{"id":2332,"date":"2026-03-03T11:03:56","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T11:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/?p=2332"},"modified":"2026-03-30T11:21:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T11:21:51","slug":"south-asian-studies-leicester-and-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/2026\/03\/03\/south-asian-studies-leicester-and-immigration\/","title":{"rendered":"South Asian Studies: Leicester and Immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BBC Radio Leicester programmes.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As well as holding many thousands of oral histories, the East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA) also holds, in partnership with the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland, the archive of BBC Radio Leicester. This includes the Maurice Ennals collection of scrapbooks and ephemera, a photo collection, and, of course, thousands of recordings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Over the past 25 years we have been working our way through the recordings, but it is a slow process and there are still many recordings that haven’t been digitised or catalogued. However, we have reached a point where we can identify and provide access to a number of recordings that cover Leicester and immigration from the late 1960s onwards. We have been helped greatly by the work of Dr Liam McCarthy, who has researched programmes looking at the South Asian experience, and how that translated into radio programmes at Radio Leicester. Dr McCarthy has used these recordings in his work and, in the blog below, reflects on what he has found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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BBC Radio Leicester was based in Epic House for many years (credit: Bob Smith, Radio Leicester)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“BBC Radio Leicester began broadcasting on 8 November 1967 just as immigration of people with South Asian heritage \u2013 mainly from Kenya in East Africa \u2013 was beginning to be established in the city. By 1972 and the expulsion of the Ugandan Asians by Idi Amin many of whom came to the city, the station was broadcasting news programmes that covered the changing demography and diversity of Leicester. For context the number of people with South Asian \/ East African heritage in the city grew from around 4,000 in the 1961 census to over 63,000 in the 1983 Survey of Leicester undertaken by the City Council \u2013 representing some 21% of the city population (1).”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“The historiography of this period widely uses the archives of the printed press, notably the news coverage in the Leicester Mercury; Joanna Herbert points to studies of \u201cthe racist local press\u201d in Leicester, and stories about \u201cminority ethnic groups as a problem\u201d(2). Judith Vidal-Hall writes of \u201cinflammatory headlines speaking of disaster in the influential Leicester Mercury\u201d(3). Barry Troyna and Robin Ward go further, suggesting that local opinion leaders in Leicester, such as City Councillors, Trade Union leaders and<\/em> local journalists were responsible in part for legitimizing racist attitudes among the local population (4). This was especially so in the febrile atmosphere in which the local Labour MP for Leicester East, Tom Bradley, suggested his constituents were \u201cobsessed\u201d with the question of immigration (5). Indeed, Judith Vidall-Hall notes that Leicester at this time was \u201cthe UK\u2019s most racist city\u201d (6).”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“However, using the digitised recorded programmes from BBC Radio Leicester in the Special Collections of the University of Leicester brings a new perspective to the troubled history of the period. From election broadcasts, through news coverage, the rise of the National Front and the personal stories of the immigrants themselves it is possible to add a new dimension to research. The BBC Radio Leicester archive also contains programmes broadcast by and to the growing local South Asian communities and reflect the change from public information to entertainment and the birth of a new British Asian Sound that is still evident on the BBC Asian Network today.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Khartar Singh Sandhu presented ”Milan”, one of the first Asian programmes (credit: Bob Smith, Radio Leicester)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, what do the recordings contain? We have searched in vain for a full recording of the boisterous Council meeting that debated the arrival of Ugandan Asians in Leicester in 1972. We know the recording survived to the 1980s as it features in a ‘look back at the past 20 years’ package, but we can’t find it! Programmes that we have managed to find include recordings of local Conservative and Labour party conferences, debates with the leader of the local National Front party, reports on how Ugandan Asians were settling into Leicester, and programmes about local elections where migration was an issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For a full list have a look at the BBC Radio Leicester Collection page<\/a> on the EMOHA website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Have a look at Dr McCarthy’s Phd thesis, Connecting with New Asian Communities: BBC local radio 1967-1990<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(1) Leicester City Council, The Survey of Leicester, (Leicester, 1984)
(2) J. Herbert, Negotiating Boundaries in the City: Migration, Ethnicity and Gender in Britain (Routledge: London, 2008), pp. 28-29.
(3) J. Vidal-Hall, \u2018Leicester: City of Migration\u2019, Index on Censorship, Vol. 32, No. 2, (2003), p. 136. (pp.132-141).
(4) B. Troyna and R. Ward, \u2018Racial antipathy and local opinion leaders\u2019, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 9. No. 3, 1981, p. 465.
(5) M. Walker, The National Front (Fontana: London, 1977), p.169.
(6) J. Vidal-Hall, Leicester: City of Migration, p. 136.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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BBC Radio Leicester programmes. As well as holding many thousands of oral histories, the East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA) also holds, in partnership with the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland, the archive of BBC Radio Leicester. This includes the Maurice Ennals collection of scrapbooks and ephemera, a photo collection, and, of course, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,5,39,101,102],"class_list":["post-2332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archives","tag-east-midlands-oral-history-archive","tag-leicester","tag-radio","tag-south-asian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2332"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2353,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332\/revisions\/2353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}