Some people they just got fired and they had no idea why.
Some people were detained, losing access to healthcare.
How many have been detained
as prisoners in their own country?
How many have denied pensions?
How many have lost their job?
This is a day of national shame.
The Windrush scandal almost embodies in a way
for some people, how Black people are seen
and treated in the U.K.
because it's this example
where people who did all the right things
suddenly had a huge amount of their rights
and their access to things that they'd always
taken for granted just taken away from them
without any real explanation.
It really becomes this question of,
was that just something that was a series of really,
really unfortunate mistakes?
Or is there something at play where
it is because the vast majority
of the Windrush generation is Black?
The Motherland, that's what Britain was called,
the Motherland
and then the mother just rejected her children.
For what reason?
We didn't do anything wrong.
Here sees the arrival
of more than 400 happy Jamaicans.
They've come to seek work in Britain
and are ready and willing to do any kind of job
that will help the Motherland along the road to prosperity.
So the Empire Windrush was a ship
that actually came to England in 1948
and most of its passengers were from the Caribbean
and they were all coming to England
to live and work across the U.K.
and it's become synonymous with an entire generation
of people that came over about 25 years
because it was people who came from,
at the time what was colonies in the British Empire,
to the U.K. to live in England as citizens of that empire.
In 1954 about 10,000 West Indians...
The Windrush generation
embodies a pivotal moment in British history.
Their arrival would set a new course
for the nation toward multiculturalism.
But to better understand issues around race today,
we have to look to Britain's past.
Specifically, the British Empire.
In the 1600s, England colonized much of
what it is now places like Jamaica
and through over hundreds of years
developed this trade network, which involved
taking millions of people from Africa
and then taking them to the Caribbean
and then forcing them to work on slave plantations
where conditions were horrific.
But it was a crucial part of the British Empire's economy.
When British slavery ended in the 1830s
there was no real investment in the colonized countries.
The formerly enslaved Africans who lived in these colonies
essentially became British citizens
and began to migrate around the empire to find work.
Around the beginning of the 20th century,
the United Kingdom began to restrict
its immigration policies, severely impacting
how many people outside Britain could earn.
But when the Motherland needed labor
it put out a call for workers.
Britain needed people to rebuild
after World War II, after being decimated.
They're all full of hope for the future.
So let's make them very welcome
as they begin their new life over here.
Hundreds of thousands of people would come
from former British colonies to the U.K.
and that seems like a reasonable step to take
because they were part of this global empire
and because they had this connection to England.
When the Empire Windrush arrived
I think a calypso singer was asked to sing the song,
which was like "London is the Place for Me."
♪ London is the place for me ♪
♪ London, this lovely city ♪
And it was about the beauty of the city
and about settling down there
and just the excitement of being in London.
Now the end of their journey is near.
What will they find in the land
they regard as an El Dorado?
But then the experiences of some people,
obviously wasn't great.
Some White people refused to work besides Black people.
Some people were refused jobs.
Some people were sent to live
in accommodation that was horrible.
There is this big discrepancy
between how people see themselves
who are coming from places like Jamaica,
to how people saw them coming in.
There was a real kind of hostility amongst
some parts of the population to these new arrivals
and it was in some way specifically because they were Black.
My name's Glenda Caesar.
I'm a Windrush campaigner/victim.
I came to the U.K. when I was three months old.
Both my parents are from Dominica.
Mummy and Daddy came over in the '60s
and they came over for a better life.
You know?
They wanted their own home in the Motherland, England.
They were told that the streets were paved with gold.
They respected England, England was everything to them.
[Interviewer] And how did you find growing up in London?
Oh, I loved it.
Our house was right in the middle of the road,
so it was so diverse
because there was families from every country.
We had Indian family, family from Pakistan,
a family from Bangladesh, Mauritians,
St. Vincent, English, Scottish, Irish.
It was so diverse.
[Interviewer] And if anyone had asked you
when you were growing up where you were from,
what would you have said?
England, I'm British.
I had never been to Dominica.
I didn't know something was wrong until after my mum went
to Dominica on holiday, and my mum fell sick out there,
and I wanted to go out there and be with my mum.
I made an application for a British passport
and that's when I found out that they said,
"No, you're not British.
If you leave this country again,
you won't be able to come back."
And I was just getting told "You're not British."
I had my youngest son in 1988
and that's when I found out
that he wasn't British either.
Within that time my mum passed away.
Yeah, and I, I just,
I couldn't get out there to be with my mum.
We want to ensure that only legal migrants
have access to the labor market, free health services,
housing, bank accounts and driving licenses
and this is not just about making the U.K.
a more hostile place for illegal migrants,
it is also about fairness.
So in 2012, there's this issue
of immigration coming up again
and there's this real sense that
Britain doesn't have control over its borders.
The British government enforced
an immigration policy known as the 'hostile environment'.
The message was clear:
If you're here illegally,
pack your bags and leave.
But the hostile environment swept up
more than illegal immigrants.
Citizens of the British Commonwealth
were caught in the dragnet
and it turned their lives upside down.
I retired and I took a part-time position
in 2009
and it was then that it started getting complicated
because the employer wanted more documentation
from me to say that I was British
and I was like, well, I've got a work history.
You can go anywhere,
I've got my children's birth certificate, all British.
They're all British, you can check.
But that wasn't good enough
and I got terminated from my part-time position
as a GP administrator
because I didn't have the right to work here
and that's when I realized it was
really, really serious.
Really serious.
I got into debt, a lot of debt.
I nearly lost my home.
I was in court many times
trying to save the roof over my head.
So I started selling old trainers
so that I wouldn't have to ask my children
to help me financially, top up the gas, top up the electric,
I need some food.
And even with my daughter, I had to share her benefits,
her disability benefits.
But it was embarrassing sometimes
because sometimes you get to a position where
you wanna buy something and you thought,
God, I've gotta ask them
and they've got their children to maintain as well.
My son got depressed and I got depressed as well.
I started blaming myself
and there was a time where I contemplated suicide.
But in my head I'm thinking, if I do that,
then what's gonna happen to the grandkids?
And then how's he gonna get out of the situation?
Since 1971, it'd been U.K. law that anyone
who'd come from Commonwealth countries before 1973,
like Glenda's parents from Dominica, could stay.
But many weren't given documentation
to prove when they'd arrived.
This hadn't been an issue until
the 'hostile environment' came into effect.
To make matters worse,
the government department in charge of immigration
destroyed the landing cards of those
that came between 1948 and 1973.
Those landing cards could've been used potentially
as a way of the Windrush generation
proving their right to be in the country.
So the fact is, is that we don't actually know
how many people were caught up in it.
It's safe to say thousands,
but it's sad, but some people have died without us knowing.
Glenda fought for the best part of a decade
to prove she was a citizen.
Even though in my head I was British,
I thought maybe I haven't done enough.
Is that a smile?
It is a smile.
What happened?
I've been, they've told me
because I came before 1971
I should get my British citizenship.
They called my son's name and said,
oh no, he's got his citizenship
and I burst out crying because
the journey wasn't about me,
it was about my son,
him belonging.
Sorry.
Morning, Home Secretary. Morning.
When will your government
get a grip on the Windrush crisis?
The U.K. government acknowledged its mistake
and undertook a compensation program
for victims of what became known as the Windrush scandal.
There was an opportunity to right the wrongs done
by past governments and to offer payment after apologizing
to that generation for what they'd suffered.
But the reality was significantly more complicated.
For Glenda and so many others like her,
the hostile environment wouldn't end
when they got their citizenship.
The U.K. government offered her £22,000
for loss of employment, being detained, and impact on life.
22,000 for what, nearly nine to 10 years
of loss of everything?
No way.
I was so mad, I was fuming.
That didn't even cover my wages.
That wouldn't even have covered the unemployment benefit
if I was entitled to it, for those years.
I always say it's like a burglar,
burgling your house
and then you have to go and
beg this burglar to give you back your stuff.
On average, people were receiving less than £10,000
as part of the payment.
When people had been out of work for years.
So imagine how many, how much money you have lost
if you haven't been able to work for say five years.
There are many that will criticize the government
for how it arrived at the numbers.
But in the tone and in the difficulty
and in the lack of belief of those who have suffered,
in turning the burden on them to prove
that they have been systemically abused
and then not being satisfied
with their paper trail, or their answers.
I think we really learned
that neither the substantive redress,
nor its delivery, has been acceptable.
There continues to be major concerns amongst
the community of survivors and those that support them
that the scheme will ever be fit for purpose
and that's because some of the tweaking that has happened
hasn't fundamentally altered the fact
that it is a scheme that remains lacking in impartiality,
and really gives the sense of
the government marking its own homework.
Now that is a government that many will accept
is guilty of institutional racism
and so really, justice must not only be done,
but it must be seen to be done.
We have set up a unit, which is helping those people
to get the documents that they need.
They are British, they are part of us.
I think you have to say that actually
there's a lot more lessons to learn.
But ultimately, we haven't yet as a society
and as a country, said sorry in really
a very meaningful way.
Last year, after George Floyd's murder,
we saw protests across the U.K.,
which in a way mirrored the ones that we saw in the U.S.
and a big of that was about the Windrush scandal.
The scandal will always be an example
of a really just blatant form of discrimination
and of wrongdoing against people who were almost all black.
So it's a question of what do you do with that information?
Do you incorporate it into a larger narrative
around how Black people are treated in this country?
Or do you treat that as an isolated incident
that is unfortunate, but doesn't really engage with race?
For many, the Windrush scandal
is symbolic of the U.K.'s track record on race.
During the pandemic, 64% of essential health workers
who contracted Covid-19 were from Black
or ethnic minority backgrounds.
And there's a disproportionate number
of Black residents in the United Kingdom
who've died from coronavirus.
Inequality permeates British society.
There's still this question of why do White families
have nine times that of a Black African family?
Is it because the Black family isn't trying hard enough?
Is it because there's a single parent?
Or is it because of systematic failings at play?
That, as I say, I think that conversation is unresolved.