Source 2c: Oral history – Mayur Seta

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Transcript

We arrived probably early October, and obviously the camp closed around the 16th of March. That’s when all the last people left. Then we went to another camp. It wasn’t far from here. So we were moved there after we finished, after this place closed down, and then what happened was, erm, Charles Swift who was the leader of Peterborough City Council, he visited Stradishall and the other camp and he invited fifty families to come and settle in Peterborough. So, you know, he wanted us to come there. As soon as he announced that fifty families were coming to Peterborough, he got a lot of hate mail, people outside his house, he had to be taken to work everyday with police protection. Yeah, he had lot of problems because he invited the Asians there and also obviously, locally, the locals were also, in you know, in this area, who were also, you know thinking, ‘What’s going to happen because if these Asians live in this area, then lots of the jobs will go…’  

So, but Peterborough City Council, yeah so, they took us on. We got there and they gave us a house.  I remember, going shopping, they gave us £50 which was quite a lot in them days, back in 1973. My mum and dad bought all the food, lots of it and we had a house and everything. And my dad got a job already, locally, working for Baker Perkins in Peterborough. And my dad became like ambassador to all the Ugandan Asians, ‘Please come to Peterborough. Come and live here. It’s a great city.’  

Like I said, Peterborough City Council wanted us to come there. If you look at Leicester, they said, ’Please don’t come here.’ Peterborough wanted us to go there.  

When I went to Peterborough, the first area I went to was all Asians – Pakistani and Indian, just full of Asians, not any white people in that area at all. The school I went to had all Indian and Pakistani kids and after one and half years, I moved to the city centre area and moved to a school where there was all ninety-nine percent English. I went to the school and the headmaster, first thing he done, told all the students – he was a fantastic guy, Mr Swinson – he told all the-, all the students that if he finds any racism from anybody, they’ll be chucked out of the school and we never faced any racism in that school. It was fantastic, it was due to that headmaster of the school.”