Britain's racist immigration laws led to wrongful deportations of Black people, report says

By Catarina Demony

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s wrongful detention and deportation of Caribbean migrants was the result of decades of racist immigration laws designed to reduce the country’s non-white population, a long-withheld official report showed on Thursday.

Known as the Windrush scandal, the revelations of the mistreatment of thousands of Caribbean people damaged the authority of former British prime minister Theresa May, who had led efforts to tackle illegal immigration when she led the interior ministry, or Home Office.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Caribbean came to Britain between 1948 and 1971 on ships such as the Empire Windrush to fill labour shortages in post-war Britain.

In 2018, Britain had to apologise for its treatment of the "Windrush generation", after a tightening of immigration policy meant thousands were denied basic rights despite having lived in Britain for decades and dozens were wrongly deported.

Britain's previous Conservative government in 2022 refused to publish the "The Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal" report, rejecting requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

The report, now released by the newly elected Labour government, found that between 1950 and 1981 "every single piece" of immigration or citizenship legislation was designed at least in part to reduce the number of Black people allowed to live and work in Britain.

"Major immigration legislation in 1962, 1968 and 1971 was designed to reduce the proportion of people living in the UK who did not have white skin," the report said, describing the Windrush scandal as "deep-rooted racism".

The research, commissioned by the Home Office in response to a government review of the scandal published in 2020, draws on hundreds of files at the country's National Archives, oral history interviews and hundreds of conversations with Home Office staff.

The report, which doesn't make any recommendations, also concluded the lives of Black people and other ethnic minorities in Britain were "profoundly shaped" by the British empire.

Britain said in 2018 it would compensate some Caribbean immigrants affected by the scandal.

"Gradually, the politics of race and immigration became intertwined," the report said. "Even when slavery was finally abolished in 1833, the belief that Black people were either not entitled to or else incapable of equal status with white people within the British Empire remained intact."

(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Sharon Singleton)