BRADFORD ASYLUM HISTORY - City of Sanctuary



CELEBRATING BRADFORD’S ASYLUM HISTORY

(Talk given at ‘Celebrating Sanctuary’ event by

Cllr Revd Geoff Reid, 23.3.2011)

60 years ago, when the Refugee Convention was signed in 1951, I went to school for the first time in another northern city. I learned to read very swiftly. But we were not the sort of family that bought books which were seen as a luxury. Books were in the public library. But before I joined, another kind of library operated at the top of the street. A boy I went to school with, called Andrew had lots of books. He had come from Poland, where his family had clearly been richer than mine. And he lent me books. That was my first encounter with Polish people. However I gradually realised that my father spent five years in a Polish prison camp during World War II and found links with Poles perfectly natural.

After the end of World War II, refugees from displaced persons camps in the Ukraine, the Baltic and Yugoslavia came to Bradford. Many of them feared Russian reprisals because they had been forced to work in German industry and agriculture. Theirs was a very different experience to that of my father who spent five years in Poland working on the farms and then came home to collect a war pension. He told me about other groups who were terrified of the Russian “liberators” coming from the east as he was forced to march westwards. Some Poles fled from the liberators and came to this country. Andrew and his family ended up in that rather poor terrace in Newcastle. Many came to Bradford.

The fifties and sixties were a time when refugee communities from Central and Eastern Europe learned to become weekday Bradfordians as they worked in the textile mills and other factories. But at the weekend they became Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians – all with their own churches and social clubs.

However in 1951 there were an earlier generation of Poles in Bradford. These were Polish Jews. Between the wars there were small numbers of Jewish refugees from Russia, Poland, Germany and Austria. At the last Holocaust Memorial event in Bradford we heard about the Kindertransport who in 1938 were welcomed into many places in Britain without their parents including Bradford. Not so well remembered are the 4,000 children from the Basque region of Fascist Spain who came in 1937. 250 spent the rest of their lives in Bradford. We have an Italian community in Bradford, but no recognisable Spanish community. Our Basques were simply absorbed into the Bradford population but in 1951 they were still amongst our youngest refugees

Political refugees tend to have been associated with major wars. In the early stages of World War I small numbers of Belgian refugees found their way to Bradford and settled in the city. Because they integrated so well, the only traces of the Belgians are a number of French surnames which can be found in the city.

They were not the first French speakers to flee to Bradford. Before coming back to the 60 years since the signing of the Refugee Convention, I want to mention the earliest refugees of all. These were a small group of Huguenots. They were French Protestants who suffered torture and mass killings under King Louis XIV in the late 17th century. Indeed some think the very word “refugee” derives from these people of strong faith who sought refuge in Protestant countries such as England. They were usually well received, not least because as artisans and professionals they were seen as contributing to the positive development of the host community while France suffered a brain drain. They were probably the first people to introduce new techniques into various textile trades even though these were fairly modest in pre-industrial revolution days. Some of them were weavers. After about half a century as a distinct community they began to be assimilated into the host community. They were very adaptable, soon gave up speaking French, and some actually joined the Church of England. There are almost certainly people in Bradford today who have distant ancestors who were Huguenots.

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the incomers tended to be economic migrants rather than refugees, particularly from the South Asian sub-continent. However in the 21st century Bradford has welcomed refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo. In these countries racial persecution is often bound up with political persecution. Indeed sometimes ethnic, political and religious issues can overlap and some of us struggle to disentangle them. Sometimes we don’t need to. Sometimes we just need to listen to the testimony of individuals and appreciate the horrific experiences they have been through.

At the last BEACON (Bradford Ecumenical Asylum CONcern) AGM we heard from Abraham Mdlongwa telling his story of arrest, imprisonment and torture in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. He spoke of it as a learning curve which made him realise the value of celebrating life. His graphic descriptions of experience in the Khami jail reminded me that human cruelty does not change much over the centuries. What he was escaping was not too different from the horrors suffered by the Huguenots under Louis IV.

So let me end by drawing parallels between those first refugees coming to Bradford in the 16th and 17th centuries and those in our city today.

Like the Huguenots many of our contemporary refugees have put some intellectual muscle into Bradford. We may be sad about enforced brain drains which weaken the countries they have escaped from but we will gladly make use of their brains however long they are here. Like the Huguenots they bring spiritual riches to Bradford. Christianity and Islam in particular have been refreshed by an influx of people who expand our experience of belonging to world faiths.

However on the cultural front most of today’s refugees are not like the Huguenots. For those refugees from France centuries ago were a quiet lot. I would never accuse our friends from Zimbabwe or the Congo of that. As they celebrate life with exuberant singing and dancing and often gloriously colourful clothing, Bradford’s traditional reputation for dour pessimism and grumpiness is seriously challenged. Let us be seriously thankful for that and welcome the resources they bring for celebrating life in all its fullness. We celebrate the Refugee Convention, we celebrate the City of Sanctuary, but above all we celebrate the contribution of refugees to Bradford.

Geoff Reid 23rd March 2011

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