Boris, Priti and the Windrush Scheme’s First Faltering Steps

Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update | Published: 3 January 2020 | Period covered: July–December 2019

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Key Developments at a Glance

• Boris Johnson becomes UK Prime Minister on 24 July 2019, reshaping immigration politics.
• Priti Patel appointed Home Secretary — a controversial choice for Caribbean community.
• Windrush Compensation Scheme processes first claims but payouts remain negligible.
• Martin Forde QC consultation on compensation scheme design continues into autumn.
• Deportation flights to Jamaica resume, drawing sharp diaspora condemnation.
• Windrush Day 2019 legacy events continue through the summer across the UK.

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The second half of 2019 has brought a seismic shift in British politics — and for the Jamaican and wider Caribbean diaspora, the change carries profound implications. Boris Johnson’s ascent to 10 Downing Street on 24 July, following Theresa May’s resignation after her Brexit deal was repeatedly defeated in parliament, ushers in a new era of uncertainty. Johnson’s government has made clear that its principal preoccupation is delivering Brexit by 31 October — a pledge that ultimately slips to 31 January 2020 — and the question of how Caribbean Britons will fare under a more muscular Conservative administration is one that communities from Brixton to Handsworth are asking with growing urgency.

A New Home Secretary and Old Fears

Perhaps no single appointment in this period has generated more anxiety within the Caribbean community than that of Priti Patel as Home Secretary. Patel, who has previously advocated for the return of capital punishment and has spoken approvingly of hard-line immigration enforcement, arrives at the Home Office with a brief that places her squarely in charge of the Windrush compensation process, the Lessons Learned Review overseen by Wendy Williams, and the ongoing question of deportation flights to Jamaica and other Caribbean nations.

For community groups who spent more than a year pressing Sajid Javid and Theresa May’s government for justice, the transition feels bruising. The Windrush Justice Campaign, alongside organisations including the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), have written to Patel calling on her to demonstrate through action — not words — that the commitments made in the aftermath of the scandal will be honoured in full. As yet, no substantive response has been received publicly, and the Home Office has declined to set a timeline for completing the Wendy Williams review, which was commissioned in September 2018 and promised for publication in early 2020.

Javid, who served as Home Secretary from April 2018 and oversaw the initial government apologies and the launch of the Windrush Compensation Scheme in April 2019, has moved to become Chancellor. He leaves behind a scheme that is widely regarded as under-resourced and structurally flawed by those it was designed to help.

Compensation Scheme: A Slow and Painful Process

The Windrush Compensation Scheme, launched on 3 April 2019, has now been operating for some nine months. The picture that is emerging is not encouraging. As of autumn 2019, the total sums paid out remain strikingly small relative to the scale of harm documented by the Windrush Task Force. Campaigners and legal advisers working with claimants report that the application process is onerous, the evidence requirements are exacting, and processing times have stretched into many months without resolution.

Martin Forde QC, appointed as an independent adviser to scrutinise the scheme’s design and fairness, has been conducting consultations with affected individuals and community representatives through the summer and into the autumn. His interim findings have not yet been published, but community groups who participated in the consultation describe a process in which many of the most severely harmed individuals — those who were detained, deported, or denied medical treatment — are struggling to navigate the bureaucratic demands of the scheme without legal assistance. The government provides no automatic legal aid for compensation applications, a gap that advisers describe as a fundamental structural flaw.

Among the most painful cases to have emerged publicly in this period are those of individuals who lived and worked in Britain for decades, who were forcibly removed or left under pressure, and who have since died in the Caribbean without receiving a penny in compensation. The Home Office has acknowledged that compensation may be paid to the estates of deceased claimants, but the process for doing so is complex and the outcomes remain unclear.

Deportation Flights and Diplomatic Tension

Alongside the slow progress on compensation, the resumption of deportation charter flights to Jamaica has reignited one of the most contentious issues in UK-Jamaica relations. Campaigners including Detention Action, Bail for Immigration Detainees, and the Jamaican High Commission in London have raised concerns about individuals being placed on deportation flights who, in some cases, entered the United Kingdom as young children and have few meaningful ties to Jamaica.

The UK government distinguishes sharply between the Windrush generation — Commonwealth citizens who arrived before 1973 and whose right to remain was settled in law — and those who arrived later or who have criminal convictions that trigger deportation under the provisions of the UK Borders Act 2007. Critics, however, argue that the distinction in practice is less clean than in theory, and that individuals who came to the United Kingdom as infants and spent their entire formative lives here are being deported to a country they do not know.

Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness, leading the Jamaica Labour Party government returned to power in the 2016 election, has continued to press the UK on the deportation question through diplomatic channels, while stopping short of the open confrontation that some in the Jamaican parliament have called for. The issue has also been raised within the Commonwealth framework, with Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states voicing collective concern at regional forums.

Windrush Day: Building a Permanent Legacy

The inaugural Windrush Day on 22 June 2019 — just before the period covered by this report — generated widespread participation across the United Kingdom and sparked discussions about how to embed the commemoration as a permanent, government-funded annual event. Through the summer and autumn months, community organisations have been drawing down from the £500,000 government grant fund established alongside Windrush Day, funding local heritage projects, oral history initiatives, and public exhibitions that document Caribbean contributions to British life.

In London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham — cities with large Caribbean-heritage communities — local councils have worked with community groups to mount events, install commemorative plaques, and begin archival projects that bring Windrush-era migration into school curricula. The National Archives, the British Library, and several university departments have launched digitisation and research partnerships. For many in the community, Windrush Day represents not merely a moment of reflection but a long-overdue act of national recognition — though some are clear that acknowledgement without adequate compensation and structural reform rings hollow.

Brexit’s Shadow Over Caribbean Rights

Brexit remains an ever-present source of anxiety for Caribbean communities in the United Kingdom, not primarily because it affects the status of the Windrush generation — whose rights in UK law are not tied to EU membership — but because of the broader climate of immigration politics that the Brexit debate has generated, and because of the practical implications for Caribbean nationals who have come to the UK more recently under various visa categories.

Johnson’s government has committed to a points-based immigration system that, critics warn, will be less accommodating of low- and medium-skilled workers from Commonwealth nations than the current arrangements. Jamaican community organisations in the UK have begun documenting cases of members who are anxious about their own future status, even where that status should be entirely secure under existing British nationality law. The atmosphere created by years of hostile environment enforcement has left a legacy of fear and confusion that the government’s promised reforms have not yet dispelled.

There is also a more practical concern about travel. Several thousand Jamaicans in the United Kingdom are on various categories of visa or leave to remain, and any tightening of the rules around renewal, family reunification, or indefinite leave could affect communities in ways that the focus on the Windrush generation has somewhat obscured.

Jamaica: Watching, Waiting, Pressing

In Kingston, the government of Andrew Holness enters the final weeks of 2019 with one eye on its own economic programme and another on the treatment of the Jamaican diaspora in Britain. The Jamaican diaspora in the United Kingdom numbers approximately 800,000 people of Jamaican birth or Jamaican heritage, and remittances from the UK remain a meaningful component of Jamaica’s foreign exchange earnings. The diplomatic stakes of the UK-Jamaica relationship are therefore not merely symbolic.

The Jamaica High Commission in London has continued to provide consular assistance to Jamaicans affected by Windrush-related issues, including help with documentation and referrals to legal services. The Jamaican government has also sought, through the Commonwealth framework and bilateral diplomatic channels, to press for a faster and more generous compensation scheme. However, with the UK government distracted by Brexit and a Johnson administration still finding its feet, sustained engagement on the Windrush question has been difficult to secure.

As 2019 draws to a close and a new decade begins, the Windrush generation and the wider Jamaican and Caribbean diaspora enter 2020 with a mixture of cautious hope and deep apprehension. The Wendy Williams Lessons Learned Review remains unpublished. Compensation payouts remain minimal. Priti Patel’s direction of travel at the Home Office is uncertain. And for too many of those most harmed by the hostile environment, justice remains a promise not yet kept.

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Sources: Jamaica Information Service; Jamaica Observer; The Gleaner; Caribbean National Weekly; The Guardian; BBC News; Reuters; Windrush Justice Campaign; Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants; Home Office (UK); UK Parliament Hansard; CARICOM Secretariat; Detention Action; Bail for Immigration Detainees; Martin Forde QC consultation documentation; Jamaica High Commission London.