I THINK it is time that the facts were set straight on the Windrush issue, because Amber Rudd is hiding behind a smokescreen and attempting to blame her employees rather than take responsibility for her and Theresa May’s bad decisions in creating a hostile atmosphere for immigrants.

I joined the Immigration Branch in 1971 at Heathrow and dealt with Commonwealth passengers every day until the 1971 Immigration Act came into force in 1973, on our accession to the Common Market.

Until 1973, NO Commonwealth citizen was required to complete a landing card and if an immigration officer wished to impose time or employment conditions on their stay (after the 1962 Act and subsequent 1968 Act which made them subject to control), the officer himself had to complete a green landing card with full details of the passenger, their nationality, date of birth, and details of the purpose of the visit along with the official stamps.

That all changed in 1973, when the new Act came into force and all passengers subject to control were required to complete landing cards with their full details.

The suggestion that there were landing cards for the Windrush arrivals is therefore totally preposterous and a blatant lie because they all arrived from the 1940 to the 1960s, when they carried passports normally showing that they were British subjects, citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies and therefore exempt from control, and their passports were not even stamped at that time. There were other categories, but all were similarly exempt from control.

Therefore if any landing cards at all were destroyed, they would have been cards post-1973 and not at all related to the Windrush passengers.
Name and address withheld

PRIME Minister May’s belief that the Commonwealth might rescue Britain from the big hole that will be left when we quit the EU has been sunk below the waterline.

Plans for a new, non-imperial British trading empire have been further sabotaged by the embarrassing news that the Home Office may have unlawfully deported Commonwealth immigrants from the Caribbean who came off the Empire Windrush but whose citizenship rights were never properly recorded. Not really the best way to strengthen relations with potential trading partners.

The Commonwealth has more than two billion people and a few member states, such as India, are rapidly expanding markets. Ripe, thinks the government, for a bit of commercial arm-twisting. The 53 nations of the Commonwealth account for just nine per cent of the UK’s global trade whereas the EU takes up 43 per cent – some great potential to boost trade, one would think.

Probably not a great deal more, however, because many of the Commonwealth countries count as developing countries that already get privileged access to the EU (and UK) at low or nil tariffs for most of the stuff they sell. Their main concern about Brexit is preserving privileged access to the UK when we leave the EU customs union. However, for the likes of India, the attraction of the UK is not as a product marketplace but as a place to get training, jobs and work experience that can then re-exported back to Indian software and professional service companies.

As the residue of an almost-forgotten empire, the Commonwealth has no trading significance. It served its purpose as a place where Britain could once sell its manufactured goods, free of real competition. Those days are long gone. There is no reason, for example, for Caribbean nations to look across the Atlantic to Britain when the world’s biggest commercial market is in their backyard.

Brexit is not a Commonwealth problem and there is no reason why the Commonwealth must provide a solution.
Alex Orr
Edinburgh