Windrush expert: People are asking 'is there any hope?'

CITY-BORN COMMISSIONER WONDERS: 'ARE WE GOING BACKWARDS?'

- By GEORGE PALMER-SOADY

(JOSEPH RAYNOR)

CLIVE Foster can still remember the racism he experienced as a boy growing up in The Meadows in the 1970s.

"One memory I go back to is when I was at junior school, and there was a white kid on the playground who was trying to get my attention, and he was going to use the N-word," he recalled.

"I also remember going to a factory on a field trip, and there were posters of the Nottingham Forest football team in the late 70s.

"Next to Viv Anderson, the black footballer, his face was defaced with monkey images - I realised then that I was going to do whatever I could to make sure I wasn't in an environment where this type of overt racism existed.

"I guess that started to shape my thinking."

Today, the Rev Foster is the Government's first Windrush Commissioner a newly created position in which he advises the Home Office on the lessons that need to be learnt from that shocking scandal.

The 61-year-old was appointed to the role, in which he acts as a trusted voice for Windrush victims across the country, last June.

But Mr Foster whose parents arrived in the country from Jamaica in 1959 is no stranger to campaigning on behalf of those wrongly detained, deported, or denied legal rights by British governments.

In fact, it was during his teenage years at Roland Green Comprehensive in Wilford that he began really thinking about the inequalities he would spend his life fighting.

"I grew up in a time where there was, particularly amongst black youngsters, real disaffection because of, particularly, the way we were over policed," the pastor told the Post.

"In particular with things like stop and search, you could feel the tension.