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Eastern eye: The Asian experience in Yorkshire
THE fascinating story of Yorkshire's first Asian immigrants is going online. Watch a Yorkshire Post film on the event.
The arrival of hundreds of people from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India in the 1950s and 1960s to take up labour shortages in the textile mills changed the face of Huddersfield and much of West Yorkshire.
Now the individual story of their trials and tribulations as they carved out a community in a foreign environment is being recorded and presented on a unique internet site.
Huddersfield University has been awarded 50,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for its Asian Voices project, which aims to interview at least 100 Asians about their first experiences of arriving in Huddersfield.
Asian Voices hopes to explore how first generation immigrants settled, the difficulties they faced in finding accommodation and employment together with how welcoming the town was.
Project manager Nafhesa Ali, from Birkby, said: "My own family and others faced enormous problems when they arrived.
"The weather itself must have come as a shock, let alone the very different social culture they found themselves in.
"Many of those first settlers will now be in their 70s and 80s, so it is essential we interview them while they still retain those memories."
Nafhesa, 26, a mother of three young children and part of an extended family in Huddersfield added: "My grandfather Ashraf Ali arrived here in 1963, after coming to the UK from Lahore in Pakistan.
"He worked in many of the textile mills and is still active and in good health.
"The older generation now keep themselves to themselves, but I hope they can take the chance to remember how all the hard work they put in has helped their children and grandchildren"
"We also intend to involve younger members of the community as well by getting them to interview their parents and grandparents.
"The impact the first generation has had on Yorkshire, and Huddersfield in particular, has changed the cultural and physical landscape forever."
For more information on Asian Voices call the Centre for Oral History Research at Huddersfield University on 01484 478412 or 01484 478411.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: East
