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I lived at the bottom of the Farley Hill area which is literally a
five-minute walk from Russell Street and that’s where my father
and my mother first bought a house and we lived for a long
time, until I attended university. I’ve seen the Bury Park area
go through a lot of changes, particularly during my youth. The
changes were mainly due to the community diversification. It
was noticeable that more Asians were coming into the area and
so it was becoming a lot more ethnically diverse.

I remember the Westside area which had a car park where we
used to go to see car auctions. The types of shops in the area
have changed, there are more asian shops now than before, this
is because of the number of Asians entering the area.

I would frequently visit Bury Park and Russel Street to see my
family. The main changes I’ve seen are in the variety of the
shops, I’ve seen the changes in the actual layout of Bury Park
as well. The area started off with a few clothing shops and
Bury Park I’ve seen the area change two mosques, now it is completely taken over with multiple
quite a lot in the time period in my mosques and a number of different types of shops, for example
now they have a number of Indian gold shops, which were not
youth and is primarily because the there before. There is a real community spirit as entering the
community was changing. area you can feel that the place caters for everyone. I recall
Bury Park as previously only having one or two shops. I also
remember that there was a McDonald’s there.
That was one of the first McDonald’s in Luton was a halal McDonald’s. The area was previously very much ‘non-asian’
and slowly it became more and more culturally diverse. I think there used to be a Woolworths at some point in Bury
Park. I remember in Westside Centre, where there is a Sainsbury’s now there used to be a large carp park. My brother
and I used to go there often to look at the cars on auction.

The football was the central focus of Bury Park, as was the cinema, I still remember going to see the movie ‘Land that
time forgot’ with my younger brother. I remember walking in the area on Saturdays, we used to be really scared of
walking through Bury Park as the football matches used to be on particularly when fans from North London or the
Yorkshire clubs where present everyone knew to avoid the area. During those times there was a lot of racism, incited by
events such as the football matches. The main changes I have experienced from the early 70s are a sharp change in the
community as mentioned before there is so much more diversity now in the area than ever before. There has been a
steady rise in the number of black communities in the area along with Pakistani and Bangladeshi.

In my younger years, when I was at school, we would visit the Bury Park area on weekends with my mother and father.
We would visit family members living in the area. I remember the neighbours in the area being very nice. My dad went
to Bangladesh at one point for about six or seven months for a business trip, whilst he was away and we used to visit
a meat shop called ‘choice meat shop’ to buy meat. I recall buying enough meat to last for an entire week, we enjoyed
walking through the area, seeing different faces, different shops and a multitude of halal butchers. I love ‘Gulab jamun’
which is an Indian sweet, Bury Park has many shops that sell Indian sweets. Being in Bury Park gives you a feeling of
welcome and warmth along with a sense of belonging as everyone is either like you or similar to you which is nice.

I think Bury Park is a very vibrant area and the community there is also amazing. The community is very supportive.
People are made to feel at home in the area. I like walking in Bury Park and being recognised by people, everyone knows
everyone. I have moved to Watford. However, I frequently visit Luton and whenever I do it always feels like home.
I started high school in the 1970’s so I was 11 years old at the time. I recall there being a lot of racism especially with the
National Front presence. ‘Paki bashing’ was a commonly used term amongst the racist white crowd, those who don’t
know what ‘Paki bashing’ was, it was basically lots of white guys choosing an Asian and attacking that one person.
One day I was coming back from school and my friend screamed to me ‘get out of here, don’t hang around, they’re
on the war path today’. He was referring to people at school, I remember thinking they’re not going to hurt me but
just then ten minutes later I was jumped by a group of people. The attack involved both white and black children, the
two had joined forced to attack Asians. Since being attacked I have had a passion for fighting racism and so I’m also
involved in the London assembly, I am on the London advisory board for ‘tell mama’ Which fights anti Muslim activity
nationwide. I have found that people no longer have to put up with things they can actually action their challenges
and make a difference, hence people’s attitudes have changed a lot. It’s very important to raise awareness and work
with governments as we are doing, we’re working with police forces around the country to help fight this type of
discrimination. I remember when I was about six or seven years old in 1971, we had the Bangladesh liberation war,

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