When George Lee was last in the UK, Tony Blair was the newly elected prime minister, Diana, Princess of Wales had recently died and Elton John’s Candle in the Wind was being played on repeat. A pint of bitter cost £1.63 and a packet of 20 cigarettes sold for about £2.94.
After 28 years of exile in Poland, Lee, an English teacher, flew back to Britain a fortnight ago, his ticket paid for by the Home Office, where staff had belatedly acknowledged he was a victim of the Windrush scandal and allowed him to return.
He first contacted MPs and Home Office workers to request assistance in summer 2018 as the Windrush scandal unfolded. He says consular officials in Poland and Home Office staff in the UK failed to help him return despite the government’s repeated proclamations that everything was being done to assist those affected.
Currently accommodated in a hotel room in Birmingham, Lee travelled to London last week, stepping off the train at Euston station into a city so transformed in the past three decades that he was instantly overwhelmed by culture shock.
“Nothing is the same – the taxis are different, the buses are different,” he said, as he made his way into the underground, puzzled by the Oyster card system. “What do I do with this? Tap and go through?”
He has spent the last two weeks walking around the streets, attempting to reacclimatise to the country he moved to from Jamaica in 1961 as an eight-year-old, assessing why he does not yet feel at home, despite the 37 years he lived here before being locked out.
He is relieved to be back, but startled by the intense sense of dislocation after so long away. “So much has changed. The homelessness is horrible – much worse than in Poland,” he said. “People here look so stressed, there’s a tiredness etched on their faces, as if they don’t know what to expect of tomorrow. It’s a little depressing. It’s clear that the quality of life is better in Poland than here, which feels very sad.”
Lee, 72, is one of a number of victims of the Windrush scandal who were prevented from returning to Britain after travelling abroad for work, or holiday or funerals; some were stopped by local border staff; many were given no assistance by UK consular officials who refused to acknowledge their right to travel to the UK. Lee says he struggled to persuade Home Office staff, MPs and officials at the UK consulate in Poland that he should be given help to return home, despite repeated appeals for assistance.
It was only last November when he contacted Desmond Jaddoo, a Windrush campaigner and Birmingham-based bishop who runs the Windrush National Organisation support group, that Lee was able to collect the documentary evidence needed to demonstrate that he should be allowed to return.
“His case was a straightforward one, so it was easy to get him back once the documents were gathered,” Jaddoo said, adding that he was puzzled by why Lee had not received help to return sooner. Jaddoo traced school records, a marriage certificate, and Lee’s son’s birth certificate, proving he had a right to live in the UK. “We worry that there are other cases like this. We need a proper campaign to encourage people who remain stuck abroad to come forward.”
Lee moved to London in 1961, the year before Jamaican independence, travelling with his younger brother on his aunt’s passport, to join his mother who was working as a nurse in east London, and his plumber father who was working on the North Sea oil pipelines. On arrival he would have been classified as a citizen of the UK and Colonies.
He went to Princess May primary school in north London, where he passed the 11-plus and transferred to Dame Alice Owen’s grammar school. He worked as a financial analyst in the City of London for a while, opened his own barbershop, before later deciding that teaching was his vocation. He married and had a son, but by the time he went to take up a teaching job in Poland the marriage had ended. He travelled to Warsaw on a Jamaican passport because he had failed to persuade UK officials that he was entitled to a British passport, despite having arrived in the country 37 years earlier.
Because he stayed slightly over two years, he inadvertently breached the terms of his immigration status as someone who had been granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK. He was advised by staff at the Polish border that he would not be readmitted to the UK. Lee argued that he should have been recognised as a British citizen, because that was his status when he arrived as an eight-year-old. Throughout his time in Poland he was undocumented, which meant it was impossible to open a bank account.
He taught English to hundreds of students. In one of the many emails he addressed to the Home Office in 2018, he noted that he had helped many Polish students pass exams to study at UK universities, and had at least 10 ex-students who now held PhDs from British institutions. “Can you imagine how it feels preparing all these people to go to the UK, when I, as a citizen of the UK, cannot even enter. Believe me it is soul-destroying,” he wrote.
Lee made contact with the Windrush taskforce, which was set up as a result of the scandal in 2018, with a view to securing the necessary documentation to return to Britain, and explained he wanted help from the British embassy in Warsaw. When he went there to seek advice, a Polish employee was sent to speak to him on the pavement outside. “They refused to let me inside the building,” Lee said.
During his time abroad he lost touch with his son and two sisters. He hopes to track them down and re-establish contact, but feels nervous about reconnecting. “I wonder if, during all the years I’ve been away, they have thought I abandoned them,” he said. In the next few weeks he needs to find somewhere permanent to live, reregister with a doctor and sort out his pension. He is dismayed that officials are refusing to grant back payments of his state pension going back to 2018, when he turned 65.
The barrister Martin Forde KC, who served as the independent adviser to the Windrush compensation scheme from 2018 to 2022, working to recompense those affected by the scandal that led to thousands of people who were living in the UK legally being misclassified as immigration offenders with catastrophic consequences for many. Some people lost their jobs or were evicted from their homes, or were denied benefits, free healthcare, and pensions; a few were arrested and deported to countries they had left decades earlier as children. Others were stuck for years abroad. Forde said Lee should be granted pension payments, adding: “It seems inequitable not to give him the pension that he would otherwise have received.”
When he feels more settled, Lee plans to visit the graves of his mother and younger brother in London, and revisit the London cinemas where he developed a love of French arthouse film.
He is not ready to apply for compensation from the government because he does not believe ministers have acknowledged that immigration legislation which remains in place caused many of the Windrush generation’s problems. A long-buried Home Office-commissioned history into the roots of the scandal, finally released last year, warned 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”.
“How can I claim compensation when they haven’t admitted that the legislation was wrong?” Lee said.
“I don’t feel angry, I’m past the stage where I can feel angry. I’m very philosophical and thoughtful about all that’s happened. But I do feel deep regret that the UK government conspired to take away the rights of the Windrush generation.”
Clive Foster, who was appointed as the new Windrush commissioner in July, said he wanted the government to do more to “proactively identify and reach individuals” still stranded abroad. The problem stretches “far beyond the Caribbean, affecting communities across Africa, Asia, and the wider Commonwealth. Yet people from these communities, in the UK and overseas, may be unaware that the injustices they’ve suffered are directly linked to this scandal.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are doing our best to ensure that justice and compensation for victims is delivered as quickly as possible. Some cases are more complex than others, but we will always try to work with each individual to get them the support they need.”
