Lord Popat and Shailesh Vara: Britain found a home for Ugandan Asians

By Lord Popat of Harrow and Shailesh Vara Member of Parliament for Northwest Cambridgeshire.

On 4th August 1972 Idi Amin, the Ugandan President who had seized power in a coup just over a year earlier, announced that he had had a dream, in which God had told him to expel the Asian. Amin issued a decree ordering almost all Asians in Uganda - some 60,000 of them - to leave.

This brutal eviction saw people forced to leave behind their homes, businesses, land, bank accounts, temples; everything but the clothes on their back, their family and the spirit that had allowed them to flourish in Uganda and elsewhere.

The expulsion led to a global game of political football. Kenya closed its borders to these people. During Independence Ugandan Asians had been given British protected passports and now India made clear the 60,000 were Britain's responsibility.

Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath and his Government rose to the occasion and demonstrated the compassion that we have come to associate with Britain. He ruled that Britain had a legal and moral responsibility to take in those with British passports. In many homes of Ugandan Asians across Britain today, pictures of Ted Heath still hang proudly.