One Suitcase Sound files and original Interviews

Sound Pieces Created by Patrick Dineen

Suitcase 1 – Pakistani Experience ‘50,000 rupees or 5 years’

Suitcase 1 Transcript :

These guys are going on this…this new journey. To a new land, a foreign country, “the Motherland,” where all they’ve ever seen or heard of is that people wear suits and are resplendent in their attire. So he’s going to be doing the same, you know, so I’m pretty sure he bought a nice suit. And a couple of token things he must’ve brought were his combs, his sandals, his Asian wear, you know. And then, maybe a prayer mat.

My dad was the oldest of four brothers, and his first job in Middlesbrough in the mid 1960s, as a young man, was as a locomotive shunter working at Lackenby. And his journey started in Pakistan. They’d seen in the 50s waves of migrants going to “the motherland”, as they called it, with open visas, post the war. England needs to be rebuilt. If you want to go back to this whole motherland, you’ll earn a great living and, you know, provide for your family in Pakistan for generations. And being the oldest son, I think my dad was to be in about 17 or 18, he got married to my mom, in Pakistan. And then he was sent to England, and our Dad came all the way in Middlesbrough. And he worked as a locomotive shunter. And once he got here, and he got a job, there was a few of his cousins who came with him at the same time. And they all used to live together in one house. And they’d basically, four lads would get out of bed, and go to work, another four lads would come in from work and get in the same beds!

Most of the people who came in at the time, came in for a short period. The idea was: come in, make money and go back. And there’s a saying, which was,

50 ہزار روپے یا 5 سال؟

50,000 rupees or 5 years

The idea was you had to make 50,000 rupees, or you just go for five years. And my father was one of those guys who came in as well. He came in 1963. So when he came over, he had with him; one duvet, one sort of blanket, a suit (the first time he wore that suit for his travels), shirt, jumper and a coat. Plus, he had a copy of the Quran, he brought that in with him. Dry food which he’d eat over a period of time. I think that was it. Yeah.

My dad being the oldest, started writing letters back home and said, look, you know, I’m earning a decent living and it’s okay, we’re getting on okay, don’t be worried. Then obviously. the next brother came along my uncle Khalid, and then the next brother, but then a couple of them went back to get married. And then a few years after my uncle Sajid came down, so eventually my dad had come as the first of four brothers here.

The idea at that time was you came in with an address of somebody you knew, right? And this could be somebody, a distant relative, it could be somebody who’s in your village, right? Or it could be like, somebody from a distant village, who’s related to somebody in your village, right? Basically so, my dad came in with the somebody who was a distant relative, and they stay in that house.

You know, these people were invited here, because Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, were parts of the Commonwealth. My father as a young man came here, followed by his brothers, and I suppose as with many migrants, had an aspiration to come and settle and, you know, make some money and go back home.
My father was there for two years in London, moved to Btadford in 1970. And then 1970, my older brother moved into Middlesbrough because I had my aunt living here by marriage, but the thing was, he worked shift work. She was on her own in the house. She complained to my dad said, this is not good. And what my dad did was send my oldest brother, who was about 19 at the time, to come here so there was somebody there, daytime. So first to crash in Middlesbrough was 1970, when my brother came over.

My dad’s journey came, you know, he died in this country. He’s buried in this country. He lived the overwhelming amount of time of his life he spent in this country working in this country.

Everybody who came, came with the same things when they came in that time because we were told it’s cold there. So they made special things to wear right? And that took a lot of space. The Asian clothing because you couldn’t get any here. And this was mainly to be used for sleep at night. Obviously, the shirt, the extra pair of vests, slippers, and that was it. Well, the thing is, I’ve been coming here since 1970. Since my brother moved in. And I think the first experience was when we came in the winter. It was dark, it was smoggy, it was cold. But 1975 I came in the summer. And I remember, right, just standing there thinking, I’m home. It was just wonder, there was just a relief. I’ve left school and everything, which is the first time freedom. But I had the feeling for a few seconds, this is home.

I’ve got various pictures of my father and from, you know, the past, but I’ve copied and scanned them digitally. So wherever I go, some of those pictures and some of those memories and always be there. Those blue air mailletters, they really stand out to me because, you know, we used to get letters from Pakistan. And it would be like, weeks and weeks before a letter would come through and a one phone call. Blue. And our dad would sit all the kids down and my mom and the letter would be in Urdu. And they would read it and translate it to us and say this is what’s going on back home.

The thing was because at that time, all the men and boys would just move from one place to another. The idea of education was okay, you get bit of education. It was never sort of, you know, you stay with the kids, you learn English, it didn’t make any difference. But when we moved to Bradford, that’s when we father decided now we were in secondary school, you couldn’t move school because the idea was to get some sort of education.

Whenever dad would go to Pakistan, the first thing we would say to him is make sure you bring me a cricket bat on the way back, you know, get a cricket bat. Because one, they actually made some of the best quality bats in Pakistan. But they were a hell of a lot cheaper than buying them here. And cricket, it’s tied us back to home. That’s the national sport. So I remember that a lot. But again, on my mom’s side, you know, Pakistani jewelry, Pakistani clothing, you know, the materials. The shalwar kameez that the men wear. It was always considered, you know, sensible to, well, get them back home.

Our headmaster decided that there should be a careers officer in the school. And it was basically somebody got pressganged, he said, you will be the careers officer. And everybody had a chance to go and see him. So I went to see him. And we just talked about, you know…They looked at me, are you doing science and everything else? So what are you gonna do? I said well, I don’t know. He said, you know, laboratory work will be good. But, in Bradford there’s no laboratories, right? There was a couple of them before the but there’s not nothing there. And he said, you know, if you were somewhere like Teesside…I said I’ve got a brother living in Middlesbrough, he said you’re on the doorstep of ICI, it’s a big place. This is where you want to be.

I was born in Middlesbrough. My father came to this town in the 60s. And you know, he’s sadly no longer with us. But his generation of South Asians, who came not only to the UK, but more specifically to the northeast, have given huge amounts to this town in terms of their time and their dedication, their hard work. They raised children who have gone on to succeed and go back into the economy and become brilliant, upstanding members of the community. And yet we still have people out there who regard Asians, Muslims and people from different countries or people with a migrant history, as though somehow they don’t belong here.

I’ve grown up in Middlesbrough, from a young lad who left school to now, grandfather with all my family here. Children, grandchildren and I dare say in few years time. great grandchildren. So this is home.

Suitcase 2 – The Irish Experience ‘The Rose of Tralee”

Suitcase 2 Transcript :

I was born in Middlesbrough, but from Irish descent, my mom and my dad came over and they were looking for work. My oldest sister Jean, who was 18 months older, stayed in Ireland with my Nana. My dad and mom came over with another two people and ended up in Sheffield to start with overnight, and then they got on a train and got off in Middlesbrough. And she told me that they stayed in this big hospital, and it was quite scary, and later on, we found out it was a psychiatric hospital – Middlesbrough asylum. My Auntie Jane actually married an Englishman. I do apologize, but that’s what the family always called him, the Englishman, and he was a Protestant. They’re the ones that actually stayed in the area, another sibling of my dad’s, my Auntie Lizzie and her husband, my Uncle Thomas. They actually came over, went back, came over, went back, and died back over in Ireland.

So both my grandparents, my father’s parents, were born in Dublin. So we’re economic migrants, essentially. And it always amuses me, you know, when that’s used as a derogatory term in the media, because if you scratch the surface of Middlesborough, or towns like Middlesbrough, we’re all here for economic reasons, essentially.
My dad was a painter and decorator. So he got a job, any job, you know, that he could, doing places like the Transporter Bridge and Leeds football ground. So he was what was classed as a rough painter or an industrial painter.

My grandparents were actually a Protestant guy marrying a Catholic woman. The job situation was pretty dire. And I suspect that my grandfather just thought, right, now’s the time to go across the water essentially. Then obviously, after a while, decided to send for the family, which again, is a very common thing now, isn’t it, you know, you’ll get the men in a situation that needs change. They’ll make the move first. And then attempt to get the family to join them.
Earliest memories, as I said, we lived in a street house. Like, there was lots of kids all sharing the same bed. And we had coats on the beds. So remember, we did have coats to keep warm.
Whenever we went into anybody’s house, there was always, you know, there was holy water. There was always a photo of the Pope. And there was always a photo of JF Kennedy…in the houses. So I grew up with that, but separated it from when I was with other people as I was a child, trying to fit in to them. Changed my name, you know, when I was six, to Linda Layden, because I couldn’t say Maria Cunningham. That was a point. You know where it was, “Irish go home” and I was made fun of, and it was like, I just felt that the we were different. So I wanted to fit in. So I told them I was called Linda Layden.

At times, the heritage was considered to be a little bit dodgy. I mean, I have to fully confess that my family lied about their origins on census records from time to time. I could fully understand why. I know why. But when they were working at Eston, for example, both parents said that they were born in Reading, you know, they had a very, very tenuous link to Reading because one of their brothers lived in Reading, but they they were born in Dublin. There’s no way that they were born in Reading. But that was to do with the town they were living in at the time. And the heritage of the different minors who worked in places like Eston and, you know, they had quite tight communities. So, you know, the Cornish people with Cornish heritage, were not particularly keen on working with people with Irish heritage. And so, I guess in order to sort of pass as something that they thought was acceptable, you know, this that whole no blacks, no Irish no dogs scenario. I don’t blame them for it, I just find it… it just came as a little bit of a surprise.
I think we went to Liverpool on the trains. And it was a long journey. And sometimes we would have to sleep on these trains overnight. And then we get on to a boat. And some of them were cattle boats, they weren’t sort of liners, they weren’t cruises. They were they were cattle boats. And we would go over to Ireland on these boats. And then we’d get off, and we’d go to Navan, County Meath where my dad’s mum and dad lived and his brothers and sisters. And my mum’s holiday was a working holiday. So she would be, she would be constantly sort of cleaning and cooking, and my dad’s holiday I was going out every day to the pub, and coming back getting fed and gone back out again. I remember going in to the house, there was a big, massive tea pot. And I was with a couple of girls from school. And I remember making this pot of tea. And I’d used a lot of the milk. And I decided that I would try and pour some of it back into the milk bottle. Because times were hard. And I didn’t want to get told off. But I poured the tea from the tea pot back into the milk that was in the milk bottle. So it was all ruined. And I didn’t half get a good hiding for that.

So as a working class, Irish family, like a lot of other working class Irish families who had problems finding work and whatever, some members of the family joined the British Army. And you know, that’s me speaking as somebody whose father was deeply into the idea of the United Ireland and all of that. There were also elements in the family who essentially, in order to survive really, had ended up being complicit in stuff that they probably didn’t really, really believe in. But anyway, this particular set of objects I can think of that are quite precious, belong to one of those guys who had joined the British Army, spent a short time in India, I think with them, but then ended up in Gallipoli. And so was on the troop ship that went into Gallipoli that particular day and was killed in the water. So we have his Catholic missal, which is water damaged. And it’s open at a certain page. It looked like it had been in a pocket and it had been held open at that particular page, so I’m sort of thinking it’s probably the prayer he would have been looking at at the particular time. His sisters essentially had held on to that. It’s a very small thing was like a black leather binding. So things like that are precious. And we have a certificate. When you were killed, your family would get a certificate saying that you’ve done all this wonderful stuff… whatever. Essentially you’d died. But yeah, so we’ve got things like that. And they’re all kept in what’s known as Auntie Annie’s cabinet.

Suitcase 3 – Mixed Communities – ‘Cannon Street’

Suitcase 3 Transcript:

There’s a huge rise in racism, of populism, post Brexit post COVID. And we’ve got to tackle that. So I think we’ve got such a an undefeatable argument, in the fact that well, actually, we’re all migrants , we were all immigrants, and we came to this town for the same reason to earn a living and have a successful life.

I didn’t even know that, that my ancestors were colonized, if I hadn’t watched Bollywood movies, so the only reason I know that is through the movies, that actually the you know, this is what happened to our forefathers. And that’s why there’s India and Pakistan and Bangladesh, we didn’t know all this, because we haven’t been ever taught in school, if I’m honest,

Obviously, the early 80s, when the likes of in National Front and combat 18. And, Enoch Powell speeches had been made in various parts, and people started to, you know, become antagonistic towards different communities and cultures. And his kids, it almost started to grow up and he’s saying to his sons, if you get into trouble with the white lads just walk away. But we weren’t about to do that.

It’s been difficult for people, because obviously, India and Pakistan partition happened in 1948. What’s happened in Pakistan was a lot of people lost education during that time, there was a lot, obviously, when they were getting colonized, there’s been a lot lost there. So, you know, when it comes to work, and everything, building themselves up, I think it was quite hard, because of all the damage, I suppose that was done years before. So they thought, Okay, so now they’re inviting us over, let’s go over and let’s see if we can build ourselves a little bit better. But I think it was a lot to do with the fact that they were invited over to kind of work here. So it was it was more of that.

What they heard at home, they would then use that language outside. And for many people that never met an Asian before. Now at my school, I always remember we had one Jewish lad, he was very quiet, nice guy, never creepy. But the jokes that they used to make about him because he was a Jew, or the Germans made a mistake, blah, blah, blah, really derogatory remarks and this, he was a gentle guy. And it was shocking. And then the other standard joke was if you weren’t black or a Jew, then the next on the list was the Irish.

I did go to school. But I think perhaps there was a lot of Irish Catholics or maybe I didn’t feel different. When I moved to Brambles Farm, I did feel different, very different. We lived in a corner house, one side of the garden, there was like a wall, and I’d come home one day, and there was “Irish go home” written on it. And I was made feel inferior in the street by some of the people that lived there.

And the other thing I noticed as well, at an early age, there was this attitude from some of the teachers I felt that they’ve got this arrogance that “we rule the world and look at these foreigners here in this school”, and then weren’t particularly interested in us doing well. Their attitude was, you know, they’d just do their duty, teach them. If they achieve anything, fine. if they don’t, so what. They’ll go and work in the factories, and that was a common attitude.

I don’t suppose my mum made it easier for me either, you know, because she painted the bloody bricks red, and the concrete bit white. So we had this bloody corner house, and it was red and white, and she wasn’t even a Boro supporter, you know what I mean?

I was fair skinned, but my brother is quite dark. And growing up here, I had no problems. I had plenty of friends. There was the odd few. It did change when I started… When you get to a certain age your parents, “Right, you need to cover your legs, you’ve got to cover your hair”. I didn’t cover my hair. I still don’t. But I went for Hajj four years ago, and when I go out, I will cover my hair, I’ll put a scarf on. But growing up I’ve never ever, apart from covering my legs, but then I could… my mum would make me these trousers. And that made you stand out a bit. And you’d get sort of called… I can’t really, to be honest, remember being called names. But there was girls from Pakistan who, who did dress the traditional costumes. And there was a lot of name calling, but there’s nothing that I could say really, I was bullied or I was… even them girls, I don’t know maybe their perspective would be different. I don’t know. The whereas my husband, his schooling, even teachers were quite racist but my teachers were lovely.

We’re young men. We were born here. We went to school here, we’re playing football here. We’re part of the culture. Although we can speak our language and we understand everything from back home and what that entails. Really, we are British by birth. We are English. We are most importantly, Middlesbrough lads. We’re Boro lads. We are from here.

One thing that stays in my mind about Cannon Street is there was riots. There was a Yemenis cafe on Cannon Street and young man had a fight with, in them days, there was Teddy boys and he… one boy, young English boy got murdered. Because if there were brown skin, we were we all had to get together. And we were all herded up into one big house where just…block and boarded up all the windows, and had to stay there for, seemed like weeks. But it obviously can’t have been. But until the riots were over, because there wasn’t very many Asian people here then. And the few that were then had to all get together, locked up in this house.

I would have been 11 or more. And what what I understood had happened is that somebody I’ll use the word, he was an Arab, probably a Yemeni, stabbed an English man, right, with a knife. I don’t think it was a fatal injury. Can’t remember. And this caused riots because the people then got together and they start attacking anybody who’s non white. We were living in Russell Street, and my uncle was there, they had families living close by. What they did, they moved them all into our house. So they were fighting for protection, because these people would come around in cars, and they’d attack people’s houses and smash the windows and attack, and people were terrified. And I can remember, my father and uncles were really worried that they’d lived here now for over a decade. And they honestly believed, time has now come that we’re going to be kicked down to this country forced out to this country, because the government, the police, nobody wants us here, and nobody’s really protecting us. I’m not going to say that the police didn’t try to find them, they must have done, but that was the start of a worrying trend that they felt, right, now race and racism has reached a new extreme. And we are the people who are going to be kicked out of this country because of the color of their skin. And it was a frightening period for a short while till, that eventually subsided very quickly, but it put the fear in people that look, you better be careful.

This lady called Marsha Garrett and she does a lot of work around colorism. But if you’ve heard of Marsha, and I remember sitting in a program once I remember thinking, “Oh my goodness, is that why every Asian wants to be white?”, because I was quite shocked with what she said. And then she talked about colonialism. And then it’s one thing that struck me she said, “You haven’t learned all this school have you?”. And I thought you know what, you’re right. And then it hit me. I thought, oh, yeah, I’ve learned this from the movies. Otherwise I wouldn’t know. Or if your parents never told you, you wouldn’t have a clue. So like my children, sometimes when they talk, and I’m like, here, you sit down here. Let me give you the other perspective. Because they’re only conditioned with one perspective,

When I get married and have kids and I’ve got grandkids one day, hopefully, they’ll talk about that great granddad. And if I’m stood around, I can tell them about their great great granddad, who lived in India, which then became, well a part of it became Pakistan. And then his dad, no his sons came here, all that history.

I was 18 months, less than that when I came but I’ve spent all my life here. English is my mother tongue. England is my home. No, I don’t have another home. Family members are all buried in Thorntree Cemetary and England is the only home and it’s the only home I know and I love this country.

And that’s what Middlesbrough is a Northeastern Migrant town. It is a migrant town.