50th Anniversary of the Expulsion of Asians from Uganda

Lord Hunt of Wirral Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I join the right reverend Prelate in congratulating my noble friend on this debate. When he left Uganda at the age of 17, my noble friend swiftly became an inspiring role model for many Ugandan Asians. Half a century later, we look with pride upon what Ugandan Asians have achieved and brought to our country. I join my noble friend in saying how marvellous it is that we now have Her Excellency Nimisha Madhvani serving as Ugandan high commissioner here, having been expelled with her family at the age of 13—my goodness, she has come on marvellously since, and it is a great opportunity to pay tribute to her.

Let me explain why this 50th anniversary means so much to me personally. In 1968, the debate on immigration changed profoundly. First, the Home Secretary Jim Callaghan introduced the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in response to the possible immigration of 200,000 Kenyan Asians who held British passports. That Act sadly set a benchmark for harsh attitudes to non-white immigrants. Secondly, Enoch Powell delivered the most appalling speech on 20 April 1968. As someone brought up in Toxteth, those two events thrust me into campaigning to counter the influence of the Monday Club within my Conservative Party.

When Idi Amin decided to make Ugandan Asians the scapegoat for his own manifest failures and expelled them from their homes, he irreparably damaged his own nation’s prospects for a generation and more. I was so proud when our Prime Minister Ted Heath took the lead in saying that the UK would be a safe haven, and set up the Uganda Resettlement Board. As Ted wrote in his memoir,

“I was determined … we would … face up to our responsibilities … We did what any civilised nation would do”.


As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, has just reminded us, it took less than five minutes for the entire Cabinet, including the future Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to agree to this courageous, enlightened and honourable policy.

However, not everyone was pleased. Public support for the admission of the Ugandan Asians fell to 6% in one opinion poll in September 1972, and the Monday Club began a reckless and irresponsible Halt Immigration Now! campaign. Matters came to a head at the Conservative Party conference 50 years ago this month. There was on the agenda a motion on immigration tabled by the Hackney South and Shoreditch Conservative Association. It soon became clear that its president, Enoch Powell, intended to move that motion personally and turn it into an attack on the Government for the admission of the Ugandan Asians. Although Powell was in the wilderness so far as the party leadership was concerned, he still had a considerable following, sadly, among the membership.

I had just become leader of the Young Conservatives and persuaded my YC colleagues that I should move an amendment to the Powell motion welcoming the Ugandan Asians. As I said in that vital debate on 12 October 1972, in a speech drafted by a determined and talented team led by Gerry Wade, “I find it completely morally indefensible, to grant a person a British passport and then, when that person is in trouble, to try to pretend it is a worthless document”. After an inspiring speech by the brilliant Home Secretary Robert Carr, alongside Ted Heath on the platform, the conference rejected Powell and accepted the Young Conservatives’ amendment.

I hope noble Lords will therefore understand why this debate is such a vital opportunity for me to pay tribute to Ted Heath and his colleagues for choosing the path of honour at a time of social, political and economic strife—a decision which has resulted, as we have heard from my noble friend and others, in the Ugandan Asian community firmly establishing itself as one of the principal driving forces behind building our successful economy.