Jamaica’s junior foreign affairs and foreign trade minister Alando Terrelonge is representing the island at the Windrush 75th anniversary celebrations in London.

Terrelonge met with Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, at the National Service of Thanksgiving at Southwark Cathedral, London Bridge on Windrush Day, Thursday, June 22. Together with Judith Slater, the United Kingdom’s high commissioner to Jamaica, they discussed the positive contribution of generations of Jamaicans on British culture, politics, society, and the development of modern Britain over the last 75 years.

Terrelonge also met with Members of Parliament Dawn Butler and Marsha deCordova, both of Jamaican descent, and Florence Eshalomi of Nigerian descent, at the Windrush 75 National Church Service.

They discussed the legacy of the Windrush generation in political activism and building a more racially harmonious UK.

The Windrush generation is the name given to thousands of people who went to the UK at the invitation of the British Government between 1948 and the early 1970s to fill shortages of key workers following World War II.

Mostly from Jamaica or Trinidad and Tobago, they received indefinite leave to remain, but many who did not apply for passports later found themselves targeted by immigration laws intended to create a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants.

Many lost jobs, homes, health care, pensions and benefits because they could not produce paperwork, while others were taken into custody or forced to return to the Caribbean.

After the scandal was uncovered in 2018, then Prime Minister Theresa May, who pioneered the policy as interior minister, personally apologised to Caribbean leaders and in 2019 a compensation scheme was set up.

However, five years later, many of those affected are still awaiting the promised compensation.

In April this year Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the scheme was “failing” and “compounding its injustice by denying claimants their right to redress for the life-altering losses”.

As of January, HRW said, only 12.8 per cent of the estimated 11,500 eligible claimants had been compensated.