On 23 August 2022, it will be 50 years since my parents, my brother and I landed in Stansted airport as refugees, expelled and made penniless by Uganda’s General Idi Amin. A brutal dictator, he made sure that Ugandan Asians, who had lived for three generations in the country, were stripped of all their assets and kicked out.
In an August 1972 edition of the Uganda Argus, Amin was reported as asking the British government to take “responsibility” for British passport holders in Uganda, because they were “sabotaging the economy of the country”. He gave Asians three months to leave the country from 5 August 1972 and said that they “only milked the cow, but they did not feed it”. The loss of Uganda’s Asians, who accounted for most of the tax revenue, sent the economy into a slump – it was an act of economic self-harm created by a leader who had initially been backed by the British. The British government thought Amin was “their man”, until he turned on it.
As part of the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Ugandan Asians in Britain, I have delved into local newspapers of the time to see how they framed the migration of the roughly 28,000 Ugandan Asians who were forced to leave places such as Jinja, Mbale and Kampala in Uganda.
The British government at the time set up the Uganda Resettlement Board to control the inflow of Ugandan Asian refugees to prevent, what the Observer at the time called “a backlash of white resentment by heading the newcomers away from the areas of coloured immigrant concentration which already exist”. The newspaper went on to say that “predictable twitches of this backlash have already come from … Enoch Powell, the National Front and the Monday Club”. We must also not forget that government papers from the time show that proposals were even put on the table to send the Ugandan Asians to the Solomon or Falkland Islands to appease the political right.
However, despite the predictable reaction by people like Powell, the British public generally welcomed the Ugandan Asians, and the British Council of Churches and faith groups formed themselves into the Co-ordinating Committee for the welfare of Evacuees from Uganda. Church halls were fitted out as temporary reception areas and volunteers came forward to assist the new arrivals who had turned up in clothes that were unsuitable for the oncoming winter. Some wore shorts, others Safari suits, with many in western clothes, such was the influence of British culture on them.
By late October 1972, about 18,000 Ugandan Asians had passed through various resettlement camps, and my family had been assigned to the Stradishall Royal Air Force camp in Suffolk. The Evening Standard stated on 2 November 1972 that at least 7,000 of them had already been moved into cities and rehoused, with many finding jobs, so that they could move their lives on. Some families had to wait only a few weeks for resettlement, while others waited for months.
In the last few days, Priti Patel, (also of Ugandan Asian heritage), launched the Rwanda relocation scheme for those (mainly) single male refugees arriving on boats and on to the shores of our country.
In 50 years, our country has gone from resettling Ugandan Asian refugees within weeks and getting them into employment, to planning to send refugees 4,000 miles away to a Rwandan government that has a very questionable human rights record. I can only imagine what would have happened to me if Amin was to eject Asians from Uganda today and if I had arrived on to the shores of Dover, simply because I had a link to the colonial legacy of Britain’s involvement in east Africa. You can bet your bottom dollar I would be sent packing. It is true that one difference between then and now is that most Ugandan Asians had British passports; but if the Windrush scandal has taught us anything, it’s that such distinctions mean little to the modern-day Home Office.
Successive British governments have slowly dehumanised refugees, driven by a fear of alienating parts of our population who believe that “Britain is full” – a nonsensical claim that the far right has been making for years. This is the same “full Britain” that rightly opened the gateway to up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, entitling them to receive public funds such as universal credit, and access to public services such as schools and healthcare services. This is in direct contrast to other refugees, such as those from Iraq and Iran, who survive on voucher support and cannot work, many of whom have languished for years, awaiting a decision on their asylum claims. They have been made to feel powerless, hopeless and disregarded by a system in which certain refugees are welcome but others are dehumanised and treated with utter disdain.
Patel should never forget that the Ugandan Asians were settled and welcomed under the Conservative government of Edward Heath. He firmly stood against the xenophobia and racial intolerance of people such as Powell. This home secretary, it seems, is willing to give up Conservative ideals of providing a safe haven to the powerless. Instead, her posturing against refugees shames those of us who see no hierarchy in preserving the dignity of people.
It would make Amin proud, knowing that he could no longer be maligned for ejecting a whole section of people. Today, in 2022, our home secretary is also willing to physically move large numbers of vulnerable people out of our country, to put them of sight and out of mind.
Fiyaz Mughal was born in Uganda in 1971 and has worked in the charity sector for more than 25 years
• This article was amended on 19 April 2022. The former RAF Stradishall site was in Suffolk, not Surrey as an earlier version said.
