#windrush-era-immigration

#windrush-era-immigration

Sam, a 24-year-old from Odisha, sought to study abroad for better job prospects. After filling out forms, he received calls from education agents offering free services to help with university applications.

There are people that have lived here for 40-plus years and there's never been any issues, and it's just all of a sudden we keep hearing every day about incidents involved with these pro-monarchists and their intimidation, Naghmeh Rajabi, a British-Iranian activist, said.

The home secretary's new attack on the rights of immigrants and refugees is shocking and disorienting. Shabana Mahmood wants to raise the qualification period for immigrants to achieve indefinite leave to remain in the UK from five years to 10 (and up to 20 for refugees). It looks outlandish. So does her wider assault on asylum seekers, denying them permanent refugee status even if their claims are successful.

A new campaign is aiming to collect 50 objects that sum up Englishness in an effort to move the conversation away from reductive arguments over whether to hang a St George's flag or not. Supported by the Green party politician Caroline Lucas, the musician and campaigner Billy Bragg, and Kojo Koram, a law professor, the A Very English Chat campaign hopes to tackle England's growing social divisions and political polarisation.

Not a day passes without some overt expression of it in our national life. A crime committed by one Muslim becomes an indictment of all Muslims. A cultural practice is wrenched from context and weaponised to provoke anxiety. A theological concept is distorted to imply threat. And on the streets, and increasingly online, it can turn into violence, intimidation or exclusion directed at anyone who looks Muslim.

It's nearly 200 years since the birth of a British aristocrat who became the first Muslim member of the House of Lords. But few have heard of Lord Henry Stanley, who "defied convention and his family's wishes" when he converted to Islam in 1859, according to historian Jamie Gilham. Little remains of Stanley's letters and diaries "which is really frustrating but adds to the idea that he was a private man," he said.

The museum devoted to the alphabet soup of sexualities has had a revamp of its displays and turned a small museum into a cramped one. It's always been a small space, with one main room and a second, smaller temporary exhibition space, but they've added two more glass cases in the middle of the main room, turning a wide rectangle into a corridor.

Early on the morning of May 29, 1660, flanked by twenty thousand armed men, King Charles II arrived in London to retake the throne. Bells rang out and ships fired their guns to mark the occasion. It was Charles's thirtieth birthday. England had been without a king for eleven years, after Charles's father was beheaded, on a temporary wooden platform outside Banqueting House, part of the palace of Whitehall. But the country's experiment as a republic was over. King Charles II was welcomed warmly.

The Home Office says the changes, due to take effect in June, will restrict accommodation and support payments to "those who genuinely need it". Ministers say the new rules will also remove assistance from asylum seekers who work illegally or break the law.

The UK Home Office said in a statement on Tuesday that an 'emergency brake' on visas has been imposed for the first time on nationals from four countries, following a surge in asylum claims by students on study visas. The Home Office said the number of asylum applications by students from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan had rocketed by more than 470 percent between 2021 and 2025.

Britain once ruled over the largest empire in history. For many Britons, it remains a source of pride. Others argue its power was built on a legacy of brutality, colonial conquest and the enslavement of millions. Can Britain reckon with that past and make amends?

The palace, rebuilt after a fire destroyed it in 1834, is falling apart. There have been 36 fire incidents since 2016. Water leaks, heating failures and sewerage problems plague the heart of this Unesco world heritage site. Fixing Westminster would save money in the long run. An upgrade is also a matter of safety and legacy.

Ahead of the end of the 'tolerance period' of the Electronic Travel Authorisation system (ETA) from February 25th, British dual nationals have been targeted with official messaging suggesting that they will only be able to enter the UK if they have a valid British passport or a pricey certificate of entitlement. Those without the correct paperwork could even be denied boarding or turned away at the border, British authorities have suggested.

The party's newly-appointed Shadow Chancellor, Robert Jenrick, delivered a keynote speech in London outlining policies aimed at tackling what he described as the "ballooning benefits bill" and the "managed decline" under Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Jenrick said Reform UK would reinstate in-person assessments and require clinical diagnoses to prevent misuse of disability benefits.

More than 300,000 children already living in the UK could be forced to wait 10 years for settled status under proposed changes to the Home Office's earned settlement policy, according to an analysis by a centre left thinktank. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found that nearly a quarter (23%) of the 1.35 million people already on routes to settlement are children, most of them dependants on their families' work visas.

British dual nationals living abroad have told of their disgust, fury and distress over new UK border rules that mean they could risk be denied boarding on a flight, ferry or train. The new rules, which come into force on 25 February, have caught many by surprise and require British dual nationals to present a British passport or a certificate of entitlement, which costs 589, to visit the UK on their non-British passport.