Who is Anthony Bryan? Victim of the Windrush scandal features in BBC drama Sitting In Limbo

The feature-length show airs on BBC One tonight
Emily Lawford8 June 2020
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New BBC drama Sitting in Limbo tells the story of Anthony Bryan, a victim of the Windrush scandal which saw hundreds of Caribbean immigrants working in the UK wrongly targeted by immigration enforcement because of the government’s “hostile environment” policies.

Former Casualty star Patrick Robinson plays Anthony Bryan, who was wrongly detained and almost deported after living in Britain for 52 years, in the programme which airs on BBC One at 8.30pm tonight.

The Windrush generation, named after the first ship to bring them to the UK in 1948, were Caribbean immigrants who arrived in Britain between 1948 and 1973.

The 1971 Immigration Act gave people who had already settled in Britain indefinite leave to remain.

Anthony Bryan was almost deported to Jamaica as part of the Windrush scandal
Good Morning Britain

However, due to changes in the immigration system, Caribbean immigrants were being deemed “illegal immigrants”, and being denied access to NHS healthcare, losing their jobs, and many were detained and deported.

The scandal was exposed in 2018 and led to the resignation of the then-Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

Here, we take a closer look at Anthony Bryan’s life and how he spent a total of five weeks in detention centres, and was almost deported.

Who is Anthony Bryan?

BBC/Left Bank Pictures/Des Willie

Anthony Bryan was born in Jamaica in 1957. When he was five, his mother left him with his grandmother to work as a seamstress in London so she could save up enough to pay for him to join her. At eight years old, he flew to the UK in September 1965 to live with his mother, who was sick.

He attended Northwold primary school and Shoreditch secondary school in London, before leaving at 16 to work in a furniture factory. He later worked as a painter and decorator, paying taxes for more than 40 years. He became a grandfather, with seven grandchildren.

In 2015, when Mr Bryan applied for a British passport, the Home Office’s immigration enforcement contractor, Capita, told him he would be deported from the UK has he had no right to stay. His employer let him go from his job after Capita warned that his they could be fined £10,000 if they continued to employ him as a legal worker.

Mr Bryan could not claim benefits, as he did not have enough documents to identify him. He had lost his Jamaican birth certificate during his childhood moves. When he came to the UK, he had used his older brother’s passport because he was so young, and did not have his own documentation. Although he did have national insurance records to prove he was regularly employed, his schools did not have records of his time there, as they had been lost or destroyed over the years.

Mr Bryan and his partner Janet eventually had to move in with their daughter due to financial difficulties.

In 2016, police and immigration officials arrived took Mr Bryan to an immigration detention centre where he was held for two and a half weeks, and told he would be sent to Jamaica, before releasing him after realising they had confused him with someone else.

“They think that I am lying about everything,” he told the Guardian. “I told them I haven’t been to Jamaica since I was eight. They didn’t believe me. They don’t tell you why they are holding you and they don’t tell you why they let you out. You feel so depressed.”

In November of the next year, he was taken to Campsfield detention centre, after an appeal was rejected.

Mr Bryan was about to be deported to Jamaica when a last-minute intervention by an immigration lawyer cancelled his flight, after growing publicity and the intervention of his MP, Labour’s Kate Osamor.

Mr Bryan, now 62, still lives in the UK and has not received compensation from the government.

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