Twice-deported drug smuggler seeking payout
CONVICTED drug smuggler Milton Thompson holds the rare distinction of being booted out of Britain twice – but the pensioner, who has served two prison sentences, is now in line for compensation from the Government.
To date, Milton, who has been back in Birmingham for nine months, has received only £250 for clothing, and the 66-year-old has a defiant message for those who say Britain should not have welcomed him back.
“At the end of the day, if I appealed my conviction (for cannabis importation), I’d win,” he says. “But that’s not what I challenged them on.
“Let’s talk about the 1948 Immigration Act passed in Parliament. That is what I challenged them on.
“Under the law passed in 1948, we are citizens of the UK and its colonies. That’s what the Immigration Act of 1948 stated.”
Milton returned to this country for a second time after the Windrush scandal erupted.
He was one of many who argued that they were British citizens, enticed to this country to ease a critical labour shortage, regardless of whether they held a UK passport.
Milton does not – but he served with the Royal Navy for two years, married a British woman and raised a family here.
“I didn’t apply for a UK passport because, at the end of the day, we didn’t have to apply for one,” the former toolmaker explains. “My (Jamaican) passport was stamped ‘indefinite leave to remain’.”
Milton, who arrived in this country in 1968 to be with his father and brothers, has deep British roots.
He is a father to five UK citizens – and has four grandchildren. He joined the Royal Navy in 1970 and spent time on HMS Ark Royal. On Civvy Street, Milton worked for years at the Cincinnati engineering company in Erdington.
He is candid about his brushes with the law. In 1983, he was sentenced to three months for claiming unemployment benefit while working.
His copybook was well and truly blotted in 2005, however, following a trip to Jamaica. At Gatwick Airport, a large quantity of cannabis was discovered in Milton’s suitcase – he remains adamant the drugs were “planted” in his luggage – and handed a two-year sentence.
During that stretch, Tony Blair’s government showed him the door.
Speaking from the four-bedroom Perry Barr property which was his late father’s home, Milton says: “I was supposed to serve half, but they didn’t give me any parole.
“They classed me as a foreign national and sent me to a deportation centre.”
There he languished from March to December 2006 before being unceremoniously sent packing to the land of his birth.
“I sent my military record to the Home Office and they didn’t want to know,” he says. “They just came with eight officers and took me to Gatwick and put me on a plane.
“When they dropped me on the island, the (Jamaican) police checked me out and said ‘You’re free to go’. I was sent to a wild, wild world in the dead of night – and I was one of many.”
Concerned for his safety and surviving on handouts sent by his British family, Milton took drastic action, returning to this country illegally in September 2007.
Here, he slipped under the radar until wrongly being arrested for a separate matter in 2012. It was a clear case of mistaken identity, but fingerprints taken revealed Milton was wanted for immigration offences.
He was again forcibly removed from the UK, but the Windrush controversy presented a lifeline.
With the help of a barrister on the island, Milton earned the right to return to Birmingham permanently.
He has emerged victorious, but is far from satisfied.
“The bid to gain Windrush compensation has become mired in red tape,” he says.
It is cash, Milton insists, that he is entitled to, and deserves.
“It is not that I’m asking for it,” he adds. “The figure of £5,000 is a figure put forward by them (the government), not me. I believe I’ve been treated wrong.
“I had to leave my dogs in Jamaica. If not for my father’s house, I’d have to stop with my brother or daughter.”