Windrush victim tells of humiliation and attacks compensation plan

A WINDRUSH campaigner has reflected on the “injustice and humiliation” of being deemed an illegal immigrant in the country he called home for more than 50 years.

Michael Braithwaite, who arrived from Barbados as a child in 1961, lost his job as a special needs teaching assistant for not having an up-to-date identity document two years ago.

The married father-of-three said the ordeal of “being told I was nobody” still causes him great mental anguish.

Mr Braithwaite, 68, also dismissed the Government’s “token” attempts and “lame excuses” to remedy the scandal and criticised the scheme designed to compensate victims of the affair.

Today marks 72 years since the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks on June 22, 1948, carrying some 500 people from Jamaica.

The official human rights watchdog is launching legal action to review the Home Office’s “hostile environment” policy which led to the Windrush scandal.

It resulted in thousands of Commonwealth immigrants being wrongly denied rights, losing their jobs and in some cases being deported to places they barely knew.

Mr Braithwaite criticised the compensation scheme, which he described as an arduous process requiring lots of “silly little documentation” that has long since been lost.

He added: “I might be dead before I get any compensation that I’m due. But compensation is a crucial deal, people are still having to think about the rent, living off charities.”

Official figures show fewer than five per cent of claims made have been paid out.