The Home Office has been forced to release a suppressed report on the origins of the Windrush scandal by a tribunal judge who quoted George Orwell in a judgment criticising the department’s lack of transparency.
For the past three years, Home Office staff have worked to bury a hard-hitting research paper that states that roots of the scandal lay in 30 years of racist immigration legislation designed to reduce the UK’s non-white population.
The 52-page analysis by a Home Office-commissioned historian, who has not been named, described how “the British empire depended on racist ideology in order to function” and explained how this ideology had driven immigration laws passed in the postwar period.
The department rejected several freedom of information requests asking for the Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal to be released, arguing that publication might damage affected communities’ “trust in government” and “its future development of immigration policy”.
Officials also argued that disclosure would impair “free and frank” disclosure of advice to the Home Office and threaten the existence of a “safe space” within the department to discuss immigration policy.
James Coombs, a transparency campaigner and an IT worker for a mobile phone company, took the case to the information commissioner arguing that the Home Office was delaying responding because the information was “politically embarrassing”.
His request was rejected last year, but he has won an appeal at the general regulatory chamber Information Rights jurisdiction first-tier tribunal.
Tribunal judge Chris Hughes rejected the Home Office’s arguments, finding that it was “highly improbable” that the wider dissemination of the study would impair future provision of advice to the department.
As well as quoting Orwell’s views on government attempts to control information, he cited philosopher George Santayana’s warning that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
The Home Office will publish the history on the government website on Thursday.
The report, which was leaked to the Guardian in May 2022, concluded that the origins of the “deep-rooted racism of the Windrush scandal” lie in the fact 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 scandal saw thousands of people who were legally resident in Britain, many of whom were born in the Caribbean, wrongly classified as immigration offenders. As a result, many were sacked from their jobs, evicted from their homes or denied healthcare and pensions; some were wrongly arrested, detained and deported.
Wendy Williams, the independent inspector who advised the department on what changes to make in the wake of the scandal, found “officials’ poor understanding of Britain’s colonial history” had been one of the causes.
Ministers subsequently agreed to teach all 35,000 Home Office employees about Britain’s colonial history, and this historical report was commissioned as part of that work.
The paper found that: “Major immigration legislation in 1962, 1968 and 1971 was designed to reduce the proportion of people living in the United Kingdom who did not have white skin.”
In legal arguments submitted to justify withholding the report, the Home Office suggested that the historian they had commissioned to write the paper was potentially “subject to biases”, adding that his history “in addition to not necessarily representing the view of the Home Office – does not represent the views of every historian nor is it the only reasonable interpretation of historical events”.
Coombs said trying to force publication had been immensely time-consuming but he had been moved to persist by an awareness of the “great injustices” inflicted on the Windrush generation by the government. “If you have transparency, the right decisions will flow from that,” he said.
Kehinde Adeogun, director of legal services and policy at the Black Equity Organisation, said it was “astonishing” that the department had wasted public money on fighting successive cases to withhold the document. “I think they were embarrassed and were trying to avoid criticism,” she said.
Diane Abbott MP, who attempted without success to have the paper released through the home affairs select committee in 2022, said: “It is a disgrace that the Home Office tried not to release this report.
“They could have released it at any time and shouldn’t have waited for a campaigner to go to court. It is as if they are trying to bury the whole history of immigration.” She said she hoped that the report would now be widely read.
Concluding that the report should be published, the tribunal judge wrote, referring to the hero of 1984, that in Orwell’s “masterpiece a justification for Winston Smith’s constant re-writing of old news stories was explained: ‘Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.’ There is no more justification for Winston Smith’s work than for withholding from wider readership a significant study of the background to Windrush.”
Seema Malhotra, minister for migration and citizenship, said: “Earlier this month, the First Tier Tribunal ruled that the Home Office commissioned report, ‘The Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal’, must be disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information request. The previous government refused to disclose it, even when challenged through the courts.
“The home secretary and I agree with the court’s decision, but we are going further because it is in the public interest to do so. We have published the report online. While everyone will have their own views on the issues and judgements included in the report, it is a substantial piece of work that should support discussion on an important part of British history.”
