Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update | Publication date: 3 January 2023 | Period covered: July–December 2022
Key Developments at a Glance
- Queen Elizabeth II’s death on 8 September accelerates Jamaica’s republican public debate.
- Charles III’s accession gives CARICOM reparations advocates a new interlocutor on the throne.
- Home Office launches two-phase Jamaica media campaign targeting Windrush claimants.
- Windrush compensation passes £64 million as scheme enters its fourth year of operation.
- Resumed UK deportation charter flights to Jamaica prompt renewed legal challenges.
- Jamaica’s constitutional reform committee established to chart the path to a republic.
LONDON / KINGSTON — The death of Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September 2022 sent ripples through Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora that were felt differently from their reception in Britain. On the island, the response was more complex than simple mourning: for many Jamaicans, the end of the Queen’s seven-decade reign was a moment to reassess the country’s constitutional relationship with the Crown with fresh clarity, and to ask whether the accession of Charles III offered the opportunity — or the obligation — to finally make that formal break. The second half of 2022 was therefore a period of unusual constitutional intensity, set against the continuing, grinding work of Windrush compensation and the sobering reality of resumed deportation flights to Kingston.
The Queen Is Dead: Jamaica’s Republican Moment
Queen Elizabeth II had been Jamaica’s head of state for the entirety of the country’s independent existence since 1962. Her death at Balmoral on 8 September 2022 was therefore a constitutional event of unusual significance for the island, even as it prompted a period of national mourning in Britain. In Jamaica, the response was measured and revealing. Prime Minister Andrew Holness offered condolences, but the national conversation quickly moved to what the Queen’s death meant for Jamaica’s constitutional future.
The timing was pointed. Just six months earlier, in March 2022, Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales had visited Jamaica as part of a Caribbean tour — a visit that had ended in visible embarrassment for the royal couple when Prime Minister Holness told them directly and publicly that Jamaica intended to become a republic. The visit had been met by protesters carrying signs reading "Apologise Now" and demanding reparations for slavery. William had expressed "profound sorrow" about the slave trade but stopped short of a formal apology. The images — of the couple smiling and waving from a Land Rover in a manner that evoked colonial-era photography, and then of Holness’s composed but unmistakable declaration of intent — had set the terms for Jamaica’s relationship with the Crown for months to come.
The accession of Charles III did not change Jamaica’s position. If anything, the death of the Queen — who had been a constant and familiar figure for Jamaicans of the Windrush generation — removed a personal dimension that had sometimes moderated the tone of the republican debate. Charles, despite his stated affection for the Caribbean, was a less familiar monarch in Jamaica. The Jamaican Government moved to formally establish a Constitutional Reform Committee in the second half of 2022, charged with recommending the changes required for Jamaica to transition from constitutional monarchy to republic. The establishment of that committee was among the most consequential institutional steps Jamaica had taken towards self-determination since independence.
CARICOM and the New King: Reparations Reset?
The CARICOM Reparations Commission viewed the change of monarch with careful attention. Several CARICOM leaders had signalled, during and after the royal Caribbean tour of March 2022, that they intended to bring the reparations question to the forefront of their relationship with the new sovereign. The commission’s ten-point plan — which includes a formal apology, repatriation, indigenous peoples’ development programmes, an African knowledge programme, psychological rehabilitation, technology transfer, debt cancellation, cultural institutions support, public health support and economic development — remained the framework for those demands.
Barbados had become a republic in November 2021, removing the Queen as its head of state just months before her death. The decision had removed Barbados from the direct constitutional relationship while leaving its reparations demands intact and, if anything, more pointed. Jamaica’s trajectory — moving towards republicanism while also intensifying its reparations advocacy — reflected a similar logic: that full constitutional sovereignty and the demand for historical justice were not alternatives but complements.
Home Office Launches Jamaica Windrush Campaign
In October 2022, the Home Office launched the first phase of a media campaign in Jamaica designed to reach potential Windrush Compensation Scheme claimants on the island. Advertisements were placed in The Jamaica Gleaner and Jamaica Observer and aired on Jamaican radio stations, directing potential claimants to a dedicated local landline number that would connect them to specialist support to help complete a claim form. The campaign was the most direct outreach effort the Home Office had undertaken in Jamaica since the scheme was launched in April 2019.
The initiative came in response to persistent advocacy from Jamaican diaspora organisations and from the Jamaican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, which had argued that the scheme’s outreach in Jamaica was wholly inadequate given the scale of Jamaican participation in the Windrush generation. Approximately 453 claims from Jamaican-nationality claimants had been received by the scheme — a number that advocacy organisations argued was far below the actual population of eligible claimants, many of whom had returned to Jamaica after being wrongly deported or refused re-entry, or whose cases arose from time spent in Jamaica rather than in the UK.
Windrush Compensation: £64 Million and Counting
By December 2022, the Windrush Compensation Scheme had paid or offered more than £64 million to claimants, a significant acceleration from earlier years driven by Home Office investment in additional caseworkers and process improvements. The scheme remained, however, a source of sustained criticism. Advocacy organisations pointed out that only 13% of those estimated to be eligible had received any compensation since the scheme’s inception, and that the total amount paid fell well short of the Home Office’s own estimate of the scheme’s eventual cost.
The cross-party House of Commons Home Affairs Committee had maintained its scrutiny of the scheme throughout 2022, producing reports that identified continuing delays, inadequate support for claimants and incomplete implementation of the Wendy Williams Lessons Learned Review. The committee had noted that a significant number of Windrush-affected individuals had died while awaiting compensation — a fact that advocates used to press for urgency with every passing month. By year-end, the Home Office had increased caseworker capacity but had not implemented the independent administration that Martin Forde QC and multiple oversight bodies continued to recommend.
Deportation Charter Flights: A Continuing Injustice
The resumption of UK deportation charter flights to Jamaica in the second half of 2022 added another dimension to the diaspora’s relationship with British immigration enforcement. Charter deportation flights to Jamaica had been contested by campaigners for years, with Justice for Windrush and other organisations arguing that the Home Office’s deportation operations could ensnare Windrush-connected individuals alongside those with criminal records, creating a risk of repeating the injustices that had brought the scandal to light in the first place.
Legal challenges to deportation flights had achieved significant results in previous years, including last-minute injunctions preventing some individuals from being removed. Campaigners continued to monitor the deportation programme closely, maintaining that the hostile environment had not been dismantled but merely renamed, and that without systemic reform of the immigration system, the risk of further Windrush-style injustices remained present. The Jamaica Government, for its part, engaged with the UK on deportation questions both bilaterally and through CARICOM mechanisms, seeking assurances about due process and the treatment of deportees on arrival.
Sources for this report include the Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, BBC, Al Jazeera, CBS News, NPR, GOV.UK (Windrush Compensation Scheme factsheet October 2022), the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, CARICOM, the Jamaica Information Service, constitutionnet.org and Caribbean National Weekly. This report was researched and published on 3 January 2023.
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