Coming to the UK
In the 1950s, Britain suffered a chronic shortage of labour. There was hard work to be done rebuilding the country after the war, but there weren’t enough people to do it. Jobs in nursing, transport and factories remained stubbornly unfilled. So Britain opened its doors to the Commonwealth and invited workers to take up residency here to get the country back in shape. By 1960 around 150,000 West Indians and 60,000 Indians and Pakistanis had arrived in Britain. Most stayed to make it their home.
Why did they come and how did they find it?
‘We came here to earn money, to educate our children and to secure a bright future,’ says Mr Baldev Singh, 62, who arrived from India in 1963. Living conditions were tough. Many Asian men lived together while their women were still ‘back home’. Singh went from one unskilled job to the next until he discovered life on the buses. ‘The bus driving was the best job I had because it was the one in which I was given comprehensive training. I enjoyed meeting people of the new country,’ he says.
Rupa Dev, 55, a professional tailor from Pakistan took on a series of jobs in the rag trade in the Midlands. ‘My husband couldn’t find work at first so I went out and got a job as a garment finisher. I had four children to feed,’ she says. Language was a constant barrier for many years. ‘One of the first things we saved up for was a TV. That’s how I learnt to speak English,’ she says.
Dev finally decided to buy a sewing machine of her own and worked as an outdoor machinist, freelancing from home and saving time and money spent commuting to work. Most importantly, however, she was still able to look after her kids as she worked, ‘Which meant I could work for more than one employer at a time, doing the hours I wanted and still be around for the children,’ she explains.
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