The origin of racist policies in the United Kingdom which includes the “deep-rooted racism of the Windrush scandal” lie in the fact that “during the period 1950-1981, every single piece of immigration or citizenship legislation was designed at least in part to reduce the number of people with black or brown skin who were permitted to live and work in the UK”.
This was disclosed in a Home Office sponsored investigation, which was released over a year ago, but was since then suppressed by government officials after it was release.
The Guardian reports that the said report of the investigation, which is about 52-page was prepared by a historian whose identity has not been disclosed.
The report indicts the British empire for its dependence on racism for survival since the post war period. It says that “the British Empire depended on racist ideology in order to function”.
The Windrush scandal, whose victims were of Caribbean decent, began in 2018. It was about some people who were wrongly detained, denied legal rights, threatened with deportation, and in at least 83 cases wrongly deported from the UK by the Home Office.
This is however, not the only incidence of racism in the United Kingdom, as there have continued to be continuous allegations of systemic racism and discrimination in the UK.
The report admits that the negative impact of racist immigration laws has been more prevalent on the blacks rather than other racial minorities, and the most visible impact is the objective of reducing the UK black population.
The report concludes: “As a result, the experiences of Britain’s black communities of the Home Office, of the law, and of life in the UK have been fundamentally different from those of white communities,”.
It states further that “Major immigration legislation in 1962, 1968 and 1971 was designed to reduce the proportion of people living in the United Kingdom who did not have white skin.”
“The British Empire depended on racist ideology in order to function, which in turn produced legislation aimed at keeping racial and ethnic groups apart … From the beginning, concern about Commonwealth immigration was about skin colour.”
According to Guardian, the document summarises decades of “dysfunctional relationships between Britain’s institutions and Black and minority ethnic people”, and concludes: “The politics of Britain’s borders, which have been administered for more than a century by the Home Office, are now inextricably connected with race and with Britain’s colonial history.”
The report, also states that in the 1950 there was a “basic assumption that ‘coloured immigrants’, as they were referred to, were not good for British society,”.
The report was named “Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal”, and was intended to educate the UK civil servants about the root causes of racism surrounding the Windrush scandal.
