Furious Windrush family storm out in clash with coroner
‘Had to prove his right to be here’
tHE family of a Windrush generation immigrant who died while trying to prove his British citizenship walked out of his inquest yesterday following a heated row with the coroner.
Relatives of dexter Bristol, 57, who collapsed and died in the street while caught up in the immigration scandal, believe the uncertainty about his future in the UK contributed to his death.
Una Morris, representing Mr Bristol’s family, repeatedly tried to make submissions to the inquest about the role Home Office policy might have played in his death.
But coroner dr William dolman ruled that the Home Office should not be an interested party in the inquest because its policy was not relevant to the immediate circumstances of how he died. He told Miss Morris to ‘stop trying to tell me how to run my court’.
He then apologised to Mr Bristol’s family and Miss Morris. But when her requests for an adjournment were refused, she said the family would apply for a judicial review of the proceedings. dr dolman responded: ‘are you threatening me in my court?’
the Bristol family and Miss Morris subsequently left St Pancras Coroner’s Court in north London, and the inquest continued in their absence. despite living in the UK for almost 50 years, Mr Bristol could not get a job because he did not have documents proving his right to work. He died from acute heart arrhythmia on March 31 outside his home in Camden, north London, shortly before a letter arrived suggesting a breakthrough in his case.
dr dolman ruled his death was from natural causes, although he did acknowl- edge had been the strain under. Mr ‘i Bristol accept from the evidence that the deceased was suffering from a great deal of stress at the time,’ he said. Mr Bristol was born in grenada, which was then a British colony. He was raised by his grandparents before his mother Sentina – an nHS nurse – brought him to the UK on her passport as a British subject in 1968 when he was eight.
He never returned to grenada and considered himself British, his mother said.
in a statement from Mrs Bristol read to the court in her absence, she said: ‘dexter was a very polite and private person, who didn’t talk much about his feelings. ‘He was upset he had to prove his right to be in the UK after living here for 50 years. i don’t know if he would have died aged 57 had he not had to go through all this.’ Mr Bristol’s immigration lawyer, Jacqueline McKenzie, said he had feared he would lose his home and his health began declining as a result of these worries. ‘Without work or benefits he had no way of surviving if he was permitted to stay in the UK,’ she said. ‘We saw him deteriorating before our eyes.’