Windrush left me ashamed of UK, says Clive Myrie
BBC NEWSREADER Clive Myrie has said he was ‘ashamed’ of Britain after watching members of his family become victims of the Windrush scandal.
The 59-year-old journalist has disclosed that his two halfbrothers, six to seven years his senior, faced deportation despite having lived in Britain for decades – and despite their parents arriving from Jamaica as British citizens, like all those from the Windrush generation.
Myrie’s brother Lionel is still waiting for a British passport and compensation while his brother Peter died of prostate cancer before getting either, and before he could take his daughter Maisie to see Jamaica.
Writing in his new memoir, Everything Is Everything, the Mastermind host says the incident made him ‘angry and also ashamed of my own country’.
And on the Government’s delays in paying compensation, he told The Times: ‘We’re all agreed that what has happened is a complete and utter disgrace – the question is, what do you do about it?
‘I’m still hoping society understands what happened and tries to rectify it.’ Myrie said people may be shocked to hear of his Windrush connection, ‘because people think they know me. But it could have happened to anyone with relations who came here under the Nationality Act.’
In his memoir, he tells of how, aged four, he was completely mute at school and so shy that he threw up out of fear on his first day.
And he says he imagined his future as a newsreader while on his paper round as a teenager, speaking aloud the front-page stories as he cycled.
The book also touches on the racial hatred and death threats he has faced throughout his career, such as receiving a card with a gorilla on it reading: ‘We don’t want people like you on our TV screens.’
He said such incidents used to trouble him but now says he pities the abusers, saying: ‘They’re so filled with this hatred or this bile... It’s just pathetic, really.’