August 20th: Today's Feature-Black History Month Celebrating Windrush Heroes

August

In late 2017, Runnymede Trust, JCWI and others helped shine a spotlight on the treatment of people who had arrived in the UK as British citizens, but were now losing their homes, jobs and even being deported. A few months later, the story hit the headlines and became known as the Windrush scandal.

Now we’re sharing the stories of some of the campaigners, activists and members of the Windrush generation whose voices you need to hear; Roy Hackett, Mona Baptiste, Anthony Brown and Jacqueline McKenzie.

ROY HACKETT

Roy Hackett was born in Trench Town, Jamaica in 1928. After leaving school, he had several jobs but struggled to make enough money to eat, and aged 24 he boarded a ship to England.

Racism was legal in the UK then, and there was a “colour bar” - similar to segregation. Black and brown people were openly discriminated against by landlords, employers, unions and businesses like pubs, restaurants and hotels.

Roy’s first years in the UK were “a dog’s life”, he told the Guardian, because it was so difficult to find jobs and housing.

He moved to Bristol, and that’s where he made friends with Owen Henry, an activist who wanted to fight back against the racism they were experiencing on a daily basis.

When their friend Guy Bailey was rejected for a job as a bus conductor because he was black, Roy, Owen, Guy and others sprung into action.

In April 1963, Roy and other civil rights activists announced the Bristol Bus Boycott. Bristol’s 3,000 West Indians stopped using the buses with many white people also supporting them.

It took four months, but finally, at the end of August, the union and the bus company caved. The “colour bar” at the bus company was lifted.

"I was born an activist" Roy told the Guardian in 2020. He died two months ago, on 3 August 2022.

ANTHONY BROWN

“That could have been me”, Anthony Brown says about people who lost their homes, their jobs, and were even detained and deported in the Windrush scandal.

And it nearly was.

Back in 1982, as a 21-year-old, Anthony applied for university, only to find out he was being treated as an overseas student. He contacted the Home Office for clarification - they told him to report to Manchester Airport to be interviewed for possible deportation.

Anthony grew up in Jamaica and in England. Unknown to him and his family, in 1971 the Government passed the Immigraion Act, the Government had taken away the automatic rights of British subjects who lived in the UK. The period of time the family spent outside the country meant Anthony had lost his immigration status in the UK.

Anthony’s plans to go to university and study law suddenly became impossible. Instead, he frantically turned to family, friends, neighbours and his MP, trying to persuade the Home Office to grant him the right to stay in the UK. After a six month fight, he was granted ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’ - a permanent right to live and work in the UK.

But the experience had a lasting impact. “It took me about ten years before I came to terms with it. It just made me doubt myself, as if I didn’t belong” says Anthony.

Anthony was in his 50s when he decided to finally study law. And at the point he graduated in 2018, the Windrush scandal was hitting the headlines.

With fellow law graduate Leonie Brown and community organiser Lorna Downer, Anthony set up the Windrush Defenders. They have recruited a group of volunteers to support the Windrush generation to secure their status and claim compensation. And alongside this support, they are campaigning for a Windrush Act that would restore British citizenship to everyone who - like him - had their rights stripped in the 1970s and 1980s.

MONA BAPTISTE

Mona Baptiste was born on 21 June, 1928 in Port of Spain, Trinidad. One of four sisters in a well-to-do family, she grew up in the capital city’s “golden age”, with the birth of the steelband and the rise of Calypso music. Mona was a talented singer, and by the age of 14 she was performing on the radio and on stage.

Just before her 20th birthday, she boarded the HMT Empire Windrush, arriving in England on 22 June 1948. She was one of just a few women on the ship, and travelled first class, along with other musicians including Lord Kitchener.

A few weeks after arriving, she appeared on the “BBC Light Programme” - a major radio station, helping to launch her career in the UK. She became a guest vocalist for some of the leading artists of the day. And she performed for elites at Qualingo’s restaurant, whose clientele included Princess Margaret.

She released her first single in 1951, “Calypso Blues”, originally recorded by Nat King Cole. This led to her being invited to perform in Paris and then Belgium and Germany.

Mona became hugely popular in West Germany, and made it her home. She released a number of records, singing in German, and had acting roles on German TV.

At the height of her fame, tragedy struck. In 1958 her husband died in a car crash; Mona retired to raise their son, then aged 5. She spent most of the 1960s in retirement, and was on the cusp of relaunching her career when she moved to Ireland with her second husband.

According to son Marcel, he did not want her to go on tour and the marriage appears to have been an unhappy one. “It was my mother’s one mistake to marry him as it ruined her career as a singer” he told journalists in 2018.

Mona died on 25 June, 1993 in Ireland, at the age of 65.

This year, Benjamin Zephaniah published “We Sang Across the Sea”, a children’s book that tells Mona’s story. He wanted to tell the real story of one of the HMT Empire Windrush passengers, following the success of his fictional book “Windrush Child”.

The stories of Windrush women are not often told. And class is often lacking from our conversations about who moves across borders and why. Mona Baptise - prodigious singer and actor, widow, wife, mother - moved for opportunities and for love. Why should anyone's life be fixed by borders?

JACQUELINE McKENZIE

Long before the Windrush scandal hit the headlines, lawyer Jacqueline McKenzie was working with the people affected.

At her office in south London, clients arrived angry and confused by the way they were being treated by the Home Office.

After decades of living and working in the UK, older people from the Caribbean were losing their jobs, being kicked out of their homes, denied medical care and even facing deportation.

“At that time, the solution was to help people naturalise - going through the formal process of getting British citizenship”, says Jacqui. “But that’s a very expensive process - and they shouldn’t have had to do it.”

By the time these stories hit the headlines in early 2018, Jacqui had been working on cases for close to a decade. It should not have taken so long for these issues to be taken seriously.

“In 2015, I ran a training seminar for High Commissioners from Caribbean countries, and this issue came up” says Jacqui. The diplomats were shocked. “The Dominican High Commissioner wrote to the Home Office, raising the issue. But she got no response.”

“We have absolute evidence that the Government knew about this issue. But nothing was done.”

After Amelia Gentleman at The Guardian started working on the issue in late 2017, it became too big to ignore. The Windrush Scandal which followed ended the career of Home Secretary Amber Rudd and led to a wide-ranging report into the Home Office.

Jacqui was on the advisory board for the report, and says it was a landmark publication, but adds “I hope we get beyond reviews, reports, inquiries - talking about it.” Instead, “we’ve got to find a way of making real change.”

The Government would love us to believe that the Windrush scandal is a one-off. A freak accident in the Home Office. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Windrush scandal is a product of decades of racist immigration policy - disproportionately designed to limit the movement of Black and minority ethnic people.

Jacqui continues to fight for justice for the Windrush generation, running free legal advice sessions for those affected. “I hope that everybody across society is going to see the Windrush scandal for what it really is - racism.”