REDDITCH royalty Madge Tillseley MBE has slammed Theresa May’s Conservative Government over its treatment of the Windrush generation.
Mrs Tillesley, now 87, came over to the UK in the 1950s as hundreds of people from the West Indies answered the call from Great Britain to work in this country.
This week has seen a humiliating U-turn by Mrs May Government which had initially remained impassive over the plight of Britons who had come to help this country only to find themselves threatened with deportation because they had no documents.
On Tuesday it was found landing cards and immigration slips which would have recorded the arrival of the Windrush generation had in fact been destroyed by the Government in 2010.
Mrs Tillesley said: “I think the way people from the Caribbean who came over here have been treated is well out of order.
“These are people who answered England’s call for help. A previous generation had fought and died for this country, which is more than the people calling for them to be deported ever did.”
She added her maiden name had been Chamberlain and many of the islanders who came over had English, Scots and Welsh blood in them.
“It’s terrible; the motto of Jamaica is out of many come one people and we answered the call from the Mother Country and this is the way we have been treated,” she said.
Mrs May had vowed, when Home Secretary, to create a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants and it was only when the current Home Secretary Amber Rudd apologised on Monday that her approach softened.
Many of those caught up in the scandal have lost their jobs, their benefits or health provision while some have been sent to deportation centres.
They had arrived in Britain as children and had never required documents to prove who they were, despite working and paying taxes in this country.
Madge Tillesley started off working in a Redditch spring factory, became a local councillor before rising to become Mayor of Redditch.
