On 19 March 2020 the Windrush Lessons Learned Independent review by Wendy Williams was released, after the then home secretary asked for independent assessors to identify key lessons for the Home Office. Fast forward to November 2022 and enter Suella Braverman, current home secretary. The Home Office advertised for a lead non-executive director to work on the review's recommendations, stating: 'We are working hard to support those affected by the Windrush scandal and transform the culture within the Department. Our work and our relationships are underpinned by our values: being respectful, compassionate, courageous and collaborative.'
The review's summary of findings called for tangible evidence that diversity and inclusion were at the department's core, demonstrated by prioritising a meaningful learning development programme. The review provides that the Windrush scandal in part arose because of poor understanding among the public and officials of Britain's colonial history of inward and outward migration, and the history of black Britons. 'Officials must understand the past to inform the present and the future of immigration policy,' it stated.
So, how will those recommendations fare with Braverman who, while attorney general, made the following statement in the Daily Mail: 'Diversity zealots have created a dangerous new religion - we must get serious about taking them on…It is all too easy to view the past through the prism of the present and then use the new orthodoxy to settle old scores. Today that orthodoxy is called 'Diversity, Equality and Inclusion.' It was also reported that as AG Braverman scrapped diversity training within her department.
Last month I listened as Braverman alluded to ‘invasion’ when describing, in parliament, migrants making their way to Britain. This transported me back to Colin Jordan’s White Defence League of the 1950s, in which he warned of the ‘coloured invasion’; the racist rhetoric of Enoch Powell, beginning with his ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech; and the National Front of the 1970s. In the Home Office and wider civil service, there is a proven lack of representation of black people at senior levels.
History does not merely encompass politics, it’s also about how Black people have been perceived within the media, and importantly primetime TV. The Black and White Minstrel Show was a British light entertainment programme that ran for 20 years, from 1958 to 1978, presenting white men blacked up. It received audiences of 16 million, and when the programme received criticism due to its racist content, the chief assistant to the head of the BBC stated: ‘On this issue, we can see your point, but in your best interests, for heaven's sake shut up.’
In 1993, the Italian company Benetton released its ‘What If’ campaign, devoted to race. One image turned the late Queen Elizabeth II into a black woman. The retaliation was swift, with headlines reading ‘Mamy’ (a term created during slavery to produce a false perception of black women, who were portrayed with a wide grin, obese and coarse). Some of the company's stores were painted black with signs, one of which read: ‘If you can make the Queen black, we can do the same to your stores’.
And how can we forget the furore when Argos was criticised for releasing an advert featuring an all-black family in 2020.
These are just three examples of racist ideals that have affected the Windrush generation and their descendants.
Having worked with a number of Windrush victims, as well as conducting seminars and workshops on the historical importance of Windrush and politics, I find it hard to fathom how we can have any confidence in this non-executive role with Braverman at the helm. Not least because the incorporation of these recommendations requires ‘mutual trust and respect’ on the part of all parties.
Pauline Campbell, senior lawyer, Waltham Forest
