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A Windrush generation man who arrived in Britain as a child 60 years ago has spent several months homeless and destitute, after officials questioned whether he had the right to live in the UK.
George Campbell, 69, ended up staying in a bus shelter in east London and visiting food banks after he was discharged from a hospital stay last year. Because he had no paperwork proving that he was in the UK legally, council officials classified him as ineligible for state-funded homelessness support.
Although the Home Office’s Windrush team was alerted to the urgency of his situation in early October, it was months before officials accepted that he was living in the UK legally and granted him the proof of immigration status to which he had always been entitled. He remains living in a night shelter, supported by a charity, because his attempts to claim a state pension have also been rejected, despite a lifetime working and paying taxes in Britain.
Seven years after the government apologised for the errors that led to thousands of people being wrongly categorised as illegal immigrants, individual Windrush cases continue to emerge, highlighting weaknesses in the systems set up to try to help those affected by the Home Office scandal.
“It has been difficult, washing in the shopping centre toilets, having to ask friends for food to eat or asking people in the library for food vouchers. That’s an awkward thing when you’re used to being independent,” Campbell said, with quiet understatement, speaking at the Forest Night Shelter premises in Walthamstow, east London.
“It’s hard to understand why it is taking so long to sort out. I was schooled here, my children and grandchildren grew up here, my great-granddaughter is here. I’m part of this country.”
Campbell travelled to Britain from Jamaica in the mid 1960s as a nine-year-old to join his mother, who had emigrated to Britain a few years earlier and who was working as a nurse in a London hospital. As an adult he never applied for a passport because he has never travelled abroad.
Although he knew he had arrived in the UK legally, throughout his life he has been hesitant about asking for help from the council. On the only occasion when he had sought housing assistance (in 1988 when he was looking for somewhere to live with his 15-year-old daughter), he was told he was not eligible and that he needed to register with the Home Office. “That put the frighteners on me,” he said. He was aware that some of his friends’ parents had been deported because of irregularities in their paperwork. “There was a fear of being deported. Will they say: ‘you are here illegally’?”
He followed the news of the Windrush scandal when it erupted in 2017, triggering the resignation of the then home secretary, Amber Rudd, but he hoped he would not be affected because he was working and living in rented accommodation, and at that point had no need of support from the state.
Many of those caught up by the scandal discovered they had been classified as immigration offenders when they applied for pensions or sought new jobs, housing or hospital treatment, because of the introduction of tightened so-called hostile environment measures from 2014 onwards, when officials were required to check the immigration status of applicants.
Last May Campbell was admitted to hospital, where he fell into a coma as a result of undiagnosed diabetes; he spent a month there being treated. When he was discharged, his girlfriend felt unable to look after him in the flat they shared. He spent a week paying for a hotel room, before running out of money, and moving to sleep at Walthamstow bus station.
Over the past 50 years, Campbell has worked as a painter and decorator, a minicab driver, a builder, a truck driver, in a brewery, for a meatpacking company. “I’ve worked all my adult life. I’ve not scrounged off the system; I’ve been paying into the system,” he said. He was puzzled when his application for a pension was turned down.
A number of individuals and charities have worked hard to assist Campbell since last summer, when he was street homeless, but despite their combined efforts it has taken months to resolve his problems.
He is particularly grateful to a council worker called Juanita based in Walthamstow library, who noticed that he was spending all day there. She helped him get food vouchers. “If it wasn’t for her, I would be dead,” he said. Council staff placed him in an emergency shelter for a few weeks in September, but when they found he had no proof of his right to be in the UK, his housing application was closed, according to staff at the Forest Night Shelter, where he has been housed since then. He buttonholed Stella Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow, outside the library in September and explained his situation; she has tried to expedite his case but has been surprised at how long the process has taken.
“The Home Office knew it was urgent. It shouldn’t have taken so long,” said Creasy. While similar Windrush cases have largely tailed off in her constituency, she said she was concerned about a series of upcoming changes to the immigration system that could push new groups of people into immigration limbo.
“When we still have cases like this where uncertain immigration status means that people are completely abandoned by public services and reliant on the voluntary sector and night shelters, maybe we should take pause in any structural changes to our immigration system. None of us want another Windrush.”
A case worker with the Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London (Ramfel) helped Campbell apply for British citizenship under the Windrush scheme; this has not yet been granted, but he was issued with indefinite leave to remain earlier this month. “It is still difficult. I don’t feel secure. I’m not living under my own roof,” he said.
“Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. This is the ‘hostile environment’ in action: individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds still face serious harm simply because they lack or as in George’s case are perceived as lacking permanent immigration status,” Alice Giuliato, the head of services from Ramfel, said. “Though nothing can undo the harm George has suffered, in recognition of this hardship, the government should prioritise approving his citizenship application. This will remove any further anxieties about his future in the country he always considered his home.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are already in touch with Mr Campbell’s representative to resolve his living situation.” Ahsan Khan, the deputy leader of Waltham Forestcouncil and cabinet member for housing and regeneration, said that now Campbell’s immigration status had been granted, the council was working to help with housing. “A homelessness assessment has been arranged to review their circumstances and determine appropriate housing options,” he said.
Campaigners are lobbying the government to hold a public inquiry into ongoing Windrush-related issues, and are in the early stages of setting up an independent people’s inquiry into what went wrong.
“The Home Office must do better at prioritising vulnerable and older applicants. When someone has lived here for six decades and is sleeping in a night shelter, their case should not take months to resolve,” the Rev Clive Foster, the Windrush Commissioner, who was appointed to the independent role last summer to help establish justice for those affected.
