Catalogue Number
NMLH.2025.29
Object Name
poster
Title
'W.I.S.S.C. Windrush Crusade. We call for more than just compensation. We call for a Windrush Act of Parliament. An act to repair the damage to community cohesion caused by the 'Windrush Scandal'. Stand with us. We are marching 12 noon Saturday 7th July 2018 from West Indian Sports and Social Club West Wood Street M14 4SW to Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester City Centre.'
Place
Manchester, UK
People
Manchester Law Centre, Windrush Crusade, West Indian Sports and Social Club (WISSC)
Events
Windrush Scandal, Windrush Crusade march Manchester 7 July 2018
Description
A grey poster with the cliffs of Dover and two knights holding shields. Black and red text is superimposed over these images. 'W.I.S.S.C. Windrush Crusade. We call for more than just compensation. We call for a Windrush Act of Parliament. An act to repair the damage to community cohesion caused by the 'Windrush Scandal'. Stand with us. We are marching 12 noon Saturday 7th July 2018 from West Indian Sports and Social Club West Wood Street M14 4SW to Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester City Centre'.
This poster was produced by the Manchester West Indian Sports and Social Club (WISSC) to promote a protest on 7 July 2018 regarding the Windrush scandal. The scandal was revealed in April 2018 and saw the UK government forced to apologise for mistreating thousands of legal migrants who moved to the UK between 1948-1971 as Commonwealth Citizens - many of whom migrated specifically at the request of the UK government to rebuild the country following the Second World War. Until 1971, Commonwealth Citizens could move to the UK without applying for visas, and when the law changed in 1971, anybody already in the country was given permanent leave to remain.
These people, known as the 'Windrush generation', named after one of the ships migrants travelled on from the Caribbean, were unable to prove their right to remain as the UK government had destroyed the migration paperwork from the ships and had kept no records of migrants granted leave to remain as Commonwealth Citizens from this era. As they could not prove when they had arrived, during the 2010s, Windrush migrants and their children were told they were in the country illegally, denied access to benefits including pensions and council provided housing, told they could not legally work, denied NHS healthcare, and threatened with deportation. A review following the scandal found that at least 83 Windrush migrants with legal right to remain were deported. The scandal was met with significant public anger, particularly because many of the Windrush migrants had come to the UK to rebuild the country after the Blitz.
In April 2018, then-prime minister Theresa May apologised for the scandal and announced an inquiry and compensation scheme. The enquiry found that the scandal was "foreseeable and avoidable". It criticised "a culture of disbelief and carelessness" in the Home Office. The inquiry made 30 recommendations including: reviewing the UK's "hostile environment" immigration policy, appointing a migrants commissioner and establishing a race advisory board. The inquiry report author, Wendy Williams, warned there was a "grave risk" of similar problems happening again if the government failed to act. The Windrush Compensation Scheme was established in April 2019 with 15,000 eligible claimants, however the scheme has been criticised for being slow to process schemes, which particularly impacts elderly people who may live in poverty due to having had their pensions and work taken away for years by the Home Office - at least 20 of whom died before their compensation was processed. The Home Affairs Committee criticised the compensation scheme as putting an excessive burden on claimants, being inadequately staffed and having long delays - and says many of those affected "are still too fearful of the Home Office to apply.
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