What happens when you have a personal connection to a news story?

While the Independent's news team covered the Windrush scandal, I was completely ignorant of the fact that a member of my own family had been on the HMS Windrush itself

When the Windrush scandal erupted earlier this year – bringing down the former home secretary Amber Rudd in its wake – I did not for a second think that I had any personal link to the story. And when I went to visit the British Library’s Windrush: Songs in a Strange Land exhibition with my family at the beginning of the summer, I still had no idea we might have any connection to the passenger liner which has become synonymous with post-war immigration of West Indian people to the UK.

We had simply gone along to support my sister who had helped curate the exhibition and to learn more about the historical, cultural and political significance of Caribbean migration to Britain 70 years after the ship arrived.

A few weeks later, we were shocked to discover my great-uncle was aboard HMS Windrush itself in 1948.