AJ Tracey, Craig David and Annie Lennox are among those to have joined the new #Justice4Windrush campaign.
The campaign aims to ensure that more of the 15,000 people eligible for compensation after historical wrongful deportation from the UK are able to claim their money.
Under 14 per cent of these people have accessed their compensation so far, with just £73.58million of an allocated £200-500million being paid out to victims. While waiting for compensation, over 40 Windrush victims have died.
The campaign group have written an open letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer which can be signed here.
Of her involvement in the campaign, which launches with a new video set to an alternate version of her song ‘Why?’, Lennox said: “With #Justice4Windrush, we want to put the issue of Windrush front and centre, to ensure that the Windrush generation are seen, heard and healed.
“Bigotry, hatred and racism have pervaded the British establishment for too long. We need to put an immediate stop to the tragic injustice of this Home Office Scandal. Windrush victims deserve nothing less.”
Another to have joined the campaign is actor and activist Colin McFarlane, who said: “The Home Office scandal that impacted the Windrush generation is not over. Yet 90% of the country think it is. In 2022, a leaked internal report* commissioned by the Home Office revealed that, ‘during the period 1950-1981, every single piece of immigration or citizenship legislation was designed at least in part to reduce the number of people with black or brown skin who were permitted to live and work in the UK.”
“2012’s hostile environment policy has exacerbated this institutional racism, resulting in over 15,000 victims and rising. The woeful 2019 compensation scheme has added insult to injury and merely prolonged the trauma and is yet another illustration of decades long discrimination by the Home Office against migrants of colour. We need justice for the Windrush generation, now.”