A Windrush generation man who was wrongly excluded from the UK by the Home Office has had his deportation order revoked in the second case of its kind to come to light in the space of a week.
Gersham Williams, 74, who first arrived in the UK in 1961 at the age of 10, was deported in August 2016 after being convicted of and serving a sentence in relation to a firearms conspiracy conviction.
He has now had his deportation order revoked after the Home Office told him he should have been exempt due to the date he arrived in the UK, which was before the Immigration Act 1971. That law granted indefinite leave to remain to many Commonwealth citizens settled in the UK.
However, while the rest of his family became British citizens, Williams decided he did not need to obtain a British passport because, he said, Jamaica was “ruled by the Queen of England” at that time.
His case follows that of Winston Knight, who had lived in the UK for 47 years before being deported. The Home Office agreed to fly Knight back to the UK after accepting he was a member of the Windrush generation and revoking his deportation order. Knight lived on the streets of Jamaica for more than a decade.
Williams’s solicitor, Jacqueline McKenzie of Leigh Day, said: “I am of the view that cases like these are probably amongst many.”
McKenzie said she was asking the Home Office to “intensify its efforts” to provide information on people from Commonwealth countries who were settled in the UK before January 1973 and who were deported, in order to “start an effective programme of outreach and engagement”.
She also called for the government “to agree to a statutory inquiry so that we can understand not just the causes of the Windrush scandal, but review its ongoing manifestation”.
Williams is in a state of poor health in Jamaica, with neurological and urological problems. He has difficulties walking and has struggled to survive there.
Although the Home Office has revoked his deportation, before being removed from the UK Williams had received an IPP – imprisonment for public protection – sentence.
Officials have warned him in a letter that due to his IPP sentence, he could be sent back to prison on arrival in the UK. The letter states: “You will therefore be liable to be returned to prison to serve the remainder of your sentence.”
Speaking from Jamaica, Williams said he did not accept that the conviction that led to his deportation was sound. “When I was in the UK the police would never leave me alone, that’s the reason I’m in Jamaica now,” he said.
“The Home Office has accepted they were wrong to deport me but I’m not returning to the UK to go back to prison. I don’t belong there. I want to get an assurance from the UK government that I can come back here as a free man. I have not committed any crimes in my nine years in Jamaica. My priority is freedom of movement.”
Williams was politically active when he was living in Ladbroke Grove in west London, helping to establish Grassroots, a bookshop and centre for black art and culture. He trained as a youth and community worker and helped support young black people subjected to police harassment. He attended the 11th World Festival of Youth and Students in 1978 in Cuba alongside people such as Paul Boateng, now a Labour peer. He befriended Winnie Mandela on her visits to London and she invited him to Nelson Mandela’s inauguration.
“I come from injustice and I still speak truth to power,” he said.
The Guardian published a report about a July 1983 conviction received by Williams and two others for an armed hold-up of a petrol station. The court heard that he had described himself as a Robin Hood raising money for community projects and told police: “You people sold my people into slavery and I’m fighting back.”
McKenzie said: “Each day that passes worsens the injustice for this family because Mr Williams is elderly, unwell and has been living in very austere conditions. I hope all arrangements will be now put in place, swiftly, to reunite him with his loved ones.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “It is our longstanding policy not to comment on individual cases; however, it is also this government’s determination to ensure that all those affected by the Windrush scandal are treated with the upmost care and consideration in their future dealings with the Home Office, and that principle will guide our approach in all such cases.”
