Many found work in the growing number of “Indian” restaurants and takeaways in the UK, most of which are actually owned by Bangladeshis. Bangladeshi men initially found work in the steel and textile mills across England, but when these industries collapsed, they turned to small businesses including tailoring and catering. They settled in the East London boroughs, which had previously been home to waves of immigrants such as Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe escaping persecution before WWI, and others who fled Nazi Germany and Austria in the 1930s. Most Bangladeshi families in the UK in the present time are the result of large scale migration in the early 1970s from the Sylhet region of Bangladesh, as people fled from the civil unrest in their homeland, to seek a better life in Britain. There was a civil war between East and West in 1970-71, which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. Pakistan comprised of two territories divided by a thousand miles - the present day Pakistan, which was then known as East Pakistan, and the present day Bangladesh, which was then West Pakistan. When India gained its independence from British rule, the country was partitioned creating a new state of Pakistan. Other groups who migrated from Pakistan in the 1960s include Punjabis who mainly settled in Glasgow, Birmingham and Southall in London, and migrants from urban areas who were more likely to be professionals and who worked for the NHS. After the Mangla dam was building 1966 which submerged large parts of the Mirpur district, emigration from that area accelerated. Pakistani migrants who came to Britain after the war found employment in the textile industries of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Manchester and Bradford, cars and engineering factories in the West Midlands, and Birmingham, and growing light industrial estates in places like Luton and Slough. Sailors from Mirpur found work as engine-room stokers on British ships sailing out of Bombay and Karachi, some of whom settled in the UK in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Migration to the UK from Mirpur, PakistanĪ large majority of Pakistani migrants in the UK originate from Mirpur in Kashmir, which has a long history of out-migration.
After the Commonwealth Immigrants Act was passed in 1962 which restricted the free movement of workers from the Commonwealth, most workers from South Asia decided to settle in the UK and were eventually joined by their families. These Punjabi migrants found work in the manufacturing, textile and the service sectors, including a significant number at Heathrow Airport in West London. It was primarily men from middle-ranking peasant families in Punjab, particularly those who had been previously employed in the colonial army or the police force and their relatives, who took up this opportunity. Sikh soldiers who served in elite regiments, were often sent to other colonies of the British Empire, and saw active service in both world wars. There is a memorial in Sussex which honours the Sikh soldiers who died in WW1.īritain’s labour shortages shaped the post-war migration patterns from the subcontinent. From 1857 onwards many Punjabis served in the British army. The ties between the British and the Punjab region of India go back a long way.