Historian's report outlines the history and immigration policies that led to the Windrush scandal
The Home Office has today released a report authored by an unnamed historian examining the historical roots of the Windrush Scandal.
Image credit: WikipediaYou can read the report online here or download the 55-page PDF file here.
As the Guardian reports, the Home Office had attempted to withhold the report since 2022, citing concerns that its release could undermine affected communities' trust in government and hinder the future development of immigration policy. It was forced to release the report after a recent decision by the First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber), which deals with information rights cases.
The Tribunal found the balance of public interest lay strongly in favour of disclosing the report, noting it contained no new information beyond what was already public. It described the report as a valuable historical context for future work and dismissed the Home Office's concerns about its potential impact on public trust as unconvincing. The Tribunal criticised the Information Commissioner's acceptance of weak Home Office evidence for withholding the report, suggesting the refusal was based more on embarrassment than substantive grounds. It emphasised that transparency would enhance public understanding of the issues, citing the importance of openness in historical matters.
Referring to Orwell's 1984, the Tribunal decision states: "In Eric Blair'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."
In the report's introduction, the author explains the purpose as follows:
This Report is intended to explain the historical causes of the series of events which came to be known as the 'Windrush Scandal'.
The details of the scandal are well known: people who migrated to the UK between 1948 and 1973 and lived and worked there legally were wrongfully detained, denied rights, and threatened with deportation (or actually deported) by the Home Office.
Less well known is the historical background to the scandal: the long-term history of the Home Office and immigration to the UK from the British Empire, and the short-term history of immigration legislation and the experiences of the so-called 'Windrush Generation'. This Report explains that historical background.
There is a paradox at the heart of the Windrush Scandal. While, on the one hand, Wendy Williams (the legal expert appointed to investigate the scandal) stated unambiguously that those affected were 'a racial group … who almost all are black', she nonetheless was 'unable to make a definitive finding of institutional racism'.How is it possible that a policy whose failure affected specifically black people was not the product of institutional racism?
The solution to this paradox lies in the complex, entangled history of race, immigration and the Home Office. The demographic makeup of the United Kingdom, the shape and content of immigration law, and the role and structure of the Home Office are all products of centuries of historical evolution. If we are to understand anything about Windrush and its implications for policymaking at the Home Office, an understanding of this history is essential.
This Report is a direct response to Wendy Williams' assertion that history, and a lack of knowledge of history, was a 'root cause' of the Windrush Scandal. It aims not only to outline the relevant historical background to Windrush, but also to explain how and why this history matters.
Summarising the report's findings, the executive summary explains further:
This report tells two stories alongside one another. The first story it tells is that of the administration of what might loosely be called 'immigration policy' in the United Kingdom, in which the movement of people across the borders of the British Isles was periodically restricted and controlled. The second story it tells is that of the history of black people and other ethnic minorities in Britain, whose lives were profoundly shaped by the politics of race in the British Empire and, latterly, the United Kingdom.
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 complex history of the British Empire explains why race and racism as political and social issues developed as they did in the UK; the actions of postwar governments explain the state of play in the twenty-first century – of which the deep-rooted racism of the Windrush Scandal is a symptom.
These are the general themes, but there are also more specific lessons to be learned from an investigation of the historical roots of the Windrush Scandal. These are as follows:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. The relationship between the Home Office and organisations set up to deal with race relations was dysfunctional in the second half of the twentieth century. The work of various governmental bodies in combatting discrimination in the UK was separate from the task given to the Home Office to reduce immigration. This led to a paradoxical situation in which immigration policy assumed that too many immigrants from a minority ethnic background were bad for society, but race relations policy promoted the idea of racial equality
In a detailed post on X/Twitter, immigration lawyer Jacqueline McKenzie noted that the report confirms that the Windrush scandal is symptomatic of the actions of post-war governments in the twenty-first century, including deep-rooted racism.
McKenzie commented that the report provides a valuable history and context for the scandal while confirming the root causes identified by others. She said it was troubling that previous governments had sought to withhold the report and suppress society's understanding of the effect of immigration policies, such as the hostile environment, on black and brown people, who were legally in the UK but faced job losses, deportation, and even death.
McKenzie called on the current government to confront the racial factors at the heart of the scandal. She stated: "The current government and institutions, must understand that the scandal happened to Black and Brown people because of the colour of their skin, a manifestation which continues to plague society, causing large numbers of people to experience negative outcomes. It must seriously address this and too, develop a programme to achieve community healing and redress, and the enabling of progress to those it eludes."