In August 1947, a Ministry of Works carpenter unscrewed the plaque by the door on King Charles Street in London that read “India Office” and replaced it with one that said “Commonwealth Relations Office.” The jewel in Britain’s imperial crown had become independent India and Pakistan. The plaque was supposed to herald a new era of equality and friendship: a family of nations that had once been under British imperial rule but were now — with Britain’s belated blessing — moving into independence.
This family has had its ups and downs over the past 71 years, but the arrangement has been more or less maintained. Last week, the heads of Commonwealth nations met in London for their biennial meeting. But the usual circuit of talking and dining was marred by a scandal over the fate of the “Windrush generation”: a scandal that has its roots back at the beginning of the Commonwealth itself.
After World War II, Britain, facing a labor shortage, invited citizens from around the Commonwealth to help rebuild the country. In 1948, around 500 people from the Caribbean arrived on a ship called the Empire Windrush, which became a symbol of British Caribbean history. These arrivals were not immigrants but citizens. The adults held British passports and their children generally traveled on their parents’. Many of them settled in Britain.
But in 2010, the government began implementing what is known as the “hostile environment” policy, requiring employers, landlords, schools, banks and doctors to check people’s immigration status. As part of this push, some of these postwar arrivals and their children, who were not necessarily able to document their status, have lost jobs and homes, and have been detained, denied health care and threatened with deportation. In a particularly cruel twist, the U.K. Border Agency itself destroyed documents it now requires them to produce.
Though these stories have been coming out for months, in the past few weeks they have coalesced into an almighty scandal that has led to calls for the resignation of Amber Rudd, the home secretary, who oversees the enforcement of immigration, and even the resignation of her predecessor at the Home Office: Theresa May, now the prime minister. The fate of the Windrush generation has resonated so loudly because it touches on many issues that preoccupy Britain at the moment: its imperial history, its relations with the rest of the world after Brexit, its attitude to immigration and ultimately, what it means to be British.
Hostility to immigration in Britain was a significant force driving the vote to leave the European Union, yet prominent Brexiteers are often sensitive to the charge that any part of their movement is inward-looking, xenophobic or racist. Many of them have recently rushed to condemn the treatment of the Windrush generation. Even the Daily Mail, a newspaper that regularly publishes scare stories about immigrants, splashed it on the front page as “Fiasco that shames Britain.”
Yet this is not an accidental fiasco but the intended outcome of Britain’s draconian and Byzantine immigration policy. Moreover, rather than being an upset, the treatment of the Windrush generation is all too consistent with Britain’s historical attitude toward those former colonies and dominions that supposedly make up its “family.”
The Commonwealth comprises 53 nations, most of which were once British-ruled, and 2.4 billion people, 94 percent of whom live in Africa and Asia. It is supposedly based on a common language, institutions and values — though, given its size and diversity, the commonality of those values is debatable. Its head is the Queen. In 2002, Boris Johnson, now the foreign minister but then a journalist, wrote: “It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.” The line is still often quoted for its offensive language; it is less commonly observed that Mr. Johnson was taking a swipe at the monarch for indulging the Commonwealth partly as a vanity project.
Is the Commonwealth more than that? As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, some Brexiteers have called for the old links of “kith and kin” to replace the European Union as a support for Britain’s international status. That is unlikely. Philip Murphy, the director of the Institute for Commonwealth Studies, recently described the Commonwealth as “a great, soothing comfort blanket” for “post-second world war imperial enthusiasts.” It is not a free trade area; converting it into one would be a gargantuan task. Many of its current trade agreements with Britain go through the European Union and cannot be renegotiated until after Brexit takes place.
If Britain wants something out of the Commonwealth, it cannot offer nothing in return. Many Commonwealth nations, notably India, would like more freedom of movement. In 1948, when British nationality was first formalized in law, British citizenship extended to more than 850 million people, either in the category “Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies” or “Commonwealth citizen.” The latter designation included the people of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India and Pakistan, among others. As Professor Gurminder K. Bhambra of the University of Sussex, has pointed out, “the very imperial form was itself multicultural.” So too was British citizenship.
For all politicians’ talk about a family of nations, though, the archives of the Commonwealth Relations Office have decades’ worth of papers revealing Britain’s attempts to deter people of its former colonies from coming anywhere near the white cliffs of Dover. In the 1950s, the C.R.O. sent propaganda to the South Asian press claiming, “Too many Indians and Pakistanis are coming to Britain.” This was accompanied by warnings that jobs were scarce, rice was expensive and subcontinental clothing was inadequate for the climate of Yorkshire.
The earliest members of the Commonwealth were once called the “White Dominions”: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Irish Free State, South Africa and Newfoundland. Minus Ireland (firmly embedded in the European Union) and South Africa (no longer so white), these nations still form the basis of some Brexiteers’ fantasies of creating a union around an “Anglosphere” or “Canzuk.” No doubt, the advocates of reviving Britain’s links with Canada, Australia and New Zealand can cite myriad reasons that have nothing to do with racism to explain why South Africa, India, Pakistan or the Caribbean nations are just different. Still, majority-nonwhite nations will notice if they are treated as them rather than us, because this will not be the first time that has happened.
The Home Office is certainly capable of being hostile to migrants regardless of their skin color. Last year, around 100 European Union nationals, many of whom were white, received letters telling them to leave Britain or face deportation; the Home Office later said this had been a mistake. Even so, the Windrush scandal raises the question of whether Britain is still in denial about its own multicultural past.
In a radio interview this month, Shashi Tharoor, a member of India’s Parliament, was blunt about the Commonwealth’s prospects: “You really have only two choices now. One is reinvention and the other is burial.” Reinvention in any more effective form would be a huge undertaking, requiring a great feat of imagination and diplomacy as well as cultural and political change — this at a time when British institutions will already be struggling to cope with Brexit. The Commonwealth does not seem minded to reinvent itself, either: Last week it acquiesced to the queen’s “sincere wish” that Prince Charles will one day inherit the nonhereditary position as its head.
The Windrush scandal reveals the complex reality of Britain’s relationships with its former colonies. Those who champion the Commonwealth now might need to reckon with its past before investing too much hope in its future.
Alex von Tunzelmann is the author, most recently, of Blood and Sand: Suez, Hungary, and Eisenhower’s Campaign for Peace.