A trumpet of warning to the Government unheeded for 70 years!

What Britain’s treatment of the ‘Empire Windrush generation’ says about our society.

I have fought against prejudice and injustice throughout my adult life and I really thought that in Britain we were, in recent years, seeing the back of it.

But I have been shocked at the stories coming to light in the past week of the treatment of some of those who came over from the Caribbean in the early days of the migration after the Second World War. I lived and worked among them in West London in the 1950s and in Tottenham in the 1960s.

I found the first generation of migrants to be extremely friendly, hard-working and trustworthy people and I had a great love and respect for them. Some of them are still my friends today. Many times I was shocked and angry at the treatment some of them received in London. I used to feel ashamed when I saw the street corner newspaper shops with their adverts for rooms or flats to let with the inevitable caveat, “No coloured, No pets, No Irish”.

The Windrush Generation

The early migrants from the Caribbean faced an enormous amount of prejudice, but they bore it with great patience and humility that won the admiration of those who took the trouble to get to know any of them on a personal basis. They played a vital part in the re-building of Britain after the Blitz, both physically and in terms of its economy which was booming in those days, but there was a shortage of manpower as so many men had been lost during the war.

Many hundreds of worker migrants came to my church in West London in the days before and after the Notting Hill riots of 1958. They not only brought fresh culture and enthusiasm into the fellowship but they also enriched our worship with their singing. We had a quartet that sang beautiful four-part harmony and they took part a number of times in broadcasts from the church.

The large number of migrants coming to my church, however, attracted opposition from the National Front who picketed the church and then attacked my house, throwing white paint over the front door and painting abusive words (‘NIGGER LOVER’) on the pavement outside the house. This atrocity backfired against them as it attracted a huge amount of local support as well as publicity in the press.

Left: Commonwealth Sunday Service 1962, High Cross Church Tottenham. Right: Workmen turning over the paving stones outside the church house, Tottenham, August 1962.

A Prejudiced System

I was a member of the Home Office-sponsored ‘Commonwealth Immigrants Committee’ and I saw at first hand the prejudice in the system that the migrants faced. It was strong in the 1960s because the Home Office was involved in framing the Immigration and Race Relations Acts.

Both the Labour and Conservative parties supported the immigration controls which sent a message to the public that there must be something wrong with these people because their numbers had to be limited. That prejudice continued for decades and became increasingly hostile in the run-up to the 2016 Referendum.

The early Caribbean migrants faced an enormous amount of prejudice, but they bore it with great patience and humility.

Evidence of Discrimination

This past week has seen the 50^th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of blood’ speech that attracted massive publicity and revealed to the world the level of racial prejudice in Britain. The speech shocked many people and was denounced in Parliament by Powell’s own party, but evidence at the time showed that Powell was expressing the views of millions of ordinary people in Britain such as the London dockers who exercised a ban on black workers.

There was plenty of evidence of discrimination in employment, such as black bus conductors being permitted but not black drivers, and it was many years before the first black inspector of buses was appointed by London Transport. There were lots of surveys of prejudice in Britain and many activists calling for social change, but cultural attitudes change slowly.

Heart-Searching Needed

In Britain we don’t like to admit it but we have lots of prejudices: like between north and south – northerners don’t like southerners and Londoners think that civilisation ends at Watford - or over regional accents. And of course, Scots stereotypically don’t like Sassenachs and would like to be independent of the English - while the English have historically not been too keen on foreigners of any origin (hence Brexit can’t come too soon!)!

But our treatment of the ‘Empire Windrush’ generation whose landing passes and other documents were destroyed by the Home Office has really been unforgivable. It is amazing that it has taken so long to come before Parliament and it is only because of media publicity that apologies have been tumbling out of the Government.

Men and women who have lived in Britain for more than 50 years and greatly contributed to this nation have been issued with deportation orders or even locked up in detention centres. Surely this is more than just an administrative error! It means we have never really valued many of those who have come to Britain from the Commonwealth.

In Britain we don’t like to admit it but we have lots of prejudices.

Acknowledging Past Injustice

Our mistreatment of people from the Caribbean islands goes back at least 200 years to the days of slavery under British colonial rule. This legacy of slavery has never been finally expunged from our social attitudes and culture, as we remarked just two weeks ago on Prophecy Today UK.

It is the legacy of slavery that the Movement for Justice and Reconciliation (MJR) is working to overcome. MJR’s Chairman sees this legacy as fuelling knife crime on our city streets (see his article, also in this week’s issue). Why is it that more young men of Caribbean origin are in British prisons than in our universities?

The Bible says “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honours God” (Prov 14:31). It is surely time to take a hard look at our inner cities to see how we can improve life for those who are often stuck in ghettos of poverty, lacking hope and opportunity. This is not a call for compassion - it is a call for justice and righteousness, because “Righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Prov 14:34).

More analysis on this issue can be found in ‘Free at Last: The Tottenham Riots and the Legacy of Slavery' (Hill, C, 2014, Wilberforce publications Ltd, London), particularly pp72-74.

After being treated like dogs ourselves, my wife and I can empathise with our West Indian friends

The scandal of bungling Home Office bureaucracy involving Britain’s West Indian community comes just months after my wife and I were subjected to the humiliation of being refused re-entry to the UK because I had no visa in my South African passport.

Our experience clearly mirrors something of what the so-called Windrush generation are suffering, with threats of deportation amid a general immigration crackdown that has apparently misfired and hit many soft targets.

In our case, it meant we could not board our El Al flight to London from Tel Aviv in Israel. It left us in a great dilemma, with possibly nowhere to go (beside expensive hotels).

Vast Labyrinth of Bureaucracy

Apart from three months on a South African newspaper, I have worked my entire career in this country, paying tax all that time and I even now draw a state pension for my troubles. I also own property (fully paid off) and have lived in Britain for 47 years! As an embassy official admitted to me, the Home Office could easily have made a quick check to verify my credentials. But they deliberately chose instead to make life difficult for me.

Fortunately, we trusted the Lord and he enabled us to cope; in fact, in the end we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as we basked in his goodness (even on the beach).

My wife and I were subjected to the humiliation of being refused re-entry to the UK. The Home Office could have helped, but deliberately made life difficult.

I realised that it was part of a new clampdown on immigration designed to persuade the general public that they were seriously doing something about it. But as Home Secretary Amber Rudd has been forced to admit, the vast labyrinth of bureaucracy diverts focus from the individual.

Because of our dilemma, we were forced to stay an extra 11 days in Israel until neighbours were able to mail my old cancelled passports (duly stamped with indefinite leave to stay here) to Beit Immanuel, the CMJ (Church’s Ministry among the Jewish people) guesthouse kind enough to take us in.

Working All Things for Good

A view of Tel Aviv from Jaffa (biblical Joppa) where we spent our enforced extra stay in Israel. Photo: Charles Gardner

Yes, the Lord blessed us mightily in the end, but it was a scary experience and it did cross my mind that I might well be deported to South Africa, and thus be separated from my beloved (British) wife and family.

It was only thanks to our MP, Dame Rosie Winterton (Labour, Doncaster Central), that we managed to get back at all without having to go through the laborious process of applying for a visa (in Tel Aviv) which we were told could take up to six weeks.

The British Embassy there were not much help, apart from offering us use of a computer and phone for a few brief hours. A minder initially treated us like dogs as he tried to shoo us away. We made a number of calls to the Home Office, but were passed from pillar to post as we went round in circles.

I do hope our lovely West Indian friends get the justice they deserve in this appalling situation which shows how little we care about people these days; to Government departments, they are just numbers on a computer register.

In fact, I pray they will experience – as we did – the truth of the Bible promise that “all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28).

The Lord Our Vindicator

During some of our more trying moments as ‘banned’ citizens, I vowed to send the bill for extra expenses incurred to the Home Office, but when I had calmed down and turned my attention back to higher realms, I felt the Lord assuring me that he would both vindicate and compensate us.

When we did finally return home, I discovered that my bank balance was as healthy as it was when we left. God had abundantly provided for us, and met all our needs.

This appalling situation shows how little we care about people these days.

As to vindication, reference the dilemma now faced by the West Indian community. That says it all! Like them, I was a victim of political correctness gone mad.

The case of Sarah O’Connor (Daily Mail, 17 April 2018) is similar in some ways to mine. On recently losing her job, she was denied benefits because she did not have a valid British passport. Like me, she had never got around to applying for one – in her case because she hasn’t left the country in 50-plus years of living here. In my case, I have travelled successfully on a passport issued by my fatherland, of which I am still proud.

As a touching footnote, my half-Jewish grandmother came out to England from Jamaica in 1919; I guess marrying a British officer qualified her for citizenship. So I too have roots in the Caribbean – I used to listen to endless tales of waving palms and beautiful beaches, and of the terrible earthquake my family survived in 1907.

I suppose, compared to that, 11 extra days in sunny Israel was no great hardship!

Today’s community problems through a historical lens.

This week has seen the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, the great American civil rights campaigner. His famous speech ‘I have a dream’ the day before his death is one of the iconic moments in American history. Dr King’s dream of equality that would be enjoyed by his children has not yet come true, despite great strides of progress that brought a black President to power in the USA.

In those days, I was involved in race and community relations at an international level and I was jointly responsible with the late Canon John Collins for organising a Memorial Service in St Paul’s Cathedral at which Coretta King, MLK’s widow, gave a passionate and moving address. It seems ironic that 50 years later more people have died violent deaths on the streets of London already this year than in New York and many of these have been linked with London’s black minority population.

Why is this? I have lived and worked in the ethnically mixed areas of London throughout my working life and I’m well aware of the complexities of social issues linked with poverty, deprivation, family breakdown, fatherlessness, gang life, poor education, low employment expectations and many other factors.

Anti-knife/gun protests in Hackney, Thursday 5 April 2018. See Photo Credits.

I understand the frustration and anger that brought residents out onto the street yesterday in Hackney with their demands for major policy changes to make the streets safe for their children – seven more people were stabbed in London last night!

But there is one outstanding factor that no politician and few social reformers want to touch. That is the legacy of slavery – especially to be found in communities with links to the Caribbean islands which suffered centuries of extreme cruelty under British colonial rule.

A Stain on British History

A new revelation in the past month has thrown fresh light on this subject, thanks to a Guardian article published just last week. It referred to a Treasury tweet (since withdrawn!) showing that when slavery in the British Caribbean was abolished in 1833 the British Government took out a huge loan to raise the £20 million required to accomplish the abolition.

That huge sum - £300 billion in today’s money - was needed to pay compensation: not to the slaves who had been captured in Africa, transported across the Atlantic and forced to work on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean islands, suffering indescribable cruelty, but to the owners of the slaves. Thousands of people in Britain were paid from this fund for the loss of their ‘property’, but not a penny was paid to the slaves themselves.

50 years on from Martin Luther King’s death, more people are dying on the streets of London than in New York.

That colossal injustice, a stain on our national history, has never been acknowledged in Britain. As a nation, for 200 years we have either ignored or carefully hidden our involvement in the slave trade and the extent to which British prosperity was built upon the proceeds of slavery. 

In 1800, seven years before the abolition of the slave trade, some two thirds of the British economy was said to be in some way linked with slavery and it undoubtedly fuelled the growth of the Industrial Revolution that prospered great cities such as Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol and London.

Generations of children in British schools, right up until 2007, were taught nothing about the slave trade. Any mention of slavery was usually taught in the context of the USA and slavery in the cornfields of the southern states of America, but never any mention of Barbados or Jamaica or Trinidad or the other Caribbean islands.

But the zenith of British hypocrisy and injustice has only just come to light.

The Price of Injustice

The great conspiracy of silence of our Government has only just been revealed in the Treasury tweet. It is that the massive loan raised to pay compensation to the people who owned slaves or shares in a slave plantation has taken nearly 200 years to be paid off and was only cleared three years ago, in 2015! And it was paid off by the Treasury using British taxpayers’ money!

This means that millions of people in Britain today have been paying to reward people who trafficked and abused thousands of human lives.

Millions of modern Brits have been paying to reward people who trafficked and abused thousands of human lives.

It is therefore an historical fact that the African Caribbeans who first began coming to Britain on the Empire Windrush in 1948 as ex-soldiers who had fought for Britain in the Second World War and were invited to come to help re-build our cities after the Blitz, have actually been paying for the freedom of their forebears.

A replica slave ship was sailed up the Thames to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, 2007.Generations of tax-paying Caribbeans in Britain have been contributing to paying off the money that was paid to white people in Britain who prospered from the suffering of their great-grandparents (who were not actually given their freedom until 1838, five years after the Act of Emancipation in Westminster).

This is the legacy of slavery that hangs over the Caribbean islands and the Caribbean community in Britain today. In 1838 slaves were given their freedom but there was no attempt to give them any compensation for their suffering or even any help to make a living! In all the years since then there has been no attempt to invest in schools or industry or community development, or any other means to stimulate prosperity for the people.

They have just been left to themselves to build their economies and to shape their societies by whatever means they could find in the modern, competitive, international world.

Quiet Cover-Up

This colossal injustice is part of the legacy of slavery that has been quietly covered by successive British governments and has only now become known through an accidental tweet from the Treasury.

It was actually in 2015, when the loan was finally cleared, that the British Prime Minister David Cameron visited Jamaica and promised to help – what was his promise? – to build a prison! No promise of help with economic or community development or educational grants – and of course, no mention of an apology for 300 years of enslavement!

This is the one great thing that our politicians will not do – say sorry! To say how much we, as a nation, deeply regret that period in our history when we enslaved our fellow human beings from Africa.

The one thing that our politicians will not do is say sorry!

 Let Justice Roll On!

One of the great truths that is revealed through the prophets in the Bible is that God hates injustice. The Prophet Amos thunders against those who despise the truth, who trample the poor, who oppress the righteous and take bribes, who deprive the poor of justice in the courts. He says: “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24).

The time has surely come not only to recognise the injustices of the past, but to do something in the present day: to see what measures can be taken to stimulate prosperity and well-being in the Caribbean islands and, most importantly, to consult community and church leaders in the Caribbean communities in Britain, to say how sorry we are as a nation for the injustices of the past, to listen to them and to take positive measures to deal with the complex social issues they face.

It is not enough to condemn knife crime or to bemoan the killings in London. We have to do something to deal with the real issues that no politician has so far had the courage to face.

Read The Guardian’s article here.

Issachar Ministries, our parent charity, is involved in a budding work to address the issues outlined in the article above, called the ‘Movement for Justice and Reconciliation’, or MJR. Click here to find out about the work that MJR is doing.