A man caught up in the Windrush scandal who resorted to sleeping in a freezing bin shed has finally been given permission to remain in the UK after a 10-year battle.
Roy Harrison, 44, arrived in the UK as a six-year-old in 1984. He had been abandoned as a newborn baby in Jamaica by his mother and left on his grandmother’s doorstep.
At the age of six, he moved to the UK to live with an aunt. He was granted indefinite leave to remain and was taken into care at the age of 10.
The Home Office took the decision to strip Harrison of his indefinite leave to remain in 2012 after he was sentenced to eight months in prison for a crime he says he did not commit.
Harrison was charged with theft after being caught up in the 2011 riots that followed the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan. He went into a shop in Croydon to look for one of his sons and, despite CCTV showing him leaving empty-handed, was charged and advised to plead guilty.
After leaving prison, he fought for 10 years to get back his right to stay in the UK, living in dire conditions because he was no longer eligible for benefits.
Since being told he can stay, Harrison has moved from the bin shed in south London to a nearby empty caravan loaned to him by a friend, unheated and without running water. He can claim benefits but has been told he will not receive any money until January.
Harrison’s solicitor, Jacqueline McKenzie, of Leigh Day, said: “The Home Office spent a decade trying to deport a vulnerable man who came to the UK aged six to join an aunt of the Windrush generation. As a child of a Windrush family, someone who became a looked after young person and someone with evidence of multiple complex needs, he should never have found himself facing the threat of deportation and destitution.”
“I haven’t processed the Home Office decision yet,” Harrison told the Guardian. “I’ve spent so many years fighting for what I had before. A decade has been wasted and it’s all down to the hostile environment and that silly Theresa May. I know I should be over the moon but I’ve waited too long … My first task is to save up for a generator so I can keep warm in the caravan.”
McKenzie said: “The restoration of his indefinite leave to remain is positive but I’m not surprised that he describes it as a bittersweet moment as challenges remain to get his life back on track after so many years of fighting the system and being worn down. This case, which cuts across the themes of the Windrush scandal and the deportation of people who have lived most of their lives in the UK, is indicative of the need for further urgent reform in both law and policies.”
Harrison added: “What I would like to say to Theresa May is: ‘You made things very hostile for me and as a result I’ve lost everything.’ The landscape gardening business I started would definitely be up and running by now. I lost my partner, too, along with my two cats and my three dogs.
“I try not to think too much about it, because if I do it will release the whole of Niagara Falls inside me. I hope if my ex-partner reads this she might try to find me again. My faith in God has got me through the last 10 years. I tell myself: ‘Onwards and upwards now.’”
