WINDRUSH: THE NEW BETRAYAL
Home Office shredded documents that proved Caribbean migrants came to UK decades ago
THE Home Office was accused of ‘systemic incompetence’ over the Windrush scandal last night after officials admitted destroying thousands of vital documents.
The beleaguered department said landing cards that recorded when migrants arrived in Britain had been shredded. The documents could have helped resolve the status of those wrongly threatened with deportation.
As the crisis intensified, it emerged that at least 49 callers have already used a helpline set up to try to get the situation under control.
However ministers were forced to admit again yesterday that they still do not know whether anyone has been kicked out of the country in error. They also had to intervene to halt the removal of the son of a 74-year- old Windrush citizen who was stricken with cancer.
And Theresa May issued a grovelling apology
AS a young cricket star in the Sixties, Richard Stewart embodied everything Britain hoped to gain from its Commonwealth ties.
An outstanding athlete and fast bowler whose talent was spotted at his London school, he might have been the poster boy for the Windrush generation.
But now, at 73, he has been deemed ‘an illegal’ – despite having a British passport as a child – and warned that if he leaves the UK he may never be allowed back in.
For Mr Stewart, it is a bitter rejection. He is desperate to visit Jamaica, where his mother is buried, and take his son Wesley to meet family there.
Distressed by the thought that he could not go, he added: ‘I’m not getting any younger. I’m thinking about this all the time.’
Born in Portland, Jamaica, in February 1945, he was ten when he came to England on a British passport to live with his older sister.
His prowess with a cricket ball was quickly spotted and he was signed up aged 21 to play for Gloucestershire and then Middlesex – a right-armed, fast-medium bowler.
Known to his team-mates as Wes, he got off to a storming start in 1966.
In his first championship match he took six wickets against Glamorgan. In more than 50 first-class matches, many of them at the spiritual home of the game, Lord’s, he claimed 131 wickets over two years.
He was regarded as a ‘ pioneer’ player, one of the bright English lights from the West Indies who overcame racial prejudice to earn a place at the top of the game.
But in 1968 he was told his mother had suffered a serious stroke in Jamaica and was not likely to live. Needing to renew his British passport quickly to be with her, he applied for temporary documents.
‘They gave me six weeks on a temporary British passport,’ he said. ‘I told them six weeks would not necessarily be long enough, as my mother was seriously ill.
‘ But the man just said, if it expired I could apply for a Jamaican passport. I didn’t have any worries, as England was written down as my country of residence.’
What they did not say was that if he did get a Jamaican passport, he might not qualify for another British passport on his return because Jamaica had declared independence from the British Empire in 1962. His mother died after an long illness, so it was nine weeks before Mr Stewart could come back to the UK on a new Jamaican passport. When his Middlesex contract was not renewed, he worked in a factory making cookers, before becoming a decorator. For five decades he worked hard, always paying his taxes as he raised a family.
But to his horror, when he reapplied for a passport in 2011, he was told he didn’t qualify. More insulting still, lawyers said he was an illegal immigrant, having overstayed his visa. He said: ‘I knew I wasn’t an illegal, but I did not know I had to apply for a British passport as I came here as a British subject.’
He was told to apply for naturalised UK citizenship to qualify him for a passport. But as a pensioner he couldn’t afford the £1,300 fee for legal documents. Besides, he was insulted, adding: ‘Why should I have to? I’m a British citizen already.’
His case has been known to the Home Office for more than five years, and Kate Osamor, the
labour MP for edmonton, north london, where he lives, has 13 similar cases on her files. she added: ‘British people who came here legally are facing deportation. It makes a mockery of our relationship with the commonwealth.’
Mr stewart said: ‘I’ve always thought of myself as British. It does seem unfair.
‘I don’t understand why they gave me a British passport once and now they won’t renew it. My cousins in Jamaica are getting on and I would like to visit them.
‘But if I go on a Jamaican passport I probably won’t be allowed back.
‘My son doesn’t know where his grandmother and grandfather are buried, and I can’t travel there to show him.’