Windrush Day will celebrate generation
THE Government is to announce an annual Windrush Day to celebrate the Windrush generation and their descendants.
Lord Bourne, a housing, communities and local government minister, told activists and others who had attended round-table events over the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the generation that he would make the announcement with “great pride” today.
It comes in the run-up to Friday’s anniversary of around 500 Caribbeans disembarking from the Empire Windrush ship at Tilbury Docks in Essex on June 22 1948.
The annual day will celebrate the generation and their descendants and be will be overseen by a panel with a Windrush Day grant, the minister told activists.
The announcement comes after a period of turbulence for the Government over the Windrush scandal, which has seen citizens wrongly detained and deported.
Amber Rudd resigned as home secretary over the scandal, and Theresa May – her predecessor at the Home Office – came under fire for her “hostile environment” policy towards migrants. Sajid Javid, who replaced Ms Rudd, signalled a softening of immigration policy under his leadership and that the policy would be reviewed.
Last week, Mr Javid admitted that as many as 63 Windrush generation migrants may have been wrongly deported. Mr Javid revealed the number could still rise as officials trawl through more than 8,000 cases dating back to 2002, as he described the term “hostile environment”, coined by Theresa May, as “un-british”.
The admission followed weeks of denials by the department that any member of the Windrush generation had been forced to leave Britain.
Under questioning at the home affairs select committee Mr Javid said 32 of the 63 cases involved criminals and the other 31 were people who left voluntarily after being sent a letter by the Home Office asking them to leave.
Asked about the 63 deportations Mr Javid told MPS: “Out of the 8,000, there’s so far a focus on 63 where there’s something on their record that indicates they could have been in the UK before 1973.”