During the emerging financial crises of 2007, the Labour Government came up with a brilliant way of showing how good they were at generating hostility against the vulnerable. As bloated bankers' losses gradually plunged the UK into debt that the poor are still paying back, a Labour Minister announced its new policy of creating a “hostile environment” for undocumented migrants.
However, being busy doling out trillions to maintain the luxurious lifestyle of rich bankers and promoting its invasion of other countries, they left it to the Tories to implement the horror we heard about as the Windrush Scandal.
On Saturday 22 of June, which commemorates Windrush Day, reviewers arrived at a performance of Sitting in Limbo adapted from the award-winning drama-documentary film by the writer Stephen S Thompson, who died in 2022. On the black back screen are projected locations, dates and phases in the story of this 'hostile environment' policy. The show opens with three men dancing and singing along with the uplifting sound of Barrington Levy’s reggae song "Here I Come (Broader Than Broadway)".
It’s Anthony Bryan’s birthday barbecue. He has been in the country since 1965 when he arrived aged 8 on his mother’s passport. In theory, he was legally entitled to citizenship and a right to remain but never needed to get himself a passport.
However, Bryan’s mother in Jamaica is ill, so in 2016, he applies for a passport, triggering a Kafkaesque sequence of events which include him being banned from working or receiving benefits, losing his job and later his home, being carted off twice to detention centres over a hundred miles away from his home and at one point given 72 hours notice of deportation by plane to Jamaica. Although his supporting documentation includes testimony and photographic evidence from his childhood school and his claims to have a family in the UK, these are discounted by cruel and bureaucratic officials who refer to his “alleged son”.
It’s a tight, utterly convincing, well-performed play by an impressive cast of four, in which we see Gary McDonald as a stoic Bryan, who gradually becomes more and more anxious, till at one point we suspect he might die. Particularly moving is a scene in which Victor Masha Jr. as Bryan’s son, with tears running down his face, watched by a police officer, tries to publicise his father’s case in the street with a megaphone, only to be threatened with arrest for disturbing the peace. At no point did anyone suggest arresting Blair, David Cameron or Theresa May for disturbing the peace with their hostile policy.
After years of misery, the publicity around his case, including a Guardian report and court hearings, gets Bryan his passport and the possibility that he and his partner can visit his mother. However, he cannot help but feel anxious.
His ordeal is not unusual. Projected onto the backscreen at the end of the show are the following:
“The Home Office estimated 15,000 people would be eligible for compensation. As of January 2024, only 1,993 people have been offered compensation…
...The Home Office has refused to allow applicants access to Legal Aid and 53 claimants have died while waiting for compensation."
Although "the government commissioned an independent review titled ‘Windrush Lessons Learned’ which made recommendations that the government promised to implement, in 2023, the government announced that it was dropping its commitment to the recommendations."
An appalled audience groaned loudly at that point.
Bryan worked over fifty years in the UK, contributing to his community and never getting into trouble with the authorities. He felt safe and didn't even know the government destroyed the Windrush landing cards which would have proved his right to remain.
The sudden, ruthless shock of police banging on his door and trying to drag him off barely clothed is something we would expect belongs in an Orwellian nightmare. But it still happens across the UK. Sometimes, a quick mobilisation of local people blocks the vans till the detainee is released. Courts and campaigners help to make that release more permanent.
Watford Palace Theatre, which in 2023 gave us a stunning production of The Merchant of Venice 1936, has again brought us a socially engaging and important play that everyone should see.