THE Tory government has chosen to mark this Windrush Day with a series of announcements which simply underline how racist they are and how much they will rely on promoting racism in the upcoming general election. 

What that means for the labour movement is how much we must still fight on all the issues of racism, and how we must place anti-racism at the heart of all our efforts to change society for the better.

In quick succession the Home Office announced the disbandment of its own unit trying to implement “lessons learnt” from the scandal, a sharp increase in the use of stop and search and that it is examining a policy of “Britons first” in relation to the allocation of council housing.

Even the Home Office’s own research shows that the policy of stop and search is a waste of time, is counter-productive and is implemented in a racist way. 

About one in 100 stops result in the discovery of anything that could be described as a weapon. The notion of allocating council housing to Britons first is a bit rich — there is almost no fresh allocation of council housing as no new council homes are being built. And it is entirely natural that ministers who are committed to piling up the injustices of Windrush do not want any lessons to be learnt or implemented.

That is why the labour movement can and must be the guardian of all our citizens and defender of their rights. Under the new authoritarianism taking hold in British politics and beyond, only the labour movement can reliably defend our rights.

The history of the Windrush generation(s) is relatively straightforward. After the second world war people were invited here from all over the newly forming Commonwealth (not just the Caribbean) to provide the labour necessary for post-war reconstruction. They were told they were being granted rights.  

But socially they were often treated as second-class citizens and increasingly anti-immigrant legislation ensured that this status was codified in law. 

People found that they lost their jobs, homes and livelihoods. They were barred from re-entering the country following family holidays, or they, or their children born here, were faced with deportation. 

The trauma of being deported from the land of your birth, away from all you friends and family is almost unimaginable.

The awful turning-point came with the passage of the 2014 Immigration Act. This led directly to the Windrush scandal itself. Some of us argued at the time that the insistence on non-existent documentation, which had never been provided by the Home Office or border agents, would lead to huge injustice. Theresa May, then home secretary, argued that she would “deport first, appeal later.”

Despite our warnings, which unfortunately proved correct, I was just one of six Labour MPs who voted against the Act. The others were Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, who are still MPs, along with Kelvin Hopkins, Fiona Mactaggart and Dennis Skinner. Regrettably, most of our parliamentary colleagues did not oppose the Act.

This is the primary source of this scandal. And, without anything like the same publicity, this legislation lies behind an ongoing scandal involving tens if not hundreds of thousands of people from all across the Commonwealth. These people will be friends, partners, workmates of all of us. They too are being treated like second-class citizens.

It is not even as if the injustices meted out to the Windrush victims has been addressed, however narrowly defined.

Some of us argued that the Windrush Compensation Scheme was wholly inadequate and that key injuries were not regarded as losses requiring compensation. 

These include issues such as wrongful deportation and wrongful barring of re-entry at the airports. Under the Home Office logic, these are not measurable “injuries.”

A home affairs select committee has previously issued a report which found that many people who have applied for compensation have yet to receive a penny. 

Some found the experience of applying for compensation has become a source of further trauma and others have been put off from applying for the scheme altogether.

Initially it was estimated that 15,000 eligible claimants have applied, but as the Home Office reported in January, fewer than 1,600 have received any compensation.

It is an enraging tragedy that dozens of individuals have died without receiving compensation for the hardship they endured. There remains an excessive burden on claimants to provide documentary evidence of the losses they suffered, which simply compounds one of the primary causes of the scandal itself.

The Compensation Scheme is not fit for purpose. It should be scrapped. It should be completely reformed and replaced by a fair and efficient scheme.

Over the years, we have seen how campaigns against mass injustice take shape and develop. I have never known one where the Establishment rapidly admits a crucial failing and provides both swift apology and the fullest redress. That never happens.

Whether it is the campaigns around Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough, Orgreave or one of the many deaths after contact with the police, the opposite occurs. Lies, official cover-up and denial are the stock responses. Only where there is a strong and determined campaign with a clear aim in sight is success even possible. 

There were 38 years between the massacre of innocents on Bloody Sunday and David Cameron’s apology to the survivors and relatives. 

That is the type of dogged determination that is unfortunately required. And it seems more likely that any of the culprits, those who gave the orders, will die before they ever face justice. 

The lesson for the Windrush campaign itself must be that the fight will go on.

There are two key lessons for the labour movement too. First, is as the saying goes, “the way a state treats its aliens is the way it would treat its own subjects if it dared.” 

Recent government policy shows the truth of that, as denial of rights and repression is increasingly used first on migrants and other vulnerable groups and is then used against strikers or the labour movement in general.

Secondly, our enemies will exploit every division for their own ends. But the people cutting your wages, decimating the NHS, increasing your rent or mortgage payments are old Etonians and their ilk. They are not Afghan refugees, Syrian asylum-seekers or Estonian plumbers. 

To make progress as a labour movement we must always stand for unity and for justice.

Diane Abbott is Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. She served as shadow home secretary from 2016 to 2020.