legislation.
  5. To send this motion through our Labour Party structures for greater support.

Proposed by Pavilion Labour BAME Members’ Branch

Agreed overwhelmingly by Brighton Pavilion CLP’s General Committee

14 August 2021