It sounds funny, but I wouldn't be here if it weren't for Idi Amin,
one of the most brutal dictators in modern history.
What will happen to these people if they don't go?
You just wait up to three months.
What will you do to them?
OK, you will see.
In 1972, he ordered all Asians living in Uganda
to leave the country.
More than 50,000 people, including my family,
were forced to flee.
Uganda will be independent after this.
As a former British colony, many of the Asians had UK passports.
Almost 30,000 exercised their right to come to the mother country.
Well, we're British, we have to go to Britain with you.
The welcome was mixed.
Their arrival brought out the best of Britain...
And the worst.
CHANTING: Ugandan Asians must go home!
This was a crisis that rocked the political establishment.
Immigration!
No!
Repatriation!
Yes!
It's the story of what happened to the Ugandan Asians
and how they were caught in the eye of a storm.
It's my take on a very British history.
My name is Meera Sodha.
I live in London with my husband Hugh and our daughter Aria.
I was born in Britain, but my grandparents
all came from India.
And my parents were raised in the former British colony of Uganda.
We try and keep some traditions the same, but life looks
very different for her.
It's really important to me that she gets
to know about her culture
and the different countries where her parents came from.
One of the ways that I do that on a daily basis
is by keeping our food the same.
So whilst everything else has changed around us,
I'm still cooking the same food that my grandparents
would have eaten in Gujarat,
and my mum and her family would have eaten in Uganda,
and we eat here every day.
You know, whilst everything else has changed across countries
and continents, our food has still stayed the same.
Apart from these croissants, obviously, which are very French!
And not part of my heritage at all!
As a food writer, I'm always looking for inspiration, and of course,
many of my recipes do draw on my ancestry.
I feel like I wrote this book as a way to connect
to India and Uganda.
I want to know Uganda and I want to know where my family came from.
I also want to know more about what they went through,
having arrived in Britain in 1972 after President Amin expelled them.
I feel terrified looking at pictures of Amin.
He looks like a big brute, a big beast of a man...
With sort of cold, unfeeling eyes.
It was the British who had first brought the Asians, mainly Indians,
to Uganda from the late 1800s,
first to build the railways and then to set up businesses.
Independence came in 1962, but by the early 1970s,
the Asians in Uganda controlled a disproportionate amount
of the country's wealth.
Amin said that this was depriving Africans of opportunities.
I want to see that the whole of Kampala Street is
not full of Indians.
It must be proper black and the administration
in the shops is run by Ugandans.
Since many of Uganda's Asians had UK passports, Amin knew Britain
would have responsibility for resettling them.
Expulsion was a way of punishing the Asians and settling old colonial
scores with Britain.
You've said you wanted to teach Britain a lesson, President.
Why is that?
That is now a lesson I am teaching the British!
I am teaching now the lesson, because I am correcting them
from the mistake they had made.
If they had thought about it earlier, that there are
Africans here who can even work on building the railways
with instruction given to them by the British,
this problem would not have been.
Today, Ugandan Asians are often seen as successful people who have
prospered in Britain.
But at the time, no one knew how things would work out.
Those early days can't have been straightforward.
I don't know if it's a trait that's common to the community,
but they don't tend to talk about the bad things.
They just don't really discuss those things at all.
Mum and Dad shielded me from how difficult life was.
I wasn't really aware of it when I was growing up, but over
the years, they would casually mention that they had had to hide
from the milkman because they didn't have enough money to pay him.
Or that they would sneak into weddings where they weren't
invited, big Indian weddings, and go and eat the food
there because they didn't have enough money for food.
And so I know that my father had taken a couple of jobs,
he would have a daytime job and an evening job just to be
able to pay the bills.
I grew up in rural Lincolnshire.
My parents still live there.
There might have been the odd bit of wildlife,
but my childhood was very different indeed to my mum's.
She was 16 when the family came to Britain, having grown up
in a place called Arua, a rural part of Uganda.
Carefree, wild, you know, we had a garden full of mangoes
growing there, papaya.
Those other things I remember.
Running about.
At the back of the house, we had the River Nile so we often used
to go down with some friends and you could see hippopotamus.
You saw the elephants, the giraffes.
And we thought that was the norm.
That was the carefree life.
Can you say hippopotamus again!
My mum's idyllic childhood came to a very abrupt end, though.
Amin gave the Asians just 90 days to leave Uganda.
The community spread around the world, but around
30,000 came to Britain, as was their right.
I remember Papa going to Kampala and getting
all the paperwork sorted out.
And he just came back and said, "Right, pack just the minimum,
what you'd like to take with you.
And we are leaving."
And that was it.
Then there were times when you heard that some people were tortured.
And the army people wanted to take over everything, they were ruthless.
So it sort of came as a shock.
The repercussions of the announcement were felt around
the globe, not least by Prime Minister
Ted Heath and his cabinet.
For a time, there was even debate as to whether Britain
would accept its citizens.
The government's first reaction, having failed to dissuade Idi Amin
from the course of action that he was carrying out,
the first thing was to try to find other countries who would help
Britain shoulder what was seen by politicians of all kinds
as a potential burden to a country which was struggling economically.
At the back of the minds of these people, of course, was also
the question of how much it would inflame racial relations.
But for all these reasons together, the government scoured the world
looking for refuges.
By prevaricating, though, did Britain miss a trick?
Ugandan born Himat Lakhani was living in London in 1972.
After Amin's announcement, he immediately volunteered to help
those Asians who came to Britain.
For the first four weeks, nothing was done.
During that period, the Canadian High Commission decided to take
Ugandan Asian refugees, and they chose the cream
of the society.
So within a week or ten days, they took 6000 people.
And when they received a report back from Canada that these were very
highly qualified people, the Canadian government decided
to take 6000 more people.
Whereas the British Government was still thinking about,
"Do we accept them or not?"
As well as Canada, numerous other countries agreed to take varying
numbers of Ugandan Asians.
Even the tiny Falkland Islands offered to help.
And eventually, of course, Britain did accept
responsibility for its citizens.
These would be people who would be rotting in concentration camps
prepared by President Amin.
And they would be there simply because of the colour of their skins
and the fact that they held British passports.
CHANTING: House Britons first!
But even so, the way the situation was explained could've been better.
I don't think there was any attempt really to explain to the British
public why there was a moral responsibility, but there
was a recognised responsibility and at the party conference,
the Conservative Party conference of 1972, Enoch Powell
was really faced down by the Home Secretary Robert Carr
who is the man that very few people remember now.
But he made an extremely brave speech basically saying that
Britain had a duty and that really the consequences were ones
which Britain had to face.
I reaffirm too our determination to honour our obligation
to the British Asian refugees fleeing still from Uganda.
Home Secretary Robert Carr is certainly someone
I had never heard of.
But he was a key player in the whole Ugandan Asian resettlement process.
I'm reading a document from the National Archives
and it is a statement made by the Home Secretary
on the 6th of September 1972.
The papers outline the government's plans for managing
the Ugandan Asian situation.
They detail various options and the pros and cons of each.
The fragment I'm reading says the British Government is offering
a resettlement grant of £2000 per family payable
on arrival in Bombay.
So basically a bribe to relinquish essentially your British passport,
to go back to India.
I don't know how I feel about it because you know,
obviously the British Government is just trying to...
I don't see it as off-loading responsibility.
What I see it as doing is just lessening the burden.
In the end the £2000 handshake to go elsewhere came to nothing.
Probably when someone realised it was a bit too similar
to what Enoch Powell was proposing, to repatriate Britain's
existing migrants.
The papers go on to detail the different plans and options.
From the forming of a new committee to oversee the entire process...
Overall responsibility for what happens to the Asians rests
with the newly formed Uganda resettlement board...
To the opening of camps where people would initially go.
There was talk about pensions, projected costs for the nation
and punitive sanctions on Idi Amin.
Perhaps Britain did have an obligation,
but the British Government certainly gave it all a lot of thought.
I haven't seen it written down in such conclusive terms before,
quite how much was done at the time.
And it's really nice to read about that.
You know, I think through reports from mum and dad,
they felt like the community were very much cast out.
You know, suddenly they were given 90 days to leave,
to leave their lives behind, everything they had worked hard for.
And, you know, under the threat of death.
I know that planes were chartered for them to come over here.
But I hadn't, it's just really lovely to read how, quite how much
the British Government did.
And how fairly they were treated.
And how well they were treated.
It makes me feel very proud to be British.
Yeah.
Stansted Airport near London
and the arrival in Britain of 193 Ugandan Asians,
expelled by President Amin.
These were the first of many thousands who are expected to arrive
during the next few weeks.
Seeing them all bundled together, just having lost everything,
looking pretty destitute and lost,
not knowing the country that they were coming into...
You know, not having very many belongings,
just looking very fearful about their future.
I don't know what I will do then because even now I don't know
what I'm going to do right now.
Who knows whether we will be surviving or we will be dead.
With the winter, I don't know.
If I've got no job, if I've got nothing to do...
May God help everybody.
There will be many more like me in that case.
Having landed in Britain the majority of the arrivals
were sent to the resettlement camps that had been hastily set
up in disused military barracks around the country.
How long will the Asians stay here?
It's impossible to say.
I think some of them will be very short term,
that is to say overnight or two or three days.
There will be canteen facilities, sleeping quarters, reception centres
for employment and DHSS.
So they will be living in relative comfort?
Reasonably comfortable, but not so comfortable
they will want to stay here for ever, I think.
May I welcome you to Donnyford camp.
You are now in the county of Somerset in south-west England.
One of the most beautiful parts of the country.
On this cold, wet, rather miserable September day, the 100 odd Asians
who have reached our shores will not be very enthusiastic
about their first sight of Britain.
First of all, health screening, to screen
all the Asian immigrants...
Looking back, it seems to me that all the efforts to set up the camps
were very well intentioned,
but perhaps at times a little misguided.
But if it is possible to put warmth into the welcome, then this menu
for their first meal in England will do it.
They've got a choice of chicken curry, lamb curry,
fish grills, boiled rice, saffron rice, lemon,
oranges, bananas.
How's that for making you feel at home?
Some of the evacuees spent weeks or even months in their camps.
My mum and her family were only in theirs a very short time.
My grandfather took the first job he could at Scunthorpe steelworks.
I showed my mum some of the footage of the camps, though,
and it's clear what an important role they played.
They might not have been home, but they did represent safety.
Come here, Mum.
Maybe those emotions need to come out.
Yeah, I'm sure they do.
It sounds like you haven't spent much time talking about all of that.
Nowadays, most of the camps are long gone.
But there is one that still holds some clues as to what camp life
might have been like.
I had certainly never heard of Tonfanau in North West Wales before.
But that's hardly surprising.
To say that it's remote is somewhat of an understatement.
It just so happens to be a lovely day today, it's
looking very beautiful.
But I can imagine people coming over from Uganda would have just felt
so displaced all of a sudden.
You know, the weather is different, the landscape is different.
The people, the cars, there were no other Ugandan Asians here.
All the lions have gone!
You know, the hippopotamus that mum was talking about.
You know, where are they?
They would probably feel just at a bit of a loss.
There you go.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Have a good day.
You, too.
What I love is that it's so remote that you have to ask the conductor
to stop the train specially here!
Otherwise you would completely miss it.
Britain stops here, it's the edge of the country!
You know, you can't walk for more than a few metres that way
and you've hit the edge.
Tonfanau military camp had closed in 1971 but was hastily reopened
to house the Ugandan Asians - a good couple of thousand
ended up there.
Nowadays, its only residents are sheep.
Back in the 1970s, there were dozens of buildings here.
And now most of those buildings have been pulled down.
I was just thinking, if you had a big business that
you had worked so hard for over many years and you had built it up
in Uganda and you had lost everything suddenly...
You know, you had to flee your country, leave your friends,
your house, your family,
you know, your money, your business, behind.
And then suddenly you end up in...
In, like, where, where are we?
In the middle of Wales somewhere.
Yeah, I can see it would've been a very strange transition.
You would be thinking, how am I going to rebuild my life from here?
And you look around you, you know, what am I going to do?
Where am I going to live?
What am I going to do with these sheep!
This camp actually had a medical centre.
It had...
It had this canteen, proper size, you know,
people could sit in it.
Azeem Simani was a teenager when he fled Uganda with his family.
They ended up at Tonfanau camp for two months.
So this camp was OK, within reason, based on the circumstances.
But the weather was against it.
So when you're in a place you feel good if the weather is good.
You feel lousy if you can't even walk out.
Because when you're here, you get blown away!
It is like 100 miles an hour!
Did it feel a bit like a little town?
Yes.
It is a little town!
It is a little village.
People just lived here, it is unbelievable.
I was only here with my family for two months.
It seems like years, that we had been here years.
What I see is like a film.
Like history just going past me.
For me it is still alive.
The place might be different now, but there is history here.
You know, people here made it or broke it, you know.
So this brings memories back.
Does this camp have a special place in your heart?
It will always have.
How did you feel about the camp administrators?
Superb.
I have to be honest.
I did not sense any discrimination.
I did not see any attitude, I didn't see any of them that
didn't want to be helpful.
When you consider the task the Uganda resettlement board faced,
I think they did do a pretty amazing job.
But inevitably there were challenges.
Many of the camp administrators had a background in the colonies
and some say on occasion this was evident in the
running of the camps.
Although the Ugandan resettlement board was run
out of the Home Office, as it were, rather than the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office, one of the first things it did
was to get in touch with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and say,
"Hey, chaps, what kind of people should we have to run these camps?"
And they gave them a long list of ex-colonial administrators.
So you've got sort of Colonel Bates in Greenham Common camp,
who had worked in India and then in East Africa in different
parts of his career.
And other people, even if they hadn't worked
in East Africa, but maybe Malaya.
But they've got some kind of colonial experience.
And so the government are seeing this as a colonial problem
that they are having to manage.
The British Government was a bit naive.
They thought that those people who had spent some
time in the colonies would understand the plight of these
people better than anybody else.
You certainly see within the archives that when people
complain about the quality of the food, for example,
or anything else, they are seen as being troublemakers.
You know, not seen as being legitimate causes for complaint.
It is if people start to complain about something,
they're troublemakers who need to be sat on in the same way that I think
a lot of the colonial way of dealing with the natives was in that similar
kind of mindset.
These officials were not there to help people,
they wanted to run British colonies.
So that is where things did go wrong.
It wasn't about working with equals to find a solution,
it was about trying to make these people do the things the government
wanted to do to solve this problem as quickly as possible.
Someone who saw this first hand was Caroline Romaine.
She volunteered to work at two different camps in 1973.
I think it was an expectation of hierarchy, that the administrators
were somehow a station above the Asian migrants.
And the sort of sense of British superiority.
And an expectation that there would be gratitude and compliance
on the part of the evacuees, with whatever was suggested
by the administration.
It wasn't just the refugees who felt a "them and us" mentality, though.
And the accounts from the time show us that Caroline's experiences
were mirrored in other camps up and down the country.
The administrators accepted us as a group of volunteers
but they also found us quite difficult to deal with
because we just had such different ideas and attitudes.
I think probably the predominant feeling that we had
was that the Ugandan Asian evacuees had British passports,
they had always been promised the right to come to this country.
And we just felt they deserved to have access to their rights.
To give you your new home, which is provided here
for you until you can find somewhere else to go...
The Uganda resettlement board had always known that central
to the smooth running of the camps would be the volunteer effort.
Two houses for this family, please.
They had called upon groups like the Salvation Army,
the Red Cross, and the women's Royal Voluntary Service,
organisations that had helped Britain get through the war.
Do you want some winter clothes?
You might want some winter clothes.
You'd better go to the clothing place next, I think.
No one is doubting their goodwill.
But it seems they had a slightly different take on how to best help
when compared to younger, more progressive volunteer
organisations like the one Caroline was working with.
They were very much in the mindset of being very
charitable and bountiful to these poor refugees.
Whereas we saw it very much more as an issue of rights
and actually wanting Britain to be a decent,
open country where people who had the right to be here
would be decently treated.
Good evening to you all.
Tonight we have a different kind of entertainment
from what we've had before.
Mrs Jones and her Merrymakers from Newbury portray the kind
of songs that my grandfather and grandmother used to sing.
PIANO MUSIC.
# I'm Henry VIII, I am... #
Despite the best efforts of all the volunteers,
and Mrs Jones and her Merrymakers, camp life was at times distressing.
Azeem helped out in the medical centre at Tonfanau.
We spent a lot of time helping people who had come for medication,
there was lot of flu and colds and fear and panic attacks
and things, you know.
Young men had panic attacks like crazy, you know.
Because they were worried about their situation?
Frightened.
They were frightened?
Were they worried about things back in Uganda, or worried
about their future lives in England?
Future life here.
Because once you landed here I think that fear of Idi Amin was gone.
That is the first time this name came up.
That fear of Idi Amin was gone.
You are here now.
So you didn't have that problem.
I think the problem you have here, what do you do here?
Where are you going to go from here?
I think that was the main problem here, you know.
I've heard stories about people tossing coins to work out
where they would go.
I've often thought about how we ended up in Lincolnshire,
simply because my father found a job at the steelworks there.
simply because my grandfather found a job at the steelworks there.
Meeting Azeem, I mean, he ended up in Stockport
just because he happened to speak to someone.
who said Stockport is, you know, not as a racist
as some other cities.
And, you know, it is quite nice there.
And so that is the message he took back to his parents and they decided
to move their entire lives to Stockport.
And it just seems odd that it is just a sliding doors
moment where you could have just ended up in Manchester
or Liverpool or a remote part of Wales or Scunthorpe,
like my family did.
But you know, that just happened with the two second
conversation with someone, with a complete stranger.
Although many struggled to get jobs that befitted their skills,
there was at least a fair amount of work on offer.
Housing in Britain, though, was a different matter.
The post-war period, there had been a big effort both
of slum clearance but also a lot of new-build housing
in the creation of the new towns.
By the 1970s councils were running out of money essentially,
and actually, Britain, British people were still living
by and large in a lot of appalling housing stock.
The local authorities were wary of pushing Ugandan Asians
to the top of housing lists.
And so with an eye on minimising public upset, the resettlement board
came up with a dispersal policy.
A way of trying to keep the refugees out of areas with already large
migrant communities.
What we've got to try and do is to disperse these people
as widely as possible.
They were called black areas to begin with and they thought that
sounded a bit racist so they changed it to red areas.
Which were areas that already had large numbers
of Commonwealth migrants.
So Leicester, Ealing, Hackney, Haringey. Birmingham.
These were designated as red areas.
And they, and so the official resettlement policies did their best
to keep Ugandan Asians from going to those areas.
It was racist.
Totally racist.
Because how can you ask people not to go to your friends and relations
when you have to leave the country where your life was not safe?
What would the effect be, would you say, of possibly 4000,
5000 extra Asian immigrants coming in to the borough?
It would be devastating.
To help enforce the policy, the Uganda Asian resettlement board
made their position quite clear.
If any passenger coming from Uganda wanted to go to a red area,
then they would not get any facilities for transport
to their destination.
And they would not be entitled to council housing.
Some of course made private arrangements to go to the red areas.
Most of them were heading for homes in the Greater London area.
Others even found lodgings with charitable Brits who welcomed
them into their homes.
Those who remained in the system, though, were sometimes offered
accommodation in places they had probably never even heard of.
At last, after five weeks in the camp, we are leaving.
We have been offered a council house in Loanhead
near Edinburgh in Scotland.
This BBC documentary follows the story of one family
who had fled Uganda.
It is told through the eyes of their 16-year-old son.
There were many people there to welcome us.
It was difficult to understand their Scottish accents.
Hello.
How are you?
Hello!
One of the things that is quite notable about Scotland, actually,
is that they were much more generous in their offers of housing
than in England as a general level.
Although most of the Ugandan Asians didn't want to go to Scotland
because if they had heard of Scotland or they knew about it,
it was that it was dark and cold.
Our first day in Scotland, and what weather!
This was worse than we had expected.
And my mother took one look and stayed in the house all day.
Some of the cultural differences might have
been even more extreme than the weather, though.
In the butcher's shop we have to be careful about buying
anything with beef in it because of our religion.
That is why my father is suspicious of trying
the famous Scottish Haggis.
Haggis?
Yes, I could give you Haggis.
What type of meat is in the Haggis?
Not the best thing for you to know!
When my grandfather took the job at Scunthorpe steelworks,
the family were offered a council house in a small village
in Lincolnshire called Winterton.
They were certainly the only Asian family in the area,
but Mum has nothing but good things to say about the welcome
they received.
The house was all painted, decorated, with all the furniture.
And, you know, the neighbours and everybody came out with cakes
and some cutlery or some bedding.
I remember the story you were telling me about how
the neighbours were showing you how to use a washing machine.
Oh, yes.
And you watching Top Of The Pops with them.
Yes, yes.
We hadn't done a lot of housework so it was a case
of learning everything, from lighting a fire
to using the cookers.
They were amazing neighbours who just helped.
And then we had another family, the Skelly family.
And they had a beautiful television and they used to take us
at the weekend to watch Top Of The Pops!
Donny Osmond!
# And they called it puppy love...
It was just so fun and exciting, you know.
When you haven't seen something like that.
Perhaps my family were amongst the lucky ones.
They stayed in the system and it worked out well.
The same can't be said for everyone, though.
We had never heard of Newcastle in Uganda.
But when they asked us to come to Newcastle we said OK,
we will go but first we must go and see the area where
we are going to live.
They said everything is all right, you just need to go there.
12 families ended up in Newcastle.
The majority of families are housed by the council
in Noble Street, a notorious slum which smells of hopelessness.
It's a squalid ghetto for families who have given up
the struggle for a better life.
The Geordies themselves recognise that it is no place for anyone
looking for a fresh start.
It's been bad, but they are going to worse coming here.
There's just no hope for them.
There's no hope for the English families here but for
the Asians, even less hope.
The situation in Newcastle sums up the dilemma that many of the local
authorities were having at the time.
So when all the people from this area were trying to get
away from this area, I don't know why we
were put in this area.
Why did you put them in this lousy area?
Because this accommodation was available.
We had to be as helpful as we could without at the same time
seeming to take away from local people what they would say
was rightly theirs.
That was the dilemma.
We did the best we could.
Having been proved wrong, perhaps.
Unwilling to take a chance, John Nathwaney took matters
into his own hands.
He was a young man living in Britain in 1972.
The rest of his family was still in Uganda.
Following Amin's announcement, he bought a two-bedroom
house in Birmingham where they could all live.
There were more than 20 of them.
It was very difficult indeed.
But we didn't want to be a burden to the community,
we didn't want to be a burden to the government.
And we made sure that whilst we were all cramped,
that it was just for a short space of time.
How did you go about rebuilding your lives?
We started working and we have a very, very close family link.
And we respect our elders.
And my brother, whilst he was head of the family and didn't work
we all used to go out and work and every Friday when we got our pay
packets, we used to give him the pay packet unopened.
And from there he would give us £5
for our week's expenses.
The rest of the money went to him and he managed that.
And he started collecting the money so we could start a business.
So essentially you were operating like a business, your family
was a business together?
Yes, I mean, we were born business people.
John chose to set up home in Birmingham which was certainly
on the government's red list.
But perhaps the reddest of the red was Leicester,
which already had a high migrant population in the early 1970s.
Nowadays the city celebrates its diversity.
But back then it was a different matter.
There is an infamous story, but a true story, that
Leicester City Council took out an advert in a Ugandan national
paper telling Ugandan Asians not to come to Leicester.
It was unbelievable that they did it.
It didn't work, though.
It's just such an absolutely stupid thing to do.
Peter Soulsby is the city mayor of Leicester.
He was a student in the city in 1972, on the fringes of politics.
The wonderful advert in the Ugandan Argos,
which was so wonderfully counterproductive,
obviously we were ashamed of it at the time.
But actually I think it's been said to me that for many people it drew
attention to Leicester in a way that was completely counter
productive from the point of view of those who put it there.
And did mean that people thought, well, yeah, Leicester,
that sounds an interesting place!
They may not want us, but we'll go and make our homes there.
And of course Leicester benefited enormously from the fact
that they did come here.
Although of course, there were all sorts of initial issues
to be dealt with with the arrival of people from Uganda,
there were enormous benefits to the city.
Every aspect of life, the life of the city,
was very quickly seen to be enriched by those who had chosen
to make their homes here.
So despite the advert, Leicester slowly but surely became
the heart of the Ugandan Asian community in Britain.
Mum really loved growing up in Lincolnshire but I know
that she loved coming to Leicester on trips to buy spices and saris.
And also to visit friends and family.
And it must've been really reassuring for her
to see familiar faces.
At the heart of the Asian community in Leicester is the Belgrave Road,
also known as the Golden mile.
We used to come here to buy all the vegetables
that the family would cook with.
I used to come here with my grandfather on special trips.
I bought my wedding sari from a shop just over there.
And I have really fond memories of growing up on this road.
Well, I didn't grow up on this road, actually!
One man who did grow up on this road, however, is Dirmesh Lakhani.
His parents founded Bobby's, a famous Ugandan Asian
restaurant in Leicester, currently being refurbished.
He is also married to my cousin.
Dirmesh was only four in 1972 when they fled Uganda.
There were some incidents but again, I think it's due to information
given to them and you know, saying a whole community
is going to come to Leicester and you know, take your jobs,
take your homes.
And that would scare anybody.
And until they got to know us they didn't know what it was like.
And we have become part of this community now, integrated fully.
We add to it and we are very proud of that.
In 1972, there was only a handful of businesses on the road.
Right now, every business on the road is an Asian business.
And a lot of them are from Uganda.
Around the time the Ugandan Asians arrived in the city, much of this
area was earmarked for demolition.
Slum clearances, they called it.
For the new arrivals, it meant affordable housing.
What happened is as people came in from Uganda, they started to buy
properties around here.
And obviously for the City Council it was ideal because they ended up
not knocking the whole area down.
They did give grants to people to refurbish their homes.
And they give help in those ways.
This whole area would not be here.
I mean, there would be something here, but it wouldn't be as it is,
there wouldn't be a Golden mile here, there wouldn't be
the residents here as they are now.
It's thriving today.
It's thriving every day.
It's thriving most days.
I mean, it all sounds so positive.
I'm just curious if there had been any fallouts from the community
settling here in Leicester?
Do you know, I really can't think of any.
I really cannot.
So the story of Leicester proves that people can change their minds.
And that was the subject explored by ITV's World in Action in 1972.
We open our doors to anybody.
You know, road sweepers, anyone.
So what's happening is all the technicians and people
with brains are gradually being drained out.
And we are being left with all the riffraff.
Shortly after Amin made his announcement they took
Wally Murrall, an openly anti-immigration butcher
at Smithfield market in London, over to Uganda to see for himself
what the situation was.
Driving from the airport, you know, my first impressions
were that the people themselves who I see on the way, they looked
to be in a pretty poor way.
We have tried our best to track down Wally,
but with no success.
This is David Bolton.
He produced the documentary.
It was an immensely risky thing for us to do because there was no
guarantee at all that he would change his mind.
And we really didn't want to end up with a film that was a kind of party
political broadcast for the National Front.
But we took the risk and it paid off.
We flew out, we started filming the very next day in the market.
As soon as he raised the issue of Ugandan Asians,
they were obviously scared.
How do you feel about the Asian situation in this country?
I can't tell you about that.
What do you think of President Amin?
He's a good man.
The situation in this country, is the right attitude?
I can't tell you anything about that.
You can't?
Yes.
It was these experiences that made Wally recognise that the whole
thing was much more, as he put it, much more complex
than he had realised.
Would you like to go to India or Pakistan?
Well, we're British, we have to go to Britain with you.
We have to go to Britain because we are holding
a British passport.
See, the way I feel is that your way of life is different to my way
of life and I wouldn't sort of class you as a British subject, you know?
When we were out of the country and we got him to Nairobi airport,
sat him down, I still had no idea of how he might sum
up his time there.
But that's when really reflecting on what he had seen,
what he had heard, what people had told him, really the warmth
of his humanity came out as he said you know,
I would, I'm a human being, I would help anyone
in that kind of situation.
And as soon as he said that, we knew that we had got what we wanted.
Well, the thing is, I feel that after talking to these
people and finding out, you know, exactly what is going
on out there, I feel sure in my own mind that if nobody
accepted these people - and they have got British passports
- if nobody accepted them, then there would be a mass
slaughter out there.
I would help these people the same as I would help anybody.
Because I'm a human being.
And that's how human beings should treat one another.
What do you think Wally would say today?
If you met him?
I hope that he would be proud of the fact that he had
the courage to change his mind.
I hope so, I hope so.
It's such a beautiful statement to make at the end.
Yes.
It's sort of an act of humanity that you would hope to see
in another human being.
Exactly, exactly.
That you're down and out need help.
That's right, yes.
Wally's change of opinion was actually mirrored by much
of the population and the press.
When people realised that the Asians from Uganda weren't
coming here out of choice, but out of desperation
public opinion softened.
When people saw the Ugandan Asians and they spoke good English,
they had education behind them,
quite a lot were qualified in professions, and suddenly
they began to feel that, you know, these are not people
who would be a burden to us.
One thing I'll tell you, I've got my son, who can work
here somewhere, and a daughter, she can work somewhere.
And another daughter who will study.
And I myself will work and my wife will work,
so definitely I'm sure that I will work,
I'll make my capital and I'll be in business.
That's my idea.
This hard-working attitude is still typical of
the Ugandan Asian community today.
But there is a chapter in our past that some feel needs
to be confronted better.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a leading light in our community.
She is amazing.
There are very few people that have written about Ugandan Asians
and amongst them is Yasmin's book, the Settler's Cookbook,
and it's an incredible record of her time in Uganda
growing up in the 1960s and her thoughts and feelings
about the community, and it's also one of my favourite cook-books.
This was made near where I loved in Kampala, near the market.
This is made by Abdullah.
He used a nail to make holes.
There's a very serious, very delicate theme that comes up
regularly in Yasmin's writing and broadcasting.
And that is to what extent the Asians brought
the expulsion on themselves.
So I'm not entirely blaming Asians for it, but I do think
we have been so living off this fable that we did nothing wrong.
Don't create a myth.
If we are fighting racism in Britain, which I am doing
every day of my life, then I have to address the racism
in me which was such a part of my life when I was growing up,
against black people.
Were the two, Ugandan Africans and Asians, was there
ever any integration when you were living there?
No, no.
They were our servants or some were mistresses of the Asian men.
And it was horrible, when children were born of this union
between Asian men and African women, we had a horrible word for them
because they were mixed race.
Yasmin told me a story that's stuck with her all these years,
about an African servant in her cousin's house who cut his
hand whilst grating coconuts.
I remember him saying something like, "Your dirty blood
is in the white coconut", and in that moment you kind
of understood this racism.
You kind of understood how we thought about these poor people.
When I see Uganda through my parents' eyes, they talk
about having played with Ugandan Africans,
having eaten with them, you know, in and out of each other's houses,
and I don't...
The segregation doesn't seem quite as severe as she talks about it,
that severity of treatment.
I was aware there was a difference in incomes and lifestyles, but not
to the extent that she talks about.
But I believe her, and I feel like it's very shocking.
Like many Asian families in Uganda at the time,
my family had servants, as well.
My mum's always spoken fondly about them, but was there
more to the situation?
We would have chefs, we would have drivers, we would have some
who would be doing the housework, some who would be helping
in the business, so yes.
Quite a few helpers.
Were you aware of a disparity between the Asian and African
income and lifestyles?
Looking at it now, yes, but at the time it...
I suppose...
I was 16, so I wasn't any wiser.
And did you ever hear any stories about Asians
treating Africans badly?
I'm sure that did go on.
Did you hear of anything happening that you remember?
I think I remember more, sort of, our way of life.
How they were treated in our family, but I'm sure it's one of those
things that, you know, it did go unnoticed, I suppose.
No, I'm not happy with that.
I'm not happy.
I'm not comfortable with that answer.
I think there must have been some that were perhaps
not treated very well.
Are you upset because it's something that happened in the family?
No, not in the family, I suppose, because we did take care of them.
If we had perhaps asked them to work longer, in a way,
it wasn't an intention, I suppose, thinking back now, knowing
what I know of the employment rules and regulations...
If you'd asked them to work longer?
So...?
They never refused.
They never did.
I was really surprised that she started crying.
She talked about having friendships with Ugandan Africans.
I wasn't aware up until she started crying of how she felt,
and that she clearly felt the Ugandan Asians didn't treat
the Ugandan Africans as they should have been treated.
And I feel that the emotion she was experiencing
was sadness and regret.
Not personal regret, but just you know, sadness that
that's what happened and acknowledging that
that wasn't right.
Perhaps nowadays, though, there is at least some willingness
amongst the community to talk about these things.
Do you know, we were not treating Africans as well as we should have.
They were the servants.
They earned the least amount of money, they worked the hardest.
It was their country and they really had no opportunity.
Do you know how that situation came about?
I think, if we look back to history, it's the British.
They came in, they brought the Indians, to work
and build the railways and work for the British government.
The British decided to have their own separate areas,
and create an area for the Indians and create an area for the Africans.
So it was not the Asians' doing, it was the British
who planned the towns.
It's just so interesting.
I hadn't realised that there were separate towns.
We were brought up in that environment, whereby we did not
appreciate each other's cultures and values.
Who knows?
We may not have been kicked out, had we integrated.
But we kept ourselves to ourselves.
It's not the proudest chapter in our community's
story, and quite rightly, there are obvious regrets.
But is coming to Britain a regret, too?
Nearly 50 years on, does Britain feel like home?
Probably, my kids feel at home because they are born and bred here,
you know, but for me, I don't feel at home.
You don't feel at home?
No, not 100%.
Well, my heart is still in Africa - I was born there.
That's the reason I go to Africa every year.
If you just bring people and throw them somewhere
or leave them somewhere, it is not your community.
You don't actually walk out the door and know a lot of people.
You walk out of the door and you are different.
Uganda will always be deep in my heart, because it's my birthplace.
Having said that, I was only 18 when I left the country.
I've spent all my life, most of my life, 50 years
in the UK and for me, Britain is my country
and to me, I feel more British than I can describe.
Perhaps not everyone has such a positive take on it as Jon,
but it does make you wonder if, for some at least,
there was a silver lining to the expulsion from Uganda.
I've gathered some of my family together to ask them just that.
So we're 46 years on, this year.
That's right, isn't it?
So how are we all feeling?
Are we happy that Idi Amin inadvertently gave us
an opportunity to...
Forced us out of Uganda to come here?
When we wake up each morning, we can go that way or that way -
and this destiny was chosen for us.
Can I say something?
I love my Lincolnshire.
So Lincolnshire through and through!
Lincolnshire or Uganda?
Oh, it's got to be Lincolnshire!
If I had my business in Uganda, I would live there.
In Uganda?
You can never forget Uganda, you can never forget
the lifestyle there.
All of us at the table have spent more years in England
than we did in Africa.
And I'm quite scared to go back.
Part of me is quite scared.
Cos you know how you want your memories to be as they were?
Yes.
And I know they're not going to be, and that's what scares me, I think.
Cos I want to hold on to something in my brain.
So those who wish they were still living in Uganda, hands up.
You'd have preferred to live in Uganda?
Well, yes, if I'd never come here, but as I said, I have very good
reason for being here!
Perhaps it's at times like this we should honour the Indian
tradition and ask the elders.
This is my grandmother.
She was in her 30s when she came here.
How do you feel now?
I mean, do you wish you were still in Uganda,
or are you happy to be living here?
SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE.
She doesn't feel she wants to go back!
She's very happy here.
We've got good facilities here, everybody looking after,
We've got good facilities here, everybody looking after Mum,
so she's very happy here.
Does this feel like home?
THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE.
She feels at home here, rather than Uganda or India.
I wasn't sure what to expect when we started filming.
I know what I'd hoped for was to be able to colour in the details
of my parents' lives in Uganda.
I thought those details were missing when I was growing up
because it was too upsetting for them to talk about their lives
back then, because they'd had to give them up very suddenly,
in an instant.
But now, I think there's more to it.
It's been really incredible, meeting everyone.
I mean, each person has opened a different window
onto the Ugandan Asian community, and it's allowed me to see
the community from the outside, which I couldn't see before
because I've grown up inside the community.
They've worked so hard and they've really succeeded
in so many different fields across the whole of society.
And more importantly, they've adapted to life over
here and they've integrated.
When my daughter is older, I'll tell her all about that,
and I want her to know about her Ugandan Asian heritage,
and if she inherits just an ounce of that resilience,
well, that's only a good thing.