To­mor­row is Win­drush Day—a com­mem­o­ra­tion in the Unit­ed King­dom to “ho­n­our the con­tri­bu­tions of mi­grants to the post-war econ­o­my. Specif­i­cal­ly, it cel­e­brates African-Caribbeans who be­gan ar­riv­ing on the HMT Em­pire Win­drush in 1948” (Wi­ki).

Win­drush Day was launched by the UK gov­ern­ment in 2018 as an an­nu­al na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tion of the Win­drush Gen­er­a­tion.

This de­ci­sion was made in light of the Win­drush Scan­dal/ the pub­lic out­cry/pe­ti­tion to Down­ing Street/the re­port of the Win­drush Lessons Learned In­de­pen­dent Re­view by Wendy Williams/apol­o­gy by the then-Home Sec­re­tary Am­ber Rudd for the “ap­palling” treat­ment of Win­drush cit­i­zens by her own de­part­ment, which had “be­come too con­cerned with pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy and some­times” lost “sight of the in­di­vid­ual”/the apol­o­gy by the then-PM There­sa May to the lead­ers of 12 Caribbean coun­tries—at a sum­mit of Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment in Lon­don—for the “anx­i­ety caused” by the treat­ment of British cit­i­zens, who ar­rived in the UK as chil­dren as far back as the 1940s.

The Lessons Learned Re­view by Wendy Williams con­clud­ed that what hap­pened to those af­fect­ed by the Win­drush scan­dal was “fore­see­able and avoid­able.”

The re­view made 30 rec­om­men­da­tions.

The UK’s Na­tion­al Archives re­minds us that “Black peo­ple have lived in Britain for over two thou­sand years...We can­not tell the his­to­ry of Britain with­out in­clud­ing their sto­ries.”

Eng­lish Her­itage web­site ac­knowl­edges that “Black his­to­ries are a vi­tal part of Eng­land’s sto­ry...”

Dur­ing the First World War, many Caribbean men went to Britain to join the army. Thou­sands of men and women from the Caribbean vol­un­teered in the Sec­ond World War to come to the aid of Britain. And in the post-war years, the Win­drush Gen­er­a­tion played a key role in re­build­ing the coun­try and re­shap­ing British cul­ture and iden­ti­ty.

Most of those who went to the UK from the Caribbean did so at the in­vi­ta­tion of the British gov­ern­ment—re­spond­ing to job ad­verts in lo­cal pa­pers in their re­spec­tive coun­tries.

Af­ter World War II there was a labour short­age in the UK and peo­ple were need­ed to help with the re­build­ing ef­forts.

On June 22, 1948, HMT Em­pire Win­drush docked at Tilbury Docks in Es­sex, Eng­land. On board were 1,027 pas­sen­gers, 802 of whom were from the Caribbean, in­clud­ing more than 100 serv­ing and for­mer Armed Forces per­son­nel.

Peo­ple from the Caribbean and their de­scen­dants have made/con­tin­ue to make sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to British so­ci­ety.

The scan­dal of Win­drush has left a “bit­ter taste” in the mouths of many. It will take a while for heal­ing to take place. When the then-Home Sec­re­tary Am­ber Rudd stood down in 2018, the new UK Home Sec­re­tary Min­is­ter Sajid Javid pledged to “do right by the Win­drush gen­er­a­tion.”

Read—“The gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the Win­drush scan­dal” Re­search Brief­ing. Pub­lished Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 4th, 2024—House of Com­mons Li­brary):

“The Win­drush gen­er­a­tion is a group of peo­ple who mi­grat­ed to the UK from Caribbean Com­mon­wealth coun­tries be­tween 1948 and 1973.

“Such peo­ple are en­ti­tled to live in the UK per­ma­nent­ly but many of them did not have doc­u­men­ta­tion to prove this. Be­cause they were un­able to prove their right to live in the UK, some mem­bers of the Win­drush gen­er­a­tion and oth­er long-stand­ing UK res­i­dents were wrong­ly treat­ed as il­le­gal im­mi­grants.

“They were con­se­quent­ly de­nied ac­cess to em­ploy­ment, health­care and oth­er ser­vices, and in some cas­es de­tained or re­moved from the coun­try.

“The Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment set up two pro­grammes to sup­port peo­ple af­fect­ed...Un­der these schemes: 17,000 peo­ple have re­ceived doc­u­men­ta­tion con­firm­ing their sta­tus or British cit­i­zen­ship (up to the end of March 2024) 8,800 claims have been made for com­pen­sa­tion, of which 2,600 have re­ceived pay­ments (up to the end of Ju­ly 2024).

“Some have crit­i­cised the com­pen­sa­tion scheme, say­ing that it has been too slow and bu­reau­crat­ic, and that pay­ments do not ad­e­quate­ly re­flect loss­es.

“The gov­ern­ment has made sev­er­al changes to the de­sign and op­er­a­tion of the scheme since it was launched, in­clud­ing to make com­pen­sa­tion pay­ments more gen­er­ous and in­crease the num­ber of staff work­ing on it. £94 mil­lion has been paid in com­pen­sa­tion, as of the end of Ju­ly 2024. To­tal com­pen­sa­tion scheme pay­ments could ex­ceed £165 mil­lion if Home Of­fice es­ti­mates of fu­ture claims are cor­rect.”

The Labour gov­ern­ment (Labour Par­ty Man­i­festo) “made com­mit­ments to im­prove the re­sponse.” We await the ap­point­ment of the promised Win­drush Com­mis­sion­er —an in­de­pen­dent ad­vo­cate for those af­fect­ed. In­ter­views were es­ti­mat­ed to end on May 19, 2025.

Let’s cel­e­brate the di­ver­si­ty of Britain’s his­to­ry.