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  • Walter's Blog.
  • Home
  • Introduction
  • About Walter
    • 1980 Joining Up - Grafton Street >
      • Arrival and First Impressions
      • First Week
      • Training
      • Passing Out
      • Yaumati Cowboy >
        • Getting on the Streets
        • Jumpers, pill poppers and the indoor BBQ
        • Tempo of the City
        • Into a Minefield.
    • Why Tango in Paris, when you can Foxtrot in Kowloon? >
      • Baptism By Fire
      • Kai Tak with Mrs Thatcher.
      • Home; The Boy Returns
  • 1984 - 1986
    • PTU Instructor & Getting Hitched
    • Having a go: SDU
    • Starting a Chernobyl family
    • EOD - Don't touch anything
    • Semen Stains and the rules
  • 1987 to 1992 - Should I Stay or Go?
    • Blue Lights, Sirens & Grenades
    • Drugs, Broken Kids & A Plane Crash
    • 600 Happy Meals Please!
    • Hong Kong's Best Insurance
    • Riding the Iron Horse
  • Crime in Hong Kong
    • Falling Crime Rates - Why?
    • Triads
    • The Saga That Rocked Hong Kong's Legal Fraternity
  • History of Hong Kong Policing
    • History 1841 to 1941
    • History 1945 to 1967
    • Anatomy of the 50 cent Riot - 1966
    • The Fall of a Commissioner.
    • History 1967 to 1980
    • Three Wise Men from the West
    • The Blue Berets.
    • The African Korps and other tribes.
    • Getting About - Transport.
    • A Pub in every station
    • Bullshit Bingo & Meetings
    • Godber - The one who nearly got away.
    • Uncle Ho
  • Top 20 Films
    • 2001 - A Space Odyssey.
    • The Godfather.
    • Blade Runner
    • Kes
    • Star Wars
    • Aliens
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    • The Life of Brian
    • Dr Strangelove.
    • Infernal Affairs
    • Bridge on the River Kwai.
    • This Is Spinal Tap.
    • Chung King Express
    • An Officer and a Gentleman
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    • Contact
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    • Family Guy Star Wars
    • Zulu
    • Hard Day's Night
  • The Long Read
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    • The Hidden Leader
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Reflections on recent events, plus the occasional fact free rant unfiltered by rational argument. 

"If you want to read a blog to get a sense of what is going on in Hong Kong these days or a blog that would tell you what life was like living in colonial Hong Kong, this blog, WALTER'S BLOG, fits the bill."  Hong Kong Blog Review
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26/4/2018 2 Comments

Windrush - Is anyone surprised?

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The shocking treatment of the Windrush generation by the UK scratched an old sore of mine. The whole saga is no surprise. It avows my view that you need to hold officials, and their mealy-mouthed political masters, to account. I realise this is not a unique opinion, but experiencing it first-hand is affirming.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, a struggling UK sought people from the colonies to rebuild a nation broken by war. Cheap labour from the West Indies arrived on the first ship ‘Empire Windrush’. Hence a generational name. On arrival simple ‘landing cards’ recorded personal details. This process was the only documentation of new arrivals for many years to come.

Move forward many decades. The Windrush folks have toiled in hospitals, kept public transport running, paid their taxes, raised families. 


Then things start to go astray. With the 'landing cards' destroyed in 2009 or 2010 (depending who you believe) they can't prove they've landed legally. Meanwhile, an aggressive Home Office is pursuing them. Theresa May laid the foundations of this approach during her tenure as Home Secretary. As many have no documents, they're trapped. Denied access to medical care, some face deportation, as their lives get torn apart. 

Meanwhile, the politicians are busy pointing fingers at each other as a human tragedy unfolds. The countries moral standing is in the toilet. The fact that the Windrush generation is black tinges the whole saga with a hint of racism. 

Let's be clear, Britain has a record of double-dealing and insincerity in its immigration policies. In 1948, Clement Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister, sought to acknowledge the debt owed the Empire for helping win the war. He created ‘Citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies’. With this status came ‘right of abode’ in the UK. Since then it’s rolled back on those undertakings. 

The 1981 British Nationality Act deprived Hong Kong citizens of those rights.  Timing is everything. With 1997 negotiations looming, did the UK fear an influx of Hong Kong Chinese? Later in 1983, the UK receded the provisions applying to the Falkland Islanders. It granted them full British citizenship. Admittedly the number involved was small, yet a nasty taste remains in the mouth. 

As a serving RHKP officer, these matters come into sharp focus for me in the mid- 1980's. Married to a Hong Kong lady, we had young kids and faced a dilemma. With the return of Hong Kong announced in 1984, I'm encouraged to stay on for continuity. The sudden departure of officers could disrupt policing. And yet the immigration status of my spouse and children remained uncertain.

As negotiations rumbled on between Britain and China, many of us couldn’t wait for answers. In an attempt to provide us reassurance, a series of chinless mandarins arrived from the UK. Politicians, accompanied by patronising officials, relayed the message ‘Britain would act with honour’. It didn’t help that officials couldn't hide their annoyance as we challenged them for details. We were a nuisance, who should shut up. 

Some senior police officers were also unhelpful, suggesting we ‘shouldn't rock the boat’. As these men would be gone by 1997, their self-interest was ugly and contemptible. 
And yet, the message of ‘honourable’ behaviour didn’t appear to have reached the Home Office. Officers who sought the Home Secretary’s discretion to wave UK residency requirements as members of a 'designated service’ met resistance and rejection.  Applications disappeared into the system; then we heard nothing for years. One couple waited three years for a rejection. 

Matters came to a head in June 1989. The events in Beijing shook Hong Kong’s confidence. The Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe heard it first hand on 4th July 1989. With nerves frayed, weeks after Tien An Mun, he met with the Hong Kong Police Staff Associations. He took robust views from officers frustrated at the UK's intransigence. 

In an attempt to shore up confidence, the UK responded with a meagre offer of 50,000 passports for Hong Kong.  The inequity of these arrangements didn't go unrecognised.  In a June 1990 Parliamentary debate MP Steven Norris noted:

" ... the extraordinary proposition that if an ethnic Chinese obtains a passport under the scheme and his wife, who is a  substantially better position than the ethnic Chinese wife of a British citizen... "

Still, Home Office officials refused to budge. Except that word leaked that officers in specific sensitive departments did get a concession. At the same time, local officers received reassurances in confidential briefings.

Faced with this situation, we opted to go to London. We wrote, visited and canvassed MPs across all parties. In October 1990, we gained a meeting with the cross-party British Hong Kong Parliamentary Group.  There was instant understanding and support.

Suddenly, the Home Office awoke. As one MP told us, officials don’t like them prying and asking questions about process. The Home Secretary found himself able to grant an exemption. 

The Hong Kong Immigration Department told to cooperate, expedited action. Acting as the UK's agent, it processed and verified applications. Things then got farcical. It was necessary that the wives undergo an English assessment.  A Hong Kong official conducted the test, struggling with his pronunciation. Bemused ladies shrugged it off. 

The inconvenience we went through was nothing compared to that inflicted on the Windrush generation. I do not suggest to equate the two. The comparison sits in the negative and hostile attitude of the Home Office. Even back in the 1980's, with an opportunity to resolve matters, officials refused to move. They ignored us, scorned us and then only deemed to act as political pressure mounted.

As a vocal, well-resourced group of insiders, we harnessed the media and politicians to campaign. We rejected unworthy voices that told us to keep quiet. Nor would we accept empty verbal assurances. How much more terrible it must be for people without the clout we wielded. It pleases that the Windrush generation's plight is now public. Besides, Mrs May needs to act to restore a sense of decency in the UK. 

2 Comments
Gloria Bing
28/4/2018 02:41:06 pm

I can only concur with our esteemed friend Walter’s central premise that this is an instance of shabby treatment by The Faceless Ones in Whitehall, and that accountability should be swiftly and accurately apportioned. However, I have to take issue with Walter in some other regards.

First, the minor issue of history. The Windrush generation was the 1940/50s, not the 1960s, and not all of them were from the ‘colonies’: my mother was one of thousands of Irish nurses brought over to staff the NHS on its very inception.

Secondly, on the issue of pre-Handover nationality. My first child was born in HK (my wife being local) prior to the Handover and I was never in any doubt about her nationality according to British law. I registered her birth at the British Consulate and nobody raised so much as an eyebrow. I doubt that Walter could have been confused on the issue either, unless he is hinting that at the time he either was not a British National or he himself had been born overseas. Even so, neither of these possibilities would have affected the majority of British expat officers on whose behalf he was negotiating, so I suspect the laudable protection of family life was not the primary discussion point in these negotiations.

Thirdly, those negotiations. Walter mentions the perceived need for continuity but fails to mention the enormous wad of cash (even by today’s standards) which was provided to some as an inducement to stay, along with assurances of continued promotion and protection of pensions given by three - yes three! - governments and the legal backing of the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. He does not mention that many other expat officers were in a similar familial situation but got nothing. The negotiations he describes were on behalf of a group of officers who happened to be members of Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service – a kind of holding company with no business but some staff whose only qualification for membership was that they happened to be appointed by the Secretary of State rather than the Governor. The negotiations, as I imply above, were not really about getting nationality for spouses but about compensation for potential (n.b.) loss of future earnings/ pension. Who can forget those stormy EIA AGMs in which, when asked to do something for the non-HMOCS officers, ‘our’ negotiators (who just happened to be most of the EIA Executive Committee… a coincidence surely?) said in almost as many words “get stuffed”. The off-the-record discussions were much more revealing: “We can get something for ourselves but if we try to get something for you too we won’t get anything”. And now Walter is lamenting the lack of generosity of the British Government…

I don’t wish to upset Walter with all this, but as an officer who was in pretty much the same position familywise, already had nearly a decade of service prior to 1997, and who stayed on and provided that ‘continuity’ it all still rankles a bit. I also have to acknowledge the extraordinary achievement of Walter and his fellow negotiators: they negotiated substantial compensation in advance for something that never happened. Way to go!

Reply
Walter
28/4/2018 03:35:32 pm

Gloria is correct; the Windrush generation arrived in the 1940s/50s. The ship berthed with the first batch of migrants on 22 June 1948. Walter stands corrected.

For brevity, the details of the UK nationality act and its impact are not covered in detail. But again, Gloria is accurate in his portrayal of the regulations.

The issue of HMOCS negotiations is a story anchored in colonial regulations and the undertakings that the UK gave as it withdrew from its colonies. There is a tale to be told, but much of this will need to wait for another day. Lastly, I don't disagree that the treatment of 'contract' officers was shabby, but the machinations of the EIA Committee are as side detail. Much more powerful forces were at work.

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    Walter De Havilland was one of the last of the colonial coppers. He served 35 years in the Royal Hong Kong Police and Hong Kong Police Force. He's long retired. 

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