Baroness Eaton
Main Page: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Berridge has secured this debate today on such an interesting and important topic. As many of us will have observed on the doorsteps while we were involved in the recent general election, the issue of immigration creates many reactions, not always positive. I feel that my life has been greatly enhanced by coming from a major metropolitan district that can truly be described as cosmopolitan. Bradford has welcomed immigrants from all over the world since the time of the Huguenots. The city experienced significant levels of immigration throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. As a very small schoolgirl, I remember looking with admiration at many of the older girls in my school with names that sounded very exotic. Many were from behind the Iron Curtain in what we called the captive nations including Latvia and Lithuania. My father explained to me the dreadful life and trouble that they had all gone through to come to this country—something that has always remained with me.
This debate is about contributions made by immigrants to both faith communities and public institutions. The Jewish community in Bradford has been an excellent example of an immigrant community that did precisely that. Jews started coming to Bradford in the 1830s to help build what was first a borough and then a city into the wool capital of the world. In 1850, more than £40 million-worth of textiles, which is an enormous amount in today’s value, was exported by the Jewish merchants.
Among the early settlers, was Jacob Behrens, born in 1806, who came to Bradford in 1838. He was knighted in 1882 and said:
“Who would have thought it possible that now just fifty years after I stepped ashore on English soil at Hull, a foreigner and a Jew, I should be deemed worthy of the offer of a knighthood by the Queen’s government?”.
His firm, the Sir Jacob Behrens Group, still exists today. Jacob Behrens was the founder of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce along with Jacob Unna, born in 1800 in Hamburg, who came to Bradford in 1846, having previously lived in Manchester and Leeds. Unna was greatly involved in the life of Bradford, becoming a magistrate and deputy lieutenant of West Yorkshire. Among his descendants was the actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft.
Bradford became a borough in 1847. As early as 1863, Charles Joseph Semon, a German Jew born in Danzig and a textile merchant, became the first Jewish mayor of Bradford. He was followed by three Jewish mayors—Jacob Moser in 1910, David Black in 1958 and Olive Messer in 1984. Bradford Chamber of Commerce, Bradford College, Bradford Royal Infirmary and Bradford Central Library are just a few of the services that we use today that enjoyed the financial support and promotional ploys of Mr Moser and other Jewish philanthropists like him.
In the period when there were problems in Russia, lots of Jews came to Bradford between 1880 and 1910. One particular family, the Stroud family, built a large textile manufacturing company with a Christian friend, Wynne Riley. He and Oswald Stroud had met as serving soldiers together in the First World War. During the Second World War, many of the young soldiers from Bradford came from the Jewish community.
The subject of immigration, as I said, is often sensitive and people sometimes feel threatened by those with lifestyles and languages unknown to them. If we are to live together in more harmonious communities, we need to work at it. Here I declare an interest as chairman of the charity Near Neighbours. Near Neighbours is all about bringing people together who are near neighbours in communities that are religiously and ethnically diverse, so that they get to know each other better, build relationships of trust and collaborate on initiatives that improve the local community. Near Neighbours has two key objectives—social interaction to develop positive relationships in multifaith areas, and social action to encourage people of different faiths and of no faith to come together for initiatives that improve their local neighbourhoods.
Many neighbourhoods in the United Kingdom have a number of different faith and ethnic communities living close to each other. Some of these communities rarely interact with one another and instead live parallel but separate lives. Such separation can lead to misunderstanding and a lack of trust or respect for each other. These are often areas of deprivation with people living there sharing common concerns for a better community, but despite this shared concern they do not come together to talk or act as much as they should. Near Neighbours brings people together, breaking down misunderstanding and developing trust to help change communities for the better. I am pleased to say that many immigrants from different faith groups through Near Neighbours now join together. Bradford continues to welcome immigrants from all over the world. Through the work of Near Neighbours, recently the Muslim community has supported the upkeep of the last synagogue in Bradford. That is surely a demonstration from both immigrant communities that they make a valued contribution to both faith communities and public institutions.