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As the deportation flight left for Jamaica this morning, black Britons' trust in the government left with it

The government’s willingness to deport people of African Caribbean heritage has retraumatised many of us who share it

Miranda Grell
Tuesday 11 February 2020 10:14 GMT
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Protest outside Downing Street over planned Jamaica deportations

Early this morning, despite last-ditch efforts by heroic immigration lawyers who battled in the Court of Appeal until the early hours, a charter left Britain for Jamaica – its passengers forcibly deported.

The deportees – all of them of Jamaican descent, but not all of them are Jamaican – were mostly young men with young families or elderly relatives, some with both. Many grew up in the UK, went to school in the UK and have jobs supporting families in the UK.

The irony, of course, is that the Conservative party has always preached family values. Why, then, has it sought to glorify the deportation of young men – some of them stay-at-home fathers – and rip apart families? If these deportations continue, the government’s actions will engender a new generation of fatherless black children vulnerable to gangs and mercenaries.

So why were they forcibly removed from a country in which they have made their lives? The government wants you to believe that every passenger on the flight was a hardened criminal. In parliament, labels of the most heinous kind have been thrown around like confetti in order to justify the flight. Over the last few days, ministers have been shameless in their efforts to exaggerate the deportees’ bad characters, with devastating consequences – not only for these young men, but for the integrity of the country they once called home.

But thankfully, decent-minded Britons have seen through the government’s smears. From the 170 parliamentarians who wrote to the prime minister urging him to intervene, to the lawyers who brought the emergency legal actions in court, to the grassroots black British groups that have led protests outside Downing Street, we are outraged by the flight, and all it symbolises.

Government defends mass deportation flight to Jamaica amid backlash from MPs

We are angry because this mass deportation proves that for all its “lessons learned” reviews, the government has not learned a thing from the Windrush scandal. In fact, the flight rubs salt in the wounds of the Windrush generation, the majority of whom are still uncompensated, and suffering mentally and physically because of their own government’s disgraceful ill-treatment. The government’s willingness to deport people of African Caribbean heritage has retraumatised many of us who share it. In the most painful way, we have been reminded that our government continues to view us as not fully British, and therefore dispensable.

Why do I say that? Well, because long-term UK residents from other parts of the world are not being deported en masse in the most-high profile and humiliating way. White men from Australia or New Zealand are not having their homes raided in the middle of the night by immigration officers, being thrown into detention and deported in chains and shackles while all the world looks on. They are certainly not being deported for the possession of cannabis or – in the case of Reshawn Davis – a 10-year-old crime he was later found not to have committed. I have never, for example, heard anyone suggest deporting Rolf Harris.

We have been told that Brexit will herald a new chapter for “Global Britain”; that it will enable Britain to reconnect with the Commonwealth. Well instead, it appears that – as many black Britons feared – the government clearly does not consider people of Caribbean heritage part of the “Global Britain” equation.

The flight that left this morning took a whole community’s faith about our place in this country with it. What the government does not seem to understand is that by deporting these men, they were in a way deporting us all.

Miranda Grell is a barrister and campaigner for BAME Lawyers for Justice.

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