Ribeiro-Addy says her constituency was “completely changed” by the Windrush generation (Alamy)
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The government’s immigration policies could produce another Windrush generation, a London Labour MP has said.
The MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, said that instituting legislation that “might retrospectively affect people that have already come into this country”, could put people “in a situation that we never really intended them to be”.
This week marked the 77th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush on UK shores, which brought passengers from the Caribbean to fill post-war labour shortages.
However, while many of those individuals believed they were seen by the UK government as British, a scandal first reported by The Guardian in 2017 revealed that such individuals were being detained, denied legal rights, and threatened with deportation.
The government this week announced the appointment of senior pastor Reverend Clive Foster as the new Windrush Commissioner, a role it says will provide independent oversight of the government’s work to address the Home Office Windrush scandal and ensure the voices of victims remain at the heart of efforts to deliver justice.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said she looked forward “to working closely with Reverend Foster as we continue our vital work to rebuild trust and deliver the justice that the Windrush generations so rightfully deserve”.
One issue with the Windrush compensation scheme that campaigners have highlighted is that it does not provide applicants with legal advice, unlike the Post Office and infected blood compensation schemes.
Ribeiro-Addy said the differentiation means the Windrush compensation scheme “wasn’t put on an equal footing to other schemes”, and that the new Commissioner must “make sure that they sort out this issue of legal support, and they need to do more to reach out, because the reality is, too many are dying before they even get any sort of compensation at all”.
A study published this month revealed that applicants who appealed their awards after taking legal advice received large increases as a result.
Labour vowed to deliver a “fundamental reset to respect and dignity” for the Windrush generation in its manifesto last year.
Riberio-Addy praised the government for implementing all the recommendations from the Windrush Lessons Learned review, which included the appointment of a Windrush Commissioner, telling PoliticsHome it is “good we’ve got to a place where they’re trying”.
However, the Labour MP said it is a “huge problem” that the scheme is being handled by the Home Office, the department that “caused all the problems” in the first place.
She is also critical of government policies on refugees, warning that they could effectively create another Windrush-esque scandal in the years to come.
Earlier this year, the government issued new guidance which said that refugees who entered the UK illegally will normally be refused citizenship, no matter how long they have been in the country.
“Looking at the new legislation that we’re putting forward in terms of immigration, whilst people may think that the Windrush generation is completely separate from that, it doesn’t feel like we have learned lessons,” she said.
“Because if we’re now instituting legislation that might retrospectively affect people that have already come into this country, then are we not doing exactly the same thing that we did before and a few decades down the line, are we not going to find that there are people that are in a situation that we never really intended them to be?”
“Whenever we start to touch issues of citizenship in this country, it makes me nervous,” she added.
While Ribeiro-Addy is generally happy with the progress being made under Labour since it won power nearly a year ago, she said she is uneasy with the party’s approach to immigration, expressing the concern shared by other Labour MPs that it leans too far to the right to stem the flow of support to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
She is also worried that it also risks demotivating party activists, saying that while Labour should be a “broadchurch”, “there’s an idea that we’re doing this to appease people who may want to vote Reform, but we need to make sure that we are protecting our base.”
The Labour MP’s interest in the Windrush generation was inspired in part by her own family’s Ghanaian ancestry, who came to the UK at around that time “to work in the mother country”.
She believes the subject should be taught in schools, telling PoliticsHome: “I don’t think we teach enough about the history of certain communities in this country at all.
“That’s really sad, because we say that we learn from the mistakes of the past so that we don’t repeat them”.
