Donald dedicated his life to others. Then he faced a terrifying accusation
25.06.2023 - 15:47
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
When a solicitor told Donald Biggs he could be deported at any time he admits: “It scared the living daylights out of me”.
The Mancunian - who spent decades working for Manchester Council - is one of many people irrevocably affected by the Windrush Scandal.
For three years he lived in uncertainty, fearing a knock at the door and believing he could be ‘snatched’ by the Home Office at any time. And, when he fell ill with cancer, he made sure to pay for his healthcare despite paying taxes his whole working life, as he was so worried about his status.
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Now naturalised, Donald says the mental scars of those years have not left him. And he is yet to receive the compensation he and many others are owed by the UK government.
“Even if I was given a million pounds it still wouldn’t make up for the years and what I’ve been through,” he said this week, on the 75th anniversary of HMT Windrush’s arrival in the UK.
When the Empire Windrush ship docked at Tilbury in 1948, it was carrying hundreds of people from Commonwealth Caribbean islands, who had been invited and encouraged to move to a war-ravaged Britain with severe labour shortages, including RAF airmen who had served in World War II. They were the vanguard of a community who went into the NHS in its earliest days, public transport and British industry.
The thousands who migrated from Commonwealth countries between the 1940s and 1970s became known as the Windrush generation. But, in 2018, that name became synonymous with a government scandal that is still affecting lives today.
The British National Act of 1948 gave the Windrush generation the right of settlement in the UK as British subjects, born in