BRITAIN’S shameful determination to ditch all responsibilities to people born in its Caribbean colonies, in common with those in Africa and Asia, is not a recent phenomenon.

Racist immigration laws introduced in the 1960s and Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community, forerunner of the European Union, in 1973 indicated a new global choice adopted by the economic and political elite.

Barely two decades after Westminster beseeched West Indians to first assist the war effort against nazi Germany and then to help rebuild bomb-ravaged postwar Britain, people whose countries had been invaded and milked into poverty by empire were told all bets were off.

Commonwealth preference rules that provided markets in Britain for Caribbean produce, especially sugar and bananas, were phased out and subject to new regulations made in Brussels.

Pre-independence residents of imperial/Commonwealth countries who travelled on British documents and could settle in Britain discovered that their passports no longer did the trick.

They were cast as aliens needing permission to travel to what they had been educated to recognise as the “mother country.”

Children born in a Caribbean colony in the 1940s, ’50s or ’60s and brought to Britain by their parents have discovered that, after being regarded universally as British, they now have to prove their right to this status by providing documents and paying a fee of over £200.

Dumbfounded people, often of pensionable age, are finding themselves homeless, jobless and denied benefits because racist sledgehammer legislation portrays them as in Britain illegally.

Tottenham Labour MP David Lammy has ripped aside the flimsy veil of excuses confected by Theresa May, pinning principal blame on the prime minister herself in her previous incarnation as home secretary for intransigent failure to tackle this humanitarian disaster.

His devastatingly direct accusation that May’s adoption of far-right rhetoric laid the basis for this “national day of shame” hit the nail on the head.

For all that May is remembered for having told Tory conference that their party had developed an unenvied reputation as the “nasty party,” her time in the Home Office exemplified it.

She was behind the election stunt of deploying advertising wagons to drive through streets threatening people with jail for overstaying visas.

May was not surprised by the request by 12 Caribbean ambassadors to meet her to discuss this problem. She knew about it two years ago when they first raised it but chose to ignore them.

She thought a hard line on migration would play well with racist voters and be welcomed by right-wing tabloid editors, which explains why she first rejected the ambassadors’ most recent request for a meeting.

It was only when the Daily Mail slammed the government for the blatant villainy of criminalising long-term residents and citizens in every respect bar that established by backdated unjust legislation.

It speaks volumes about what moves May that she was ready to stonewall the ambassadors and ignore hardships inflicted on innocent people until the Mail spoke out.

Her ministers are now trying to make policy on the hoof, uttering reassuring noises, hinting that all will be well but without real commitments and asking people affected to contact the authorities.

The victims are not responsible. It’s not their job to get ministers out of a hole of their own making.

The onus is surely on the government to search its own records, come clean on the full extent of its crimes and sort the matter out once and for all, issuing a sincere and comprehensive apology to all those treated so shabbily.