Deported Into Destitution!

By Stephen Wilson, one of our reporters abroad

The Home Office in the United Kingdom finally concedes it illegally deported Winston Knight to Jamaica after allowing him to remain homeless on the streets of Kingston for over a decade. Despite depriving him of his right to an abode and work in England, the Home Office has refused to apologise to him.

Jamaica street! How did a street in Glasgow get called Jamaica? Then other streets which catch your eye are named West Nile Street and Virginia Street. Why in this bitter chilled wind swept city do streets bear the names associated with the Caribbean? It represents a riddle not only for tourists but local people unaware of the history. The word Jamaica tends to conjure up exotic images of pirates, rum and the wonderful Reggie music of Bob Marley. It is also associated with the abode of the author of the James Bond novels Ian Fleming, who adored it.

But dig deeper into the history and you find that Glasgow was the base of the tobacco lords who made lucrative profits from trading slaves shipped from Africa to Jamaica.

The city of Glasgow was built on the bones and blood of oppressed slaves. The historian T.M. Devine claimed that of the slaves who arrived from Africa to Jamaica and other islands of the Caribbean that “It was reckoned in 1750 that a quarter of all slaves died within three years of arrival. But averages often concealed: on the Condrinton plantations in Barbados between 1744 and 1746 43 % of all African negroes died within three years of arrival.” Devine goes on to claim that “Some scholars have suggested that coercion reached especially rigorous and exacting levels in the Caribbean. The grossly skewed ratios of white and blacks generated rancorous fear and paranoia among British planters about the menace of slave rebellions.” (See pages 224 and 225 of T.M Devine's “Scotland's Empire 1600-1815,” 2004, London: Penguin Books.}

The legacies of slavery and colonialism left Jamaica one of the most economically devastated as well as poorest ex-colonies of the British empire. The local people have experienced mass deprivation, poverty and high rates of unemployment. Following World War II, Britain still allowed Jamaicans the right to go to reside and work in Britain. Many took the opportunity up, and hundreds of Jamaicans arrived on the ship H.M.T. Empire Windrush in 1948. They managed to find work in Britain, but they often experienced discrimination and deprivation in the worst jobs. They were a convenient and cheap way to fill a labour shortage after the war.

Jamaicans and many other people from the ex-colonies served Britain in two world wars and they were the backbone of the construction industry as well as the National Health Service. But instead of receiving gratitude they often experienced racism. According to the law, those Jamaicans who arrived and settled in Britain had the right to live and work there. However, the Home Office and the British government passed a series of immigration and nationality laws which rendered their status ambiguous and unclear. With the rise of 'hostile environment' polices from 2010 the Government started to detain, and even deport, Jamaicans who could not prove they had documents confirming their legitimate status in the United Kingdom. Some had lost their documents over the years. The Home Office did not strive to keep their own records of those arrivals who had a right of abode. In fact, the Home Office destroyed any such documents of proof! They destroyed registration slips and landing cards of immigrants who had arrived. They justified this measure with the ludicrous claim that this did not represent 'reliable evidence' of immigration status. The Home Office failed to adequately inform the Jamaicans of changes in the law where they could apply for formal citizenship.

So many Jamaicans who had lived practically all their lives in the U.K. could face being detained and deported because they could not prove their legal status. The Home Office now claims that it 'made mistakes' in deporting people. But that is not how a historical report formally suppressed by the Home Office puts it. A historian claims that 'institutional racism' lies at the heart of the matter and that those 'mistakes' were the culminative results of immigrations acts designed to restrict immigration. Those policies of a hostile environment have deep roots in British history and the British Empire which was built from perpetuating a racist ideology. (You can read the formal history report which remained unpublished for many years until 2024 on the Internet titled “The Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal,” Independent Research Report, 26th September 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-historical-roots-of-the-windrush-scandal)

The Windsrush Scandal arose when people who had migrated to the United Kingdom from 1948 to 1973 and lived and worked there legally from around 2010, were wrongfully detained, denied rights and threatened with deportation or worse, actually deported.

Winston Knight was one of those unlucky enough to be deported.

Winston Knight came to Britain when he was just 6. Before being deported from Britain to Jamaica he had spent 47 years in the U.K. He has never had an easy life. Instead of going to school he worked on construction sites. He told how he had endured many racists comments where people said, “He had come in a banana ship” or he was a “black monkey.” Another migrant Allan Wilmot who came on the ships stated, “I never knew what it was like to be broke, hungry or homeless until I came to Britain. I couldn't even afford a cigarette.” (see article by Diane Taylor “U.K. Agrees to Fly Home Wrongly Deported Windrush Man from Jamaica,” 16th May 2025}

During the 2011 race riots in Britain, Knight made the error of committing an opportunist crime where he stole some jewelry. While he was detained and awaiting deportation to Jamaica, he twice attempted to kill himself. He had to be escorted on a flight to Jamaica in the presence of medical staff. When he reached Jamaica, he was just dumped there. He was left on the streets with no home to go to. He was abandoned and destitute. He had nobody he could turn to for help. He had been left In Kingston a place ridden with gang warfare. Some local people derided him as a ‘deportee' and 'alien.' He was not accepted by the local people.

Knight recalls how he witnessed people being beaten up and even murdered. He stated, “But I am coming from hell. I have been living in a war zone in Kingston and I've had some very tough days." He tells how he survived by eating vegetables and fruit from the markets as well as bread.

Fortunately, the Home Office has decided to allow him to return to the United Kingdom. His Lawyer stated that “Mr. Knight has suffered unimaginably having been homeless in an extremely volatile environment for over a decade with no support. The physical and psychological toll is profound and will take years to repair. Astonishingly, the home secretary still offered him no apology for the historic wrong of her department.

This reluctance to apologise is no accident. Winston Knight is returning to a United Kingdom which doesn't appear to learn from history. The recent speech of Prime Minister Keir Starmer where he warns of the dangers of 'living in an island of Strangers' and blaming migrants for inflicting untold damage on Britain as well as plans to tighten up immigration laws won't console the victims of Windrush that those scandals cannot happen again.

Walking up Jamaica Street in Glasgow suddenly feels much more chilling.