Windrush Generation

I don't think this is the result of "cock ups" at all. OK ministers can't supervise every last detail of their department but what they do do is set the ethos of that department. And if the ethos is that we want to classify as many people as possible as illegal, make life as difficult as we can for them and if possible get rid of them, that trickles down to all the civil servants involved. So to begin with they may remind a minister that certain people may suffer as the result of a measure she has taken, but eventually they give up and just go with the flow. So responsibility rests entirely with the minister who should of course resign. But what little honour there might once have been in politics has long gone and instead she gets to be PM!

MaizieD You are coming out all guns blazing on the ‘OMG it was all done deliberately’ front without a shred of evidence for that view.
Far more things happen inadvertently or through incompetence or not seeing the pitfalls of a policy.
It was strongly doubted by the OP that anything would be put right or done quickly, but we hear that it will be, and compensation given to anyone who suffered financially from it.Putting things right quickly ( when they have gone wrong) is the main thing, because mistakes will always be made.Full apologies have been made also, which was necessary.

Sorry, Nfk. fingers got confused...

Sorry, MOnica, nice try but civil servants who dealt with claims such as those of the WG were strongly pointing out at the time that destroying the landing cards was a grave mistake as they were still needed to prove claims.

The very most that should have happened to them should have been sending to the National archives, not being destroyed.

I think that Mark Steele sums it up nicely,Kfk and Bridgeit

"Theresa May said that she's sorry that her government upset the children that came on the Windrush, so we should accept that. It was an accident and we all make them.
Some of us knock over a glass of lemonade, and some of us accidentally spend ten years yelling that we must drastically reduce the number of immigrants as they are taking our jobs and benefits,and boasting our policies will create a "hostile environment" for them and whoops-a-daisy, you accidentally make an environment that's hostile to them."

The WG affair isn't a result of an administrative cockup. It's a direct consequence of government policy. Ministers knew a few years ago that WG people (and others) were being appallingly badly (and illegally) treated but they just turned a blind eye. They are wholly responsible. That should be a matter for resignations.

Most happenings like this are the result not of deliberate plans but of cock-ups. Person A from one part of the organisation made one decision on criteria that applied to them - reducing document storage costs or some such. Someone else makes decisions elsewhere on different criteria and never the twain shall meet or talk to each other.

Really good post NfkDumpling.

I do feel a bit (just a bit, only a bit) sorry for the politicians at the top who are in the firing line and expected to carry the can for all the misinterpretations and mess ups their underlings make. I feel there should be an enquiry into who did make the decision to destroy those cards, and why no one checked to make the Windrush people - and all the others from the Commonwealth who came before the Common Market/EU changed things - full British citizens. Which they were and are. (Am I right that that was when it stems from?) Why were their records not changed? Is it only that some system somewhere wasn’t updated when the cards were chucked?

I watched Ms May yesterday at the Stephen Laurence memorial service and found myself thinking that, important as it is, that’s half a day when she’s not at the helm. And much of a PM’s and her ministers time is eroded in this way. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for them to make all the cock ups they have to take responsibility for. I wonder how much well paid advisors and high up civil servants, who ministers perforce rely on heavily, cover up and get away with. Is it likely that a PM or Home Secretary said to an underling, “Its ok, you can destroy all those cards now” they’re on the system. I checked.” Of course not. The civil servants are the experts and the MPs have to rely on that expertise. Perhaps that’s where the overhaul is needed.

After I'd posted earlier today I found this blog post from Richard Murphy which says much what I was saying but also cites other 'hostilities' which UK citizens are suffering:

The most basic of human rights - which minsters are supposed to uphold - have been deliberately denied.
And there has not been a single resignation.
Not one
I feel ashamed of this country.

I feel even more ashamed because I know some, maybe many, will feel,nothing of the sort. There is racism in this country. That there is explains the actions of ministers: they were playing to it. And they still do.

This in itself is a cause for national shame. But it is not the only such cause. After decades of supposed modern enlightenment we still suffer institutional sexism. This year’s disclosures on unequal pay are evidence of that.

And there is institutional economic discrimination. Those who need the social safety net that our society should provide, precisely because hardship can befall anyone, have been deliberately victimised by the wholly unnecessary policy of austerity.

So too have those with disability been targeted.

As have the young, because the children of those implementing the policy are unaffected.

Long ago it was apparent the the politics of neoliberalism had the potential to be brutal. And so it has proved. But that has not stopped those promoting it. Indeed, it seems to have encouraged them, if anything. Once one brutality had been delivered and seemingly accepted they tried another, as if addicted to the shock it might supply. Until we got to Brexit, when it has become apparent to some at least (but not yet all) that the brutality has turned in on almost everyone.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/04/21/freedom-from-fear/

No, MOnica, it's not all right!

Okay, a big mistake has been made, and it will all be sorted out

I mean all that has happened is that people, in old age, after spending almost their whole lives in this country have lost their jobs and their homes, which many had lived in for decades, have been refused medical treatment, forced to sofa surf and live on handouts from families. Some in extreme old age have been exiled to countries they hardly know, thousands of miles from their homes and families.

However, apologies have been made. So that's alright then.

Really?

Surely if people have been working they have been paying national insurance during their time in this country. You can’t do much without a number. How could they have been refused National Health care when people on holiday here can use it? How can benefits be stopped when information must have been confirmed to get them in the first place? Sounds as if that standard letter was intended to frighten them into undertaking the Home Office’s work themselves. A bit like the tax office sending huge estimates to people who haven’t sorted out their tax returns. Also that letter must have frightened some people into returning to their original home. The Home Office has been the grave yard for many a politician and it has dug another hole again.Shame, shame, shame.

The whole thing is disgraceful. What about these people who were paying a visit to family and then not allowed to return to U.K. - what happened to their home and belongings if they lived alone? It is all very well to talk glibly of compensation but if their home has gone and they did choose to return to U.K. what would they be coming back to?
This particular group of people are the tip of the iceberg - there are foreign nationals married to British citizens for tens of years and having been working etc who are facing deportation or have been deported back to places where they now have no connection - that happened to a lady from either Singapore or HK who was the main carer for her disabled husband. I hope this initiative will include them also.
Whatever way you look at it their lives have been ruined and no compensation will really make up for that and the treatment they received when they were older legal residents.

However, apologies have been made.

Doesn't anyone think that some resignations might be in order? We used to have a doctrine of Ministerial responsibility. If something went badly wrong in a givernment department the minister responsible for that department resigned.

This isn't just a little administrative error. Hundreds of legal residents of the UK have been subject to appalling treatment, loss of jobs and homes, denial of treatment for life threatening illness, demands for repayment of benefits, barred from re-entering the UK, and even deported. The distress they have suffered must have been almost intolerable.

An apology which has had to be painfully extracted from the PM and the Home Secretary only after adverse publicity and a public outcry would seem to me to be virtually worthless, and compensation a poor recompense for the country which you had lived and worked in practically all your life, and which you thought you were a legal citizen of, suddenly turning on you in your old age and telling you that you are entitled to nothing from the state and that you must leave.

Extraordinary that people can be so complacent about Ministers and a government which can subject UK citizens to this horror.

Okay, a big mistake has been made, and it will all be sorted out. People who have suffered badly should (and I think will be compensated. Today, the news is that there are records of passengers on the Windrush in the British Archives, and that these can be used to help in this fiasco.

I, too, don't understand why School records, National Insurance records, tax records, etc. don't demonstrate that these people have been living and working here for years.

And in 2010, when the landing cards were destroyed, why weren't they data-based first?

The Home Office should be seeking out illegal immigrants, and deporting them, not hassling and distressing people who have every right to remain here as British citizens.

However, apologies have been made. And I am sure that - eventually - all this will be put right.

AlieOxon Exactly, and I think some of the comments on here are really unpleasant and insulting.

For a LOT of people in Britain, these are not 'other people', they are part of their family - like me.

I understand what you are saying Joelsnan, a very good description/explanation imo.

In my posts I stated "in my experience" - thought that would have been clear enough.

Your original statement: I have to smile at the indignation of some people on behalf of the black population

Nothing about it being your experience in contexts other than on this forum.

(Fri 20-Apr-18 21:26:20 if anyone wants to check for the words 'In my experience' in the post)

I apologise for taking offence at this but you really sounded as though you were talking about posters on this thread.

Gerispringer Thank you for your clarification.
Your comments to oldwoman referencing MLK and Nelson Manela refer to brave men standing up for their own people and this bears little reference to those who puport to advocate on behalf of other races/culture because they consider themselves as superior and therefore must 'save' these people just as those who went abroad felt the need to evangelise and convert the heathens.
Give people credit for who they are and recognise that should you or I move to a foreign country it is more than likely that we too would be subject to some prejudice.

If we had ID cards here this issue would never have happened. Children always used to travel on their parent's passports and lots of people never got a passport themselves. Even white British people can have issues (though less serious) with ID. My sons only got passports aged around 30 and they were asked lots of questions about mine and their father's background, in addition to the standard application form, and had to attend an interview.
When I last changed GP, having been with the same one for over 20 years, they said they could find no record of me and could not be registered with a new GP. At the time I had been registered with a GP in the same borough for around 45 years and had worked for the NHS in the same area for many years. They wanted to know my parents addresses before 1939 which of course I didn't know. It was eventually sorted out.

Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were national figures and leaders. I am talking about those who work quietly in local areas, behind the scenes, making a difference - heroes who rarely receive the acknowledgment they deserve.

joelsnan I wasn’t quoting Margaret Mead or suggesting all her findings to be gospel I was naming one anthropologist as asked for in connection with the notion made that racism is somehow “natural”. Her methodology etc has definitely been questioned but the challenge to evolutionary theorists has much support as mentioned earlier.
oldwoman As for anti- racists having to just “work quietly” and not”draw attention to themselves” and anyone who speaks up is just an “empty vessel” - I suppose you should have said that to Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela.

In my posts I stated "in my experience" - thought that would have been clear enough.

Thank you for clarifying that, Oldwoman. It's a shame you didn't make it clear in your original post.