Last year Anthony Williams decided to leave the UK after 51 years, 13 of which were spent as a soldier serving with the Royal Artillery. He said his decision to move was directly linked to the pain of being caught up in the Windrush scandal and his sense of disappointment that government promises to make amends were being quietly abandoned.
“I just didn’t feel welcome any more. I spent the best part of my life serving the British army, and when I needed help everyone turned their back on me,” he said by telephone from Jamaica. Williams arrived in Birmingham aged seven in 1971, with his mother, a hospital cleaner, and his father, who worked at the Longbridge British Leyland car manufacturing plant. He was wrongly classified as an illegal immigrant and sacked from his job in 2013, and spent five years nearly destitute, unable to work or claim benefits.
