PART 1
Racialising the Crisis
CHAPTER ONE
Windrush
âNever was so much owed by so many to so fewâ, it began. This wartime quote by Winston Churchill ⊠is to me the most apt way of expressing the gratitude of the Caribbean high commissioners and the West Indian diaspora for the incredible work by Amelia Gentleman.
â The High Commissioner for Barbados, quoted in the Foreword by Katherine Viner to Amelia Gentlemanâs The Windrush Betrayal (2019)1
It wasnât Labour who cut the Border Force. It was the Tories. Labourâs last manifesto committed to adding five hundred extra border guards, over and above the level we will inherit from this Government. They are vital in the fight against people-traffickers, and the drug and gun smugglers, as well as preventing illegal immigration.
â Diane Abbottâs speech on Labourâs plans for a simpler, fairer immigration system, September 20182
In spring 2018, British politics was dominated by what came to be known as the âWindrush scandalâ. The scandal concerned older Caribbean migrants who had moved to the UK before 1973, and who therefore should have had a âright of abodeâ (permanent and unconditional right of residence and re-entry), but who instead had been treated as âillegal immigrantsâ and denied access to healthcare, welfare benefits and housing. In some cases, âWindrush migrantsâ were deported. In one case, a man who had lived in the UK since 1969 lost his job at a local council because new immigration rules stipulated he had to have a passport to work. Having never left the country since his arrival in Britain, he could not produce the necessary documentation and so was left with no job and no recourse to claim out-of-work benefits. Another member of the âWindrush generationâ had lived in the UK since he was five months old. After travelling to the Caribbean to visit his sick mother he was denied re-entry at the UK border. Another man of Caribbean heritage who had lived in the UK for 40 years was given a ÂŁ5,000 hospital bill after his immigration status was checked. Finding he had no residency status, the council evicted him from his home, and he was discharged from hospital onto the streets, ineligible for a state-funded hostel as an âillegal immigrantâ.
There were over 50,000 people of Caribbean heritage who potentially faced similar problems, as the border moved from the airports and docks to housing offices, job centres, hospitals, schools, workplaces and streets. This expansion and internalisation of the border was part of the Conservative Partyâs policy to make the UK a âhostile environmentâ for undocumented migrants (although these policies were very much a continuation/extension of New Labour immigration policy). In responding to moral panic about immigrants stealing jobs, welfare benefits, or both, the government made proof of legal status mandatory for access to the basic means of existence: employment, housing, healthcare, education, a bank account, a driving licence. This is the hostile environment: the system of immigration checks and data-sharing which saw the expansion of everyday, everywhere bordering.
Over a number of months in 2018, left and liberal media outlets began to collect the stories of these long-settled British Caribbeans who had been illegalised, made destitute and banished. Soon, other sections of the press, including those on the right, began to cover the âWindrush scandalâ. One Daily Mail editorial summed up the paperâs position: âThe Windrush scandal is yet another example of how poorly Britain treats those to whom it owes a great debt and how twisted our bureaucratic morals are.â3 Meanwhile, Brexit campaigner and far-right Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg described the âhostile environmentâ as âfundamentally un-Britishâ.4 Both the Mail and Rees-Mogg used the scandal in an attempt to revalorise people from the Commonwealth as âdeserving migrantsâ, while petitioning for a âhard Brexitâ that would extricate Britain from the EUâs âtwistedâ, âun-Britishâ bureaucracy, and make the lives of many EU nationals in Britain increasingly difficult and insecure.
In other words, outrage was not directed at the âhostile environmentâ per se, which the government had created to root out âillegal immigrantsâ. Rather, the scandal was seen by the Mail and others as an example of âhow it is those who play by the rules and do the right thing who get punished â while those who act on the sly seem only to get rewarded for itâ. The âWindrush scandalâ demonstrated the lack of respect for good old British âcommon senseâ: the âbad migrantsâ flood in, stealing jobs and benefits, while the good ones get punished. The story was thereby made familiar in a very particular way: the point was that the Home Office was totally dysfunctional, rather than immigration controls being inherently punitive, violent and racist.
Across the political spectrum, âWindrush migrantsâ were celebrated for their contributions to the nation. The fact that the treatment of this particular group of âmigrantsâ became a national scandal, with a consensus across the political spectrum that the Home Office had acted not only unlawfully but also immorally, was surprising for a number of reasons. First, it was surprising because the tabloids are always talking about Britain as âa soft touch for migrantsâ. Normally we are told that migrants are bad and controls are too weak, so it was disorienting to have a public scandal where the migrants were good and the controls were too harsh. But the consensus on the treatment of Windrush victims was even more surprising given that all of the Windrush generation were black and many of them worked in lower-income jobs or were welfare claimants. This is the same economic demographic â âbenefit scroungersâ and âjob stealersâ â who are the target of popular outrage in debates about immigration.
However, unlike in most of the hateful political and media discourse on migrants, victims of the Windrush scandal were portrayed as elderly, respectable and law-abiding, and the well-rehearsed yarn about them having been invited over to help with the post-war effort prevailed. The âWindrush generationâ did not summon images of âillegal border crossingsâ, âbreaking pointâ, or threats of crime and terrorism. They were not dangerously mobile, but settled, orderly and respectable. Thus, the âWindrush generationâ were folded into the national âweâ, reclaimed as our war veterans, our bus conductors and our caring nurses. The Windrush scandal clearly played on the politics of respectability, economic contribution (even if historical) and good citizenship. As ever, the incorporation of black people into the national fold was partial, conditional and retractable.
Importantly, the opportunity to connect the Windrush scandal to the decimation of the welfare state and the wider demonisation of âillegal immigrantsâ was missed by the left. The scandal became ultimately about immigration policies being applied to the wrong migrants, or applied in the wrong way. We should pause at this point to reiterate that âhostile environmentâ policies involve denying âillegal immigrantsâ the right to healthcare, housing, employment and education, as well as a driving licence and the ability to open a bank account â effectively denying people access to the means of life on the basis of immigration status. Many people incensed by the âWindrush scandalâ were against these immigration policies in general, but the overall tenor of the public debate involved special pleading for one particular group of âcitizensâ, rather than a wider interrogation of the exclusionary and expulsive logics of the immigration regime as a whole.
With some political imagination, the Windrush scandal should have allowed us to challenge received understandings of âillegal immigrantsâ, âforeign criminalsâ and âwelfare claimantsâ. After all, it should be easy enough to recognise that âillegal immigrantsâ are simply those non-citizens who have been categorised as âillegalâ by law, a juridical group rather than a social one. âIllegal immigrantsâ, who share their lives with other migrants and citizens, are illegal only insofar as they have been subjected to an arbitrary legal process. Furthermore, the racist treatment experienced by the Windrush generation in the 1950s and â60s, widely acknowledged across the political spectrum, should not be disconnected from the disproportionate enforcement of immigration controls against black and brown people today. Not all migrants are policed equally, and thus some are more likely to be made foreign through subjection to coercive state power. However, politicians, journalists and activists from across the left emphasised that Windrush migrants were distinct from âillegal immigrantsâ. David Lammy MP, in a rare and rousing speech in the Commons, suitably timed for maximum social media shares, reminded us that victims of the scandal included âa British citizen who paid taxes for 40 yearsâ. Lammyâs steadfast separation of Windrush migrants, who were to be understood as citizens, from the real âillegal immigrantsâ, was repeated across the Labour Party.
These repeated references to tax records and national insurance contributions were more than proof of long-term residency. They served to construct the âWindrush generationâ as respectable, industrious people who âplay by the rulesâ. Referring to Windrush scandal victims as âcitizensâ (which in law was not quite true) worked to separate their treatment from the violence enacted against other non-citizens â the violence of immigration raids, indefinite detention and mass deportation flights, to destinations which include the Caribbean. While some commentators reminded us that post-war migrants were hardly welcomed by white Britons or the British state when they arrived, and others sought to historicise British citizenship as an imperial form of political membership later restricted to exclude âcolouredâ migrants, there was a strong tendency, even among the left and anti-racists, to separate the violation of âWindrush migrantsâ from the wider treatment of âmigrantsâ. Indeed, Diane Abbott appeared on BBCâs Question Time to explain that the issue of âillegal immigrationâ must not be confused with the ill-treatment of âWindrush migrantsâ, before promising that the Labour Party would âbear down on the numbers of illegal immigrantsâ once in power. Evidently, immigration enforcement becomes visible as violence only when it affects certain groups â in this case âWindrush migrantsâ who migrated, legally and respectfully, way back when.
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Perhaps the clearest indication of the limits of this newfound hospitality came when Sajid Javid, as Home Secretary, explained that members of the âWindrush generationâ with criminal records would be fully excluded from compensation and legal recourse. Having a criminal record, however minor or from however long ago, was enough to erase over 45 years of residence. Even in that rarest of moments in British politics when there was widespread sympathy for one particular group of âmigrantsâ, the spectre of âcriminal historyâ was enough to brand some âWindrush migrantsâ as unwanted guests who had abused our hospitality. Exile remained perfectly proportionate in these cases, never mind what people were returned to. The mere mention of criminality was enough to set the nation into default mode: âsend them backâ.
Clearly, if the âWindrush migrantsâ were to be considered British, and welcomed into the national fold, they were incorporated because they were law-abiding. They had proved, over time, that they were not âlesser breeds without the lawâ. Indeed, the Windrush migrants were contrasted explicitly and implicitly with younger, law-breaking black Britons during this period. Newspapers which sympathetically covered the Caribbean grandparents you might help cross the road, or allow in front of you in the queue at the post office, presented at the same time a very different image of âBlack Britainâ in their inner pages. The national outrage over the âWindrush scandalâ was matched by a much more hostile collective outrage over youth violence, because the other big news story of spring 2018 was the so-called âknife-crime epidemicâ.
Commentators made a point of emphasising statistics from particular cities (mainly London), in which the majority of âknife crimeâ victims and perpetrators were black men and boys â and often the focus was specifically on âblack Caribbeanâ teenagers. âBlack youthâ were once again vilified as sources of danger, violence and moral decline, and violence was linked to the family (read âabsent fathersâ) and the nihilism of contemporary urban life (read âblack cultureâ). While wayward black youth symbolised a national crime crisis, their soft, neglectful or inept parents were also held responsible. As such, these later generations were separated from the sympathetic protection and welfare afforded to the âWindrush generationâ who came before them. Echoing repeated moral panics directed at black Britons over the last seven decades, âknife crimeâ called for a law-and-order response. It was time for the police and the state to reassert control in the context of spiralling lawlessness, urban decline and a nation lacking discipline and confidence.
While the state tends to have a clear line when it comes to dealing with crime, the British left have struggled with how to respond to problems of violence in oppressed, lower-income communities. At best, the left is able to identify the social harms caused by a lack of social provision (housing, education, healthcare), and to recognise how this can lead young people in particular to be more likely to be affected by and implicated in violence. But the British left mostly seem unable to say that while one individual harming another is morally wrong, so is having uniformed agents force human beings into cages. Without a compelling critique of police and prisons, much of the left falls back on the carceral logic which divides society into victims and perpetrators. It then becomes possible to argue for the effectiveness of âevidence-ledâ, âtargetedâ policing â perhaps with a sprinkling of unconscious-bias training for good measure.
Arguments are made for policing to be carried out by officers who are âpart of the communityâ, which in addition to black and brown officers also sees police occupying schools, youth clubs and places of worship. Without a critical language, the left implicitly consents to these police powers which are then challenged only for being used âat randomâ (as if those subjected to stop and search are ever identified randomly), or for being used in a discriminatory manner (as if there were any other way in which such powers could be used). This poverty of understanding, and lack of effective articulation, results in the left focusing on a defence of the welfare state, which includes the call for more police. Indeed, more bobbies on the beat has a homely leftish resonance as well as an authoritarian rightish one. Constrained by this logic, the police and the prison system are perceived as flawed, but still fundamentally necessary. Such constraints limit demands to diversity drives, community consultations, equality impact assessments, increased funding and, in extreme cases, public inquiries.
What should have been learnt from the âWindrush scandalâ â from the illegalisation and expulsion of long-settled Commonwealth citizens â was that racist discrimination persists across a range of state institutions and practices, and that this takes new forms as punitive, everyday borders proliferate. The exclusionary logic of immigration controls â according to which âmigrantsâ take jobs, resources and public goods and therefore need to be excluded â operates to justify and obscure the wider disentitlement and abandonment of citizens. Conditionality and punitiveness in the benefits system can then be reframed as p...