It was 1948 when the HMT Empire Windrush landed the first large group of Jamaicans in the UK. After World War II, the UK economy was desperately short of labour. West Indians were not the only group of migrants shipped in to help this labour crisis. Yemenis were recruited from Adan, then a British Protectorate to work in the steel industry in Sheffield and Indians and Pakistanis recruited to work in the Cotton and Woollen mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire. There was little immigration control of any sort for citizens of the British Commonwealth. After all, these nations were the backbone of our Empire which had generated so much wealth for our nation. We felt momentarily grateful, not only for their past contribution but also for so many of their soldiers who had fought from 1939 to 1945 in our armed forces, many of whom had sacrificed their lives.

However by the early 1960s, black immigrants were met with racist hostility in many of our cities. The first salvo against commonwealth immigration law was fired by the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1962. By today’s standards, this was a mild piece of legislation, specifying that all Commonwealth citizens without a connection to the UK (including Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies who were not born in the UK and not holding a British passport issued by the British government) were subject to immigration control. Commonwealth citizens who were residing in the UK or who had resided in the UK at any point from 1960 to 1962 were exempted as well as some of their families.

I was a student at Nottingham University when the then Labour Government passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968. This followed the Enoch Powell ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, one of the most blatantly racist speeches ever uttered by a main stream British politician. The speech resulted in the 1968 Act which further tightened the screw for our Commonwealth cousins. It was aimed in particular at 200,000 East African Asians who were threatened with expulsion from Uganda. There was a scramble for eligible Asians to obtain British Passports abroad. I acted for one family who were disastrously separated by the process. Mother and one daughter came to the UK whilst another, who worked for Barclays in Kampala, failed to stay long enough in the queue because her employer would not allow her time off work to do so. She ended up with no British Passport and was sent to Australia. Her brother who was a radio engineer was forced by Idi Amin to remain in Uganda only to be murdered some years later. Frankly it was a scandal and the British Government simply refused to relent to allow the sister from Australia into the UK until after the brother’s death.

1971 saw the enactment of the Immigration Act which brought in further immigration controls. However that Act was utterly benign compared with the present draconian regime which treats ‘foreigners’ with suspicion and distain. Immigration control is unpleasant because the government acts on constant Daily Mail headlines proclaiming immigration problems. The Brexit campaign further ratcheted up the ante. Is it any wonder that some of the Windrush generation have been treated appallingly badly? That’s what the public, whipped up by false scare stories, have demanded. I cannot understand how Amber Rudd could possibly have been caught out on the issue of removal targets as such targets have been the mantra of all recent Home Secretaries.

I qualified in 1974 and it is hardly surprising I ended up as an immigration specialist. Injustice is part of everyday life for many immigrants and the Government is making life as difficult as possible for those seeking to enter the UK. I am glad that we have a team of specialist lawyers who have carried on where I left off. It is good that the Government is going to relent on the Windrushers as they certainly should. However, their stories are just the tip of a huge iceberg. As a nation we should be ashamed, very ashamed by some of the attitudes to those who come here and contribute massively to our society.