Sitting in Limbo

[BubbleBathandBook]

Just watched this- very moving. (BBC 1). A true story written by the brother of the man at the centre of the story.

Absolutely devastating. Even though I've known about the windrush scandal, and the hostile environment, seeing this borne out on a real persons life was so shocking and awful.

Afterwards, DH asked- How can anyone vote Tory on this country? (He is not inclined for such dramatic statements).

I thought it was very well done. He was so dignified in the face of adversity.

Theresa May really ought to watch this. She wont though.

Such a sad story. Treated like a criminal

Yes indeed, I wonder if she watched it

Very well done. Reminded me a lot of I, Daniel Blake.
Made me cry for many reasons, not least of all the futility of all their efforts and the absolute coldness. The ptsd where he got up in the night, the way they stood there watching him dress, the sheer lack of reason and explanation.
I've grown up with racism and have also had situations where I've had to try and take on institutions. It's hard and painful.
I loved the ending and love the Jimmy cliff song.

Also feel abut weirded out by piers Morgan having been on the right side of justice a few times lately and hadn't seen the original morning show where he called out the home office as usually refuse to have him on my telly.

I can't bear Piers Morgan... Usually. However he has been bang on recently and really taken the right wing to task

A lot of people need to watch this drama for them to understand what institutionalised systematic racism is.

I had read quite a lot about this and the truely cruel and manipulative way that the process was carried out. But seeing it from the personal level really bought it home.

Reading about it at the time made me feel both anger and shame. And watching this play last night bought it all home.

Worth remember that you can NOT think this is just a Tory thing. Dont forget it was Labour who started down the "hostile environment" route. And it was under Labour that the destruction of Windrush documentation started.

At the time of Black Lives Matter it would be too easy to say oh its just the tory party and those who vote tory. They may be more overt in their racism, and Labour may play lip service better, but the evidence is that because of racism, not just in political parties but throughout UK society discrimination continues.

(Why I said cruel and manipulative, in most cases even if not as a child, there would be records held by local government eg rates, and also central government eg tax and NI. But it seems as those whoever devised the assessment scheme was actively witholding those records which they themselves could have asked for.)

Totally agree.
I watched it with DH totally open mouthed. Seeing it from the personal perspective was a massive eye opener for me.
So sad that some people who were deported died before they could come back to Britain.

Really sad.

I had to watch this twice, once alone & second time with DH where I could rant.
The statement 'but for the grace of God go I' is so true. You may not believe, but look how easy it was for a law-abiding person to fall foul of ill-thought out and off-the-hoof policies - and they usually are.

What annoys me is that actual 'illegal, and knowingly breaking the laws of land immigrants' and criminals get away with all sorts. Whilst people who are law-abiding and open seem to be easy meat.

It is so sad, that those without resources or recourse to the legal help have suffered from this evil policy.

Why did they get rid of the landing cards - are they not historical data, what's happened to this country?
I better not go on, it's bad enough trying to sleep with all the goings on at the moment - I mean the victims of Corona 19, BLM and all those 'quiet forgotten wars'.

It shows how humans suffer unnecessarily at the hands of others 'in power' or those who appoint themselves despite their own ignorance of the complex issues, and then delibrately choose to ignore sound advice from those who know better.
Rant over. and

And good on Piers Morgan, for using his voice in a positive way. I realise he is human, and not alot of people's cup of tea. But, at this time, he is proving his worth as a compassionate human being.

Apparently the excuse given for the landing cards being destroyed was the data protection act.

But this just seems rubbish. That is about holding current information about living individuals.

Presumably the landing cards, apart from name (and age and sex?) would have no current info.

And even if they were subject to the DPA they should of course have been kept as historical data.

I think it wasn't necessarily overt racism, but part of the state of mind that just goes this isn't anything important.

Or worse still, some poor work experience school leaver was left to tidy up the filing system!

I think it was overt racism. There was a Windrush documentary by David Olusoga which went into the whole history of it. The UK gov actively invited and enticed "West Indians" to come and work in the decades after the war, and guess who was the special envoy sent out there to entice them to come? Enoch Powell! Then after they came full of hope (and had a shit time and a load of racist abuse from the community - no blacks no Irish no dogs etc) the UK gov started questioning the policy and there were gov memos talking about the danger of Windrush immigrants "diluting" the "indigenous" population. It was in these original gov documents that the phrase "hostile environment" was first used. This of course was championed as a policy by Theresa May who made Amber Rudd fall on her sword for her.

Despicable.

Such a terribly sad story. Anthony Bryan, and the other people affected and their families, were treated so so appallingly. And very few of them have received the compensation they are due.

ChroniclesofMama - my comment about overt racism was just about the instance of the destroyed landing cards. So much government business is now outsourced to companies who have no concpet of society and who have people on zero hours contracts who have nothing invested in their work.

But obviously the whole arc of the Windrush story is about British racism, and a horrible hangover of the exploitative and dehumanising history of British colonialism.

Just going back to the passenger list, it must have been more than some clerical mishap. It was possible to search old passenger lists via the National Archives, regularly used by people tracing their ancestory. So someone must have decided that they shouldn't be digitised.

So seems like a deliberate act to destroy evidence.

How do you pack for a journey to a country you left as a four-year-old? “I was on autopilot,” Joycelyn recalls. “I was feeling depressed, lonely and suicidal. I wasn’t able to think straight; at times, I was hysterical. I packed the morning I left, very last-minute. I’d been expecting a reprieve. I didn’t take a lot – just jeans and a few T-shirts, a toothbrush, some Colgate, a towel – it didn’t even fill the whole suitcase.” She had £60 to start a new life, given to her by an ex-boyfriend. She had decided not to tell her sisters she was going; she confided only in her brother. “I just didn’t want any fuss.” She didn’t expect she would ever be allowed to return to Britain.

In Grenada, she found everything unfamiliar. She had to scrub her clothes by hand and struggled to cook with the local ingredients. “It’s just a completely different lifestyle. The culture is very different.” She was given no money to set her up and found getting work very difficult. “You’re very vulnerable if you’re a foreigner. There’s no support structure and no one wants to employ you. Once they hear an English accent – forget it. They’re suspicious. They think you must be a criminal if you’ve been deported.”

Joycelyn recounts what happened to her in a very matter-of-fact way, only expressing her opinion about the Home Office’s consistent refusal to listen when I ask her to. But her analysis is succinct: “The way I was treated was disgusting.” I still find it hard to accept that the government threatened her until she felt she had no option but to relocate to an unfamiliar country 4,300 miles away. The outcome – a 57-year-old Londoner, jettisoned to an island off the coast of Venezuela, friendless and without money, trying to make a new life for herself – is as absurd as it is tragic.

Another article by Amelia Gentleman who was the reporter who did most to bring the Windrush scandal to public attention. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/sep/14/scale-misery-devastating-inside-story-reporting-windrush-scandal

Such an unbelievably wicked thing to do.

Such a heart breaking film, I can't believe this actually happened, it's criminal and disgusting.
BLM indeed

By chance as i dont usually follow things like this I saw this show won best TV drama at the BAFTAs (or was it some other awards ceremony)

I am a bit surprised as I thought it didn't really get much of a write up at the time.

But really good. And I hope it means more people watch it.