Yahoo News Windrush victim dies without compensation or apology
Another prominent Windrush victim has died without receiving compensation or a personal apology from the government. Hubert Howard died on Tuesday, just three weeks after finally being granted British citizenship, 59 years after he arrived in London aged three.
Howard spent much of the last two months of his life still fighting for British citizenship from his intensive-care bed in hospital. He was granted it at the end of October when his lawyer informed the Home Office that he was critically ill, and highlighted the urgency of his case.
Howard had not left the country since he arrived here legally in 1960. He first realised he had problems with his documents in 2005 when his employers, the Peabody housing association, asked him to show that he was in the UK legally. He tried to get a passport the following year so he could visit his sick mother in Jamaica, but the Home Office said it had no record of him and warned him that if he left the UK he might not be allowed back into the country. His mother died before he was able to see her again.
He tried on numerous occasions to apply for a passport. In 2012 he was dismissed by Peabody because he was still not able to prove he was in the UK legally. He died in debt as a result of losing his job.
Tyrone McGibbon, an old friend, described Howard as “one of the nicest people you could meet”.
“But recently we didn’t see that side of him so much. He was stressed out because of what he was going through for the past few years. The Windrush saga made him ill – the non-stop pressure. There is only so much people can take before they can’t take any more,” he said.
“It was just too much for him in the end. I’m very upset with his treatment from the government.”
Howard’s daughter, Maresha Howard, said she felt angry at how exhausted her father had become as he tried to prove his right to British citizenship after a lifetime in the UK. “He was an amazing dad; he gave the best advice. He was very popular, and he had a lovely presence. My dad was a fighter, but the way he was treated caused his illness. Last week he said he was giving up on living. He was so fed up.”
She said her father had been living with leukaemia for a number of years but had neglected his health while preoccupied by his Home Office difficulties.
His lawyer, Connie Sozi, with Deighton Pierce Glynn – who visited him several times in hospital as she assisted him with his fight for citizenship – said: “Hubert should not have died as he did. He was physically unwell but should nonetheless have finished his life on this earth with dignity: the dignity that one has knowing that they live in a society formed of a government that does not seek to do harm. He lived the last 15 years of his life fighting to prove the lawful status he has held since he entered the UK on 16 November 1960, as a three-year old British boy.
“The Windrush scandal is only but beginning to unravel. This calls for more than compensation. A public inquiry is needed to establish the extent of the harm perpetrated by the government, and suffered, by Hubert and others of the Windrush generation.”
Related: The motherland: lost images of the Windrush generation
Several other Windrush victims have died as they tried to rebuild their lives. Last month Jashwha Moses, a reggae musician who had arrived in Britain in the 1960s aged 12, died shortly after securing citizenship, too late to make a long-planned trip back to Jamaica. Sarah O’Connor and the former Middlesex bowler Richard Stewart both died before receiving compensation or personal apologies from the government; their families said they had been worn down by the fight to prove they were here legally. None of them had received compensation.
Of the 88 people the government admits were wrongly classified as immigration offenders and removed from the UK, 14 died before officials were able to contact them, and another 14 have still not been found.
