Limbo Ends. Now.

Becoming the Windrush Generation's True Legacy

I sat with my mother, texting back and forth furiously on Whatsapp to friends and other members of my family we watched the horror story unfold .

'Sitting In Limbo', the true life story of Anthony Bryan, was shown without any of the usual fanfare or major pre-screening promotion by the BBC. Interesting. Maybe the government was afraid that all those 'angry black women' in the UK would 'kick off' and start even more protesting.

Wrong move. So wrong. Because we heard about the screening.

And I for one was livid. Livid and determined. A powerful combo for a black woman.

Why Livid?

To see how a hardworking, but working class, black family was brought to severe financial destitution in a country they and their parents worked to rebuild and felt was their home by dint of indisputable citizenship.

To hear again about the callous disposal of historical records in 2010,

To know that the findings from the mandatory Equality Impact Assessment (required by the same government) showed that this harassment and unlawful detention would be the most likely outcome.

To hear again that the pressure was driven by a need for the Home Office to hit secret deportation targets.

To see the culmination of institutionalised racism, not immigration, was incubated with the full knowledge of the various men and women appointed as Home Secretary (including Theresa May and Amber Rudd)

And that all of this led to twisting of immigration policy and wield it with unflinching determination and devastating effect on the populations 'low hanging fruit' - the elderly British black community.

This is the community who worked tirelessly in this country's most menial but (as Covid19 has shown in stark relief) yet, the most essential jobs.

Without complaint. Without recognition. Without celebration. Without commemoration

A generation who have been so stoic in the face of the outright racism in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s,..and the covert racism that is so often cleverly overlaid with a thin veneer of well-meaning platitudes that has been such a feature in the 1980s and 1990s

And who still expect to country to treat them with the same grace and kindness they have shown, even though this racism persists now in the 2000s.

Mama, my mother is of that generation. And anyone who knows anything, knows better than to trouble a black person's Mama.

And why determined?

Because the outro showed that over 1,200 applications for compensation and restitution have been made since 2018. But at the time of showing June 2020 only 60 payouts had occurred. 13 elderly citizens deported died before they could see the reversal of the unlawful detainment and deportation reversed.

"How you treat the minority when you think no one will react, determines how you lead the majority when you have enough power not to care. You are who you are in the dark"

So it is time. It is time for the children and grandchildren of the Windrush Generation to stop gasping in horror and grinding our teeth in anger. And to rise up to demand more from our countries.

Yes, OUR countries that make up Great Britain, and the United Kingdom.

The Windrush Generation Legacy will not be one that allows its elderly to slowly die off so that the UK government never pays out a FAIR compensation for the devastation it caused these black citizens and their families.