Campaigners have issued fresh calls for justice over the treatment of African-Caribbeans in Britain at a Hackney event held to mark Windrush Day, and warned society risks going backwards in the push for equality.
Ahead of the annual commemoration on June 22, on Saturday residents piled into the pews of St Peter's Church in De Beauvoir for a night of live music and speeches celebrating the migrants invited to Britain as citizens in the post-war era to help rebuild the country.
The event was organised by the group, 'Justice4Windrush', which has campaigned against the "structural, state-driven injustice" that led to the wrongful deportation or detention of 164 people.
"It's not the Windrush scandal. That generation didn't do anything wrong. It's the Home Office scandal," said actor and activist Colin McFarlane.
In 2018, it emerged that the UK Home Office had not kept records for migrants granted permission to stay, and had not issued paperwork they needed to confirm their citizenship status. It had also destroyed landing cards belonging to Windrush migrants.
The Home Office later admitted to wrongfully deporting at least 63 people from this generation as a result.
Colin's father, senior air force officer Sidney McFarlane MBE, was also in attendance. He was one of thousands of Jamaicans who alighted the HMT Empire Windrush in 1948.
In an interview given ahead of last year's general election, he criticised the government's compensation scheme for victims, set up in 2019.
"It's as though the Home Office is waiting for these people to die out," he said. "It's been dragged out, and we're losing people."
The government admitted last year that more than 50 people affected had died while waiting for compensation.
Although the 2018 scandal forced the then-Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, to resign, many blamed the department's 'hostile environment' policy introduced in 2012 by Theresa May.
"People came here with British citizenship – I still have my mum's passport – and the hostile environment stripped that away," said Hackney's Cabinet Member for Equalities, Carole Williams.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), Cllr Williams warned that the world was entering a "moment of hostility" and was in danger of forgetting the history and lessons of racism.
"There seems to be a regression from us talking about the disproportionality of racism, which we started to recognise in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd and the disproportionate impact of coronavirus.
"People are now getting on with business as usual, but we shouldn't forget."
Keep up with the latest East London news. Sign up to our MyEastLondon newsletter HERE for daily updates and more.
(Feed generated with FetchRSS)