Only nitpicking here, but it's somehow significant to me that the vessel was the HMT
Empire Windrush.
FWIW, I've had to look up HMT and it's nothing to do with His Majesty. It's said to mean "hired military transport."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_prefixI've discovered a bit about this vessel's history prior to 1948 when it achieved a certain notoriety.
It seems that pre-war it had been a German cruise ship, with that good old German name MV Monte Rosa. Among other wartime duties, it was used as an army barracks at Stettin - the destination for a lot of slave labour - and later transported migrants from Norway - Jews going to Auschwitz.
It was seized by the British forces at the end of the war, when "Empire" was still real.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMT_Empire_Windrush====================================================================
PS I got so engrossed in the Empire that I forgot about the news item which triggered this.
It looks like another example of earlier generations of politicians being better at talking than acting. I'm not suggesting for a moment that anybody who arrived as a child many decades ago whose immigration status is unclear should be deported now or that they should have been then. Just that in spite of all the talk, this part of the underlying situation was ignored.