Windrush Day 2025

Lisa Smart Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

There have been some incredibly powerful speeches this evening, and I feel really lucky to be participating in the debate. There is a lot to celebrate, but there is an awful lot to be really angry about as well.

We owe an enormous amount to the Caribbean and broader black-British community for their contributions to our society, not least the Windrush generation’s key role in building the NHS, and in my own region, the black-Caribbean community’s role in profoundly shaping Greater Manchester’s cultural landscape and social fabric. In 1966, Louise Da-Cocodia became Manchester’s first senior nursing officer, having come from Jamaica in 1955. Confronted with relentless racism in her role, she channelled her experiences into activism, becoming a key anti-racist campaigner, and her legacy continues through the organisations she helped to establish.

In 1980, Kath Locke, a pioneering mixed-race community activist, founded the Abasindi Co-operative, a black, women-led community organisation based in the Moss Side people’s centre. It offered essential services, including a drop-in centre for the elderly, a community health hub and a Saturday school to tackle educational underachievement and high youth unemployment.

In 1991, the NIA centre, now the Playhouse theatre in Hulme, opened as the first large-scale arts venue in Europe dedicated to African and Caribbean culture. Its inaugural event featured none other than the legendary Nina Simone. Today, the Chuck gallery in central Manchester continues that legacy by showcasing and celebrating Afro-Caribbean and African art. It works to foster greater understanding and appreciation of Caribbean artistic perspectives.

Here in the UK, far too many people’s lives are still blighted by prejudice, discrimination and inequality. Racism is still far too prevalent in our society. We all have a responsibility to recognise that reality, but also to recognise the role that we can play in challenging that injustice. I am proud that the Lib Dems are committed to fighting for racial equality, and that means unequivocally condemning racism in all its forms and tackling injustice wherever we see it.

In her opening, very powerful remarks, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) rightly laid out that the previous Government failed to deliver the justice that Windrush victims so deeply deserve. The Government dithered and delayed on implementing the recommendations of Wendy Williams’ lessons-learned review. Liberal Democrats will keep pushing the Government.

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

The Windrush generation made a huge contribution to the life and the economy of the UK, but I want to pay tribute to the Hong Kong community in my constituency of Wokingham and across the United Kingdom, who I am sure will make the same contribution to the UK. I am deeply concerned that the Government are piling uncertainty and worry on British Hongkongers through their reforms to indefinite leave to remain. These people, who are living here in Britain, already fear retribution from China. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should have their back and maintain the five-year pathway for British national overseas status holders?

[Lisa Smart]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the huge contribution of Hongkongers in his constituency. I have asked the Minister before about some of the changes the Government propose to the time period for indefinite leave to remain. The Minister has answered that a consultation is under way, and I am sure that she will talk about that in her closing remarks. I feel that we need to value the contribution made by those who are new arrivals in our country, and I agree with my hon. Friend’s comments.

The Liberal Democrats will keep pushing the Government to right the wrongs forced on to the Windrush generation, including by urgently implementing the lessons-learned review in full and making the compensation scheme independent of the Home Office. Like the hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), I hope very much that the Minister is in a position to update the House on the progress being made on righting those wrongs and delivering justice.

The Lib Dems have long pushed for the implementation of a comprehensive race equality strategy, which would include provisions aimed at reducing the disproportionately high and utterly shameful maternal mortality rates for black women and for eliminating racial disparities in maternal health, as other right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned this evening.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I want to have a point on the record, as it is very important to do so—I was talking to the Parliamentary Private Secretary beforehand, and I talked to the Minister earlier on. On behalf of Windrush people who got their status in Northern Ireland, I will say that the Windrush scheme for Northern Ireland enabled people to work and remain and to have equality with the rest of us. I put on record our thanks for that scheme, because those in Northern Ireland who came through the Windrush scheme were enabled to help our country and Northern Ireland be a better place because of the culture, history, and interaction and social action that they bring.

[Lisa Smart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments. Each successive generation that arrives on these shores, as people have done for millennia, has added to our rich cultural and social fabric. He is absolutely right to highlight his part of the world and the impact that people have had in his community.

On the things that we should also look at, I will say that we should end the disproportionate use of stop and search. We should also look very carefully at the use of live facial recognition, which is most likely to wrongly identify black men and women.

In so many ways, we are holding this debate because of the tireless campaigning of many of the Windrush generation, not least the Liberal Democrat peer, my noble Friend Baroness Floella Benjamin. Floella’s journey is emblematic of the Windrush generation. She arrived in Britain from Trinidad in 1960 at the age of 10, accompanied by three of her siblings. Her childhood was marked by persistent racism; she recalls every day as a battle where she was either ignored or subjected to verbal abuse. During a house viewing, neighbours called the police, accusing her family of stealing furniture from what would soon be their own home.

Floella, of course, was not alone. Many children of her generation endured those indignities in silence, shouldering the burden of rejection by clinging to the hope that life would one day improve. Leaving school at 16, she chartered an extraordinary path—first as an actress, then as a presenter, writer, independent producer and always a tireless advocate for the care, education and welfare of children worldwide. Today, she chairs the Windrush Commemoration Committee, which is charged with establishing a lasting tribute to the Windrush generation and its descendants. Among the Committee’s notable achievements is the unveiling of the national Windrush monument at Waterloo station, which was designed by celebrated Jamaican artist Basil Watson, as mentioned earlier by the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi). The monument stands as a powerful symbol of the immense hardship and equally immense contributions of the Windrush generation to British life. Floella’s voice remains a powerful one, holding the Government to account to ensure that the Windrush generation receives the recognition and justice that it so rightly deserves.

I believe it was Floella who first proposed the idea of Windrush Day as a national celebration of the moment when Caribbean communities came to rebuild Britain in the face of adversity. It is thanks to her determination that we are able to mark this occasion and speak of it today. As well as being the giver of the best hugs in Parliament, she is a celebrated author, using her experience to educate future generations with her writing. It is right that we celebrate Floella and all the Windrush generation today.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.