Ugandan Asians at Houndstone Camp
From the collection of
From the collection of
Ugandan Asian refugees face up to a sudden wintery future.
TV reporter John Doyle is at Houndstone near Yeovil Somerset to report on Ugandan Asians as they settle into the South West's resettlement camps. Refugees in the camp are interviewed about hopes and prospects for a future in Britain. Camp commandant William Pollock Morris explains the huge impact of the expulsion from Uganda on the refugees. Local volunteers help set up food kitchens, distribute warm clothing and aid in the processing of the refugees.
Over 27,000 refugees were successfully resettled in the UK. More recently some have returned to Africa to rebuild livelihoods. Idi Amin was the Ugandan president from 1971 to 1979. By expelling Asians and installing a brutal regime, the country's economy collapsed. He was deposed in 1979 fleeing first to Libya and then to Saudi Arabia, where he died in 2003. Idi Amin was never tried for his crimes against humanity.
From local news to feature film, through home movies and TV documentaries, this collection showcases South Asian Britons in front of and behind the camera. The contribution of colonial troops is illuminated through the earliest newsreels, while hardhitting current affairs programmes highlight the struggles faced in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond. Public information films produced for South Asian audiences feature alongside Hindi-language films made in Britain and interviews with prominent Asian-British figures. A bold wave of British Asian filmmaking in the 1990s is represented through early works by the likes of Gurinder Chadha and Asif Kapadia.