Pakistan Achievement Awards UK & Europe
Unit M229, Trident Business Centre, 89 Bickersteth Road, ,
London
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A Proud Journey
It was over half a century ago when thousands of Pakistani men arrived
in Britain as part of the Empire Windrush facilitated by the British
Nationality Act 1948. Largely unschooled and unskilled they became the
bedrock of the labour force that built Britain’s war-ravaged economy.
From menial jobs at airports to driving busses in northern towns to
filling near-abandoned foundries up and down the country to manning
textile factories, these men toiled in double shifts to make a living. Within
a few years they were joined by their wives – equally ill-equipped but doubly
industrious who not only raised their new-borns, they saved up
enough from the pittance their husbands earned to buy mortgages and respectability for their families.
Politics and people of Britain have not always been kind to immigrant
communities. Instead of commending the men and women who gave
Their youth and energy to build broken Britain, the government established
a Cabinet committee in June 1950 to find “ways which might be
adopted to check the immigration into this country of coloured people
from British colonial territoriesâ€Â.
50 years on, the gloom of arrival has successfully been transformed
into unrivalled boom. The sons and daughters of illiterate parents have
graduated from Oxbridge and other elite educational institutions. From
politics to economy to society to sport, British life is radiant with faces of
Pakistani origin.
In 2009, UK Times launched the Pakistan Achievement Award UK & Europe to
identify and recognise the immense contribution that Britons of Pakistani
heritage are making to the mainstream British life. Three years on, the
process is marching ahead with collective institutional and community
support and appreciation.
