In 1953, the year she was crowned, Queen Elizabeth II recorded her Christmas message in New Zealand. She did so as the head of a Commonwealth that she said bore “no resemblance to the empires of the past”. In truth there were many resemblances – including colossal and unjust imbalances in wealth and power that continue to this day. Immigration policy is one area in which Britain’s imperial past left an indelible mark. A report commissioned by the government in the wake of the Windrush scandal, from a historian employed by the Home Office, provides an accessible account of the mechanics of this.
So it is a bitter if not unsurprising irony that in a week when the nation’s attention is turned to the 1950s, in celebration of the Queen’s platinum jubilee, it has emerged that ministers have been denying the public access to these insights. The report, which was completed last year and is titled The Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal, was leaked to the Guardian after a freedom of information request to see it was turned down on the grounds that disclosing it could prejudice “the ability of the department to develop policy in a safe space”.
This was a wrong decision. The appalling treatment of thousands of black British people from 2010 onwards is one of the most shameful episodes in our recent history. At least 164 people were detained or deported as a result of the “hostile environment” engineered by the Home Office. In the words of Wendy Williams’ review, published in 2020, they were made to “feel like criminals in a country where they’d lived lawfully for most of their lives”. Around 20 died before receiving compensation, many of them in the Caribbean.
Ms Williams found that “institutional ignorance” was to blame for a situation in which laws were changed in ways that penalised black people, without the Home Office understanding that this was what was going on. The report on the policy’s roots came in response to her call for improved training. It describes with admirable clarity the process whereby laws began to discriminate between white and black people. It explains how multiple acts of parliament from 1950 onwards were “designed to reduce the proportion of people living in the United Kingdom who did not have white skin”. This was, and is, a racist legacy of a racist empire. And it is not a secret.
Yet the government appears unwilling to confront it. Since Ms Williams’ report, there have been warm words but little evidence of a change of culture in Priti Patel’s department. In March, Ms Williams said that she was “disappointed with the lack of tangible progress”. Her proposal for a migrants’ commissioner was not taken up. Windrush victims are frustrated by compensation delays.
This context makes the refusal to publish the historian’s work all the more pointed. It is disrespectful to the people whose lives were destroyed by the hostile environment not to be transparent about the findings, which include an account of the dysfunctional three-way relationship between the government, the Home Office and the official bodies set up to monitor and improve race and community relations. To keep this secret is undemocratic and the opposite of educational. This would be true at any time. In a week devoted to celebrating the past 70 years of British history, it casts the government in a particularly poor light.
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