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In the 1960s, I lived with my family in Bury Park, in a number of locations. In 1971 we moved to Hockwell Ring and stayed
there until about 1976 eventually we moved to Marsh Farm. I grew up on a housing estate. My family moved from
Yorkshire. I was actually born in Yorkshire in 1960 so I’m kind of like the first generation British Asian really, I have fond
memories of growing up in Bury Park and attending the Maidenhall School.

We were all very poor in general, everyone was poor in the 60s we all lived in one room in Westbourne Road, there
were like five kids, Mum, and Dad. So they had two rooms in Westbourne Road where the central mosque stands now,
basically two rooms which we shared between all of us. I remember those years as being quite happy and the other
thing I remember is the number of Asian people in the area which were very few. Bury Park was quite diverse then, still
lots of Italians lots of West Indians, Arabian families but very few Asians and when I went to Maidenhall School. There
were about two Asian kids there including myself.

A lot of changes took place between the 1960s to 1980s up until now in the 1970s.There were more jobs around, we
moved to newer housing estates built mainly for Vauxhall workers. My father used to work for Vauxhall. In the 1980s
I became a young man, so I became more independent and what I noticed leading up to now as well is that Luton
is much more diverse now than before with many people from the South Asian communities. We have many more
Pakistanis, Kashmiris and Bangladeshis, people from those communities move to Luton for one reason or another, at the
same time people have moved into the area to work for Vauxhall Motors which has now more or less closed down.
In the 1970’s due to losses in employment people started to set up their own businesses in order to become self-
sufficient. The town has seen a lot of changes on a political level, from thatcher’s government to now. The change is
that shops seem to have longer operational hours than before. In Luton and presumably many other places, people
from south asian communities took to setting up family run corner shops which became very prosperous.

I remember that in the 1960s and the 1970s all you could smell was boiled cabbage and boil vegetables, because that
was, what every household was cooking those things even at school. Back in the days when we used to do our cooking,
the neighbours used to really complain about the scent of the food, English neighbours were complainers, there was
a lot of racism about then they used to resort to offensive name calling. It was very hard for my mother to cook
traditional food for this reason, however now the society has changed for the better.

Another difference is the availability of spices and halal meat, I remember my father in the 60s having to go to a kosher
butcher shop to buy meat in Chapel Street, Luton. There was a Jewish kosher butcher in Chapel Street, so in late 1960’s,
we used to buy halal meat from there. My father didn’t have a car to travel all the way to London so for this reason we
would purchase kosher meat instead. Now spices and halal meat are purchasable from Tesco’s and Sainsburys this is how
society has changed.

In the 60s it was a diverse area with lots of Italians, West
Indians, Irish and Bengali origin people. It was the place where
people were moving into. When families came over, they kind
of settled in the area and although a lot of those families have
now moved out of the Bury Park area, the businesses that have
been established here remain. Bury Park is a success story. Bury
Park is very vibrant area it’s always been vibrant but it’s much
more vibrant now.

The evenings of 11th and12th July 1981 are very prominent in
my mind as young people were rising up against authority,
there were major riots involving people from Leads, Bradford,
Southall, Bristol, Brixton, Birmingham, Handsworth, Coventry
as well as other parts of the country. As there was no social
media at the time, we had heard rumours that skinheads were
coming to Bury Park to smash the mosque up, which had a
history of attacks. That year in 1981 a pig’s head was placed on
top of the mosque in place of the minaret. In 1979 the mosque
was attacked by Chelsea football supporters. In 1981 there were
also lots of Asian families being attacked. As a result of the
rumours, we formed the youth movement as a response to the
attacks being aimed on the mosque. We put a message out for
We were the kind of like first cohort young people, black, white Asian together outside the mosque
residence on the Marsh. So I grew up to protect it against skinheads, so on the evening of July the
in all these areas mainly you know the 11th we had hundreds of young people gathered outside the
housing estate. mosque. The youths gathered in the town centre, and they
moved towards Bury Park and eventually the police started
moving in to clear the streets. I remember the taxi drivers

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