Nick Ahad: Immigrants’ stories woven together at the mill

INTERVIEWING Lenny Henry recently about his stand-up show and his new found love for theatre, I shared a number of experiences with him that are universal to the children of immigrants.

The comedian, whose parents hail from Jamaica, recently accepted an invitation to officially open a foundry in his home town of Dudley. His father, whom he described as a grumpy, silent presence in his home, worked in a foundry every day of his life.

Having benefited from his father’s labour, he wanted to see inside the belly of the beast that consumed him on a daily basis. When Henry junior was in the foundry, he had an epiphany: he finally understood his dad. “It was dangerous, dirty, hard work. No wonder he was grumpy,” he told me.

I had a similar epiphany last week.

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Standing in the weaving shed of Drummonds Mill, in the heart of Bradford’s Manningham suburb, I was moved to tears.

I was there to witness an incredibly powerful piece of theatre. The Mill: City of Dreams is a site-specific theatre show in which the audience walk through the now defunct Drummonds Mill.

Drummonds Mill was built in 1856 on a 10-acre site in Manningham, just outside Bradford city centre. It reached the height of its industry in the 1960s when, bolstered by immigrant workers, it shipped wool around the world from the heart of Bradford.

As the wool industry declined, it gradually slowed down its output, becoming defunct in 2002. It is now owned by a private company which maintains it just at a level to prevent it falling into complete disrepair.

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As we walked around, actors played out the stories of people they had interviewed from the Bradford district, all of them brought to the city from other countries to chase the dreams offered by steady work in these powerhouses on which Yorkshire’s fortune was built.

The audience saw stories of Italian women, sought because they were considered to have slender fingers, brought to life by actor Raffaella Gardon.

We learnt how workers from the Ukraine transported themselves to Bradford because they were hardened by days of toiling in the fields and the mill owners witnessed in them a work ethic from which their industry could prosper.

Pakistani men were brought to England with the promise that they would earn enough money to send back to family who remained in their homeland.

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Upstairs in Drummonds Mill, under the glass apex of the roof, the drama came to a climax and my personal connection to the mill and what it represented was overwhelming.

Both my parents – my mother, a Keighley native, and my father, from Bangladesh – had worked in similar mills when they were teenagers.

What they had been through, what they had sacrificed (and so many with them) in those mills to give their children a brighter future, was brought starkly home as I shivered in the fading light and growing cold of what William Blake called “these dark satanic mills”.

It also brought home the fact that cities such as Bradford are indelibly shaped by immigration and that is something that should be celebrated by all of us.

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As far-Right groups gain support becoming ever more vociferous in contemporary Britain, and David Cameron addresses the “problem of multi-culturalism”, we appear to have lost something in the rhetoric.

Namely, the fact – and it is a fact – that immigration has brought wonderful things to our green and pleasant land.

Now, this is not a popular view. We appear hell bent on “tackling the issue” and “dealing with the problem” when it comes to discussing immigration. We have been tricked into thinking along certain lines: immigration is a problem, that the lack of integration between communities an issue that really ought to be addressed.

But hang on, the story of the mill seemed to be saying, what about the stories that we have gained through immigration to this country?

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What about the power of those stories, the way they have been woven into the tapestry of “England’s mountains green”, creating a richer history we all share?

The personal histories of Lenny Henry and myself, both second generation immigrants, are tied up entirely with these palaces of industry.

The story of The Mill I saw in Bradford opened up a greater truth – perhaps we have all been fortunate to benefit from these stories of immigration.

There are the very obvious and visible ways in which this is true – directly opposite Drummonds Mill is one of Bradford’s oldest and most popular Asian restaurants.

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But we benefit in a host of less tangible, unquantifiable ways. How poorer would all of us be in a British society bereft of the contributions of Monica Ali, Baroness Warsi, Nasser Hussain, Ben Kingsley, Salman Rushdie, Meera Syal and countless others who share an immigrant story in their personal history?

Perhaps, The Mill reminded me that immigration is not just part of my personal story but it is an important part of all of our stories that could, if we allow, help us build our own new Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.

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