PHOTOGRAPHS: ALICIA CANTER/EYEVINE, MONTSE GARRIGA/THE INTERIOR ARCHIVE180 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | October 2019 http://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk
TALK ING POINTS
I was checking my work emails at the kitchen table in October 2017
when I noticed a disturbing message from a small refugee charity in
Wolverhampton, marked ‘Urgent – imminent deportation of a lady
who has been in the UK for 49 years’. The organisation, which I’d
visited a few years earlier, was concerned that a woman it had been
helping for some months – Paulette Wilson, a 61-year-old cook – had
been arrested and detained in Yarl’s Wood, a notoriously unpleasant
immigration-removal centre. Paulette had lived in England since
arriving in 1968 aged 11 or 12, had been at school, been employed
and paid taxes here for decades (she’d even spent time working in
the House of Commons canteen), and had never left the country. Yet
somehow she had been classified as an illegal immigrant, and was
facing deportation back to Jamaica, a place she hadn’t visited for
almost half a century, where she had no remaining relatives. It seemed
shocking and peculiar that the Home Office should be taking such
drastic steps against a law-abiding grandmother
who had spent a lifetime here. I called the
charity and asked if I could meet Paulette.
I didn’t realise this would be the beginning
of an investigation that would stretch over
months and would ultimately unleash an inter-
national scandal, force the Home Secretary to
resign and make the British government
promise to pay out hundreds of millions of
pounds in compensation.
Paulette had been released by the time I met
her, but she was expecting to be rearrested at
any time. I spent several hours sitting with her
in her daughter’s flat, drinking tea, trying to
understand what had happened. Eighteen
months earlier, she had been sent a letter from
the Home Office telling her she was in the UK illegally. She had tried
repeatedly to explain that this was a mistake, but staff refused to
listen. Instead, they arrested her.
The Guardian published a long article that I’d written about
Paulette. I assumed that Home Office employees had made a terrible
one-off mistake, until over the next few days I began to get calls and
emails from other people caught in the same trap. Most had arrived
as children from the Caribbean, and had lived here for about 50 years
before they started receiving alarming letters, phone calls and some-
times even text messages from the Home Office, instructing them to
leave the country or face arrest. Many had never had enough money
for a foreign holiday, so had not applied for a passport. Now, in the
newly created ‘hostile environment’ for illegal immigrants, launched
by Theresa May, they were having to prove their Britishness, and
had no way of doing so. They were both furious and terrified.
It took weeks of often frustrating reporting, calling lawyers, chari-
ties and politicians before I fully understood the scale of the problem.
People were being made homeless, jobless, destitute, facing impris-
onment or being threatened with deportation, and no one seemed to
want to pay attention. For months, my desk was piled high with
lawyers’ letters and endless lists of contacts who might be able to help.
Women were frightened about coming forward; if you’ve been
told you’re an illegal immigrant facing deportation, you’re going to
feel nervous about having your name and picture in a newspaper.
Some of the emails asking for help were sent at two or three in the
morning. It seemed as though many were spending their nights in
anxiety-induced insomnia, contacting me as a desperate last resort.
I found it very stressful, worrying about whether publishing these
articles would make their lives more difficult, but there was also a
satisfac tion in ensur ing t heir untold stor ies were hea rd.
In the weeks that followed, I met Judy Griffith, who had come to
London from Barbados at the age of nine in 1963 (she remembers
the woolly slippers her mother bought to help her
feel at home in the bitter cold). For 52 years, she
had studied and worked here, employed by the
police and in London hospitals, before being told
she was an illegal immigrant. Now she was
unable to work or get a passport, which meant
she couldn’t travel to see her mother, who had
returned to Barbados for her retirement, before
she died. ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be snatched
from my bed in the night,’ she told me.
I also interviewed Sarah O’Connor, who, since
a r r i v i n g f r o m J a m a i c a i n 19 6 7 a t t h e a g e o f s i x , h a d
attended primary and secondary school, worked
continuously, married someone British, had four
children, all with British passports, and had been
devastated to be told a few months earlier that she
too was here illegally. She was no longer allowed to work, and was
nervous about opening the door to her east-London home in case the
visitor was an immigration-enforcement officer coming to arrest her.
Positive things began to come from the Guardian articles. Again
and again, the Home Office responded by mysteriously deciding to
fi x p e ople’s c a se s w it h i n d ay s of publ ic at ion. G ove r n me nt m i n i s te r s
tried to ignore the issue, until it became clear that thousands were
affected. A huge political crisis followed.
A year later, more than 6,000 people have been given documents
confirming their right to be here. I’m still getting emails from people
telling me they’ve got their jobs back, or have been able to travel to
see relatives. I feel so happy when I read their news. But for some, the
change came too late. Sarah O’Connor died last year, still struggling
for justice, before the compensation scheme was announced. I’ve
dedicated the book I’ve written about the scandal to her.
‘The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment’ by Amelia
Gentleman (£18 .99, Guardian Faber) is published on 3 October.POLITICS
WOMEN OF THE
WINDRUSH
Amelia Gentleman tells the stories of the people who built their lives in Britain from childhood,
only for them to be unjustly torn apart five decades later
Paulette Wilson
(left) with her
daughter Natalie