50th Anniversary of the Expulsion of Asians from Uganda

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

I am delighted to follow the noble Lord and to join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Popat, on instigating this debate and the one 10 years ago and on the quality of his contribution in this House and beyond, as well as thanking him for giving us the opportunity to reflect on the events of 50 years ago.

This week has made me feel very old. Not only do I have two sons older than the Prime Minister, which is quite a thought, but it reminds me of where I was 50 years ago. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, told of his work as a young Conservative—fighting Enoch Powell, if I may use the shorthand. Fifty years ago I was selected as the prospective parliamentary candidate in my home town, Wolverhampton, for Wolverhampton South West, Enoch Powell’s constituency. Thereafter followed a vigorous campaign. The one thing I had to be profoundly grateful for was that there was no social media then, so the abusers had to take the trouble to buy paper, envelopes and stamps and send the abusive mail to you. But it made me profoundly aware of the racism current in the country.

While I was doing that politically, professionally I took on the role of director of the Ugandan Evacuees Co-ordinating Committee for Welfare. It was the group that brought together 75 voluntary organisations to provide support and work in parallel with the Uganda Resettlement Board. I remember going to the West Malling camp referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, where we supplied the liaison officers supporting the individual families. We did a great deal within the communities, and much of that was done not in the black or white but in the red areas. I absolutely agree with those who say that a principled decision was made and that we should pay tribute to the Prime Minister and Cabinet who took that decision, but we have to recognise that the fears of being seen to be soft on immigration were very strong in the policies of the Uganda Resettlement Board.

The wonderful staff in the Library found the report that I co-authored, a year after the final camp was closed, on the work that was done. The Prime Minister had referred to the co-ordinating committee’s work as “a job well done”. We published a report, A Job Well Done?—with a question mark—and it went through the difficulties that those people found. They were not entitled to social security if they went into red areas and resettlement was often in areas where there was no employment and no support from communities. People therefore gravitated to where there were communities but they were not entitled to what the Government gave to people who went to green areas. There was a great deal of frustration and indignation in the report. It only goes to show two things: first, how fantastically the community succeeded, despite those early difficulties. The other is how dangerous and wrong-headed it is for Governments to run scared of racism in their immigration policy.