Windrush victim stuck in Jamaica for years returns

Amember of the Windrush generation who spent the past 25 years stuck in Jamaica after his British passport was taken from him has returned to the UK, and said he is looking forward to having fish and chips.

Ken Morgan, 68, said he was offered no help by the British high commission when his documentation was confiscated without explanation at Kingston airport, while he was in Jamaica for a family funeral.

Morgan, who arrived in the UK in 1959, aged nine, was stopped at check-in on his way home, where his passport was taken. He had been in Jamaica ever since.

He arrived in the UK at about 8am yesterday on a flight from Kingston and walked into the Gatwick arrivals area, giving a thumbs up and wearing a hat with a Jamaican flag on it.

“It’s kind of interesting, this one. They said it was balmy. The pilot said it was balmy. It’s not too bad, considering,” he said. He added that he was happy to have returned.

Following the Guardian’s investigation into the Windrush scandal, Morgan was offered leave to remain. “When he (the Guardian’s reporter Josh Halliday) came to Jamaica, he saw we started off with nothing, then they (the British high commission) recognised, they checked and then they found discrepancy and they made adjustments. They gave this visa,” Morgan said, pointing to a stamp of entry on his passport that stated he had leave to remain.

Morgan said his plan was to sort out a biometric card. “I’m supposed to go to the post office and pick up,” he explained. His “main issue”, however, is eventually getting his passport back. “I’m taking it step by step,” Morgan added.

He returned to the UK on the final day of the government’s consultation on the Windrush compensation scheme. The call for evidence was first published in May. The programme will build on existing measures to support affected members of the Windrush generation, the government has said.

But Morgan criticised the scheme for not being accessible enough. “We had to tell them what happened, and your situation, how you dealt with it. And then they had a consultation kind of thing, where they designed some kind of scheme. They have a cap – there’s an upper limit and a lower limit. But you have to prove all these expenses that you would have accrued over years, and I’m not sure how that works out for poor people,” he said.

“Jamaica is basically a cash society. Three-quarters of the economy is cash. It’s very hard to find documentation for 20 years or more. Very difficult. I’m not quite sure how it’s going to work out.”

He previously told the Guardian about his destitution once he left the British high commission. Morgan opened a shop in Kingston, but was attacked by a gunman who shot him five times before Morgan managed to disarm him. He eventually got a job in graphics at the University of the West Indies, where he met his wife, Annika Lewinson-Morgan, a British-Swedish citizen.