JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

My name is Dr Jaswant Jutley-Plested and I was born in a tiny place called Iganga in East Africa in Uganda and then I went to secondary school in Jinja and we left Uganda in 1972 due to the expulsion by Idi Amin. And so, I can go through my story of that if you like?

MAX RUSSEL

Yeah, so in what year were you born?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

I was by in 1954, so I was [18] when we left.

MAX RUSSEL

So how was it growing up in Uganda?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

Oh gosh growing up in Uganda was really, I really wouldn’t have left Uganda if I didn’t have to. I was born in Iganga. We lived in the town and then my parents built a house on a farm. My mum did lots of farming, my dad was a carpenter and he supplied furniture to schools so you can imagine I was brought up on this farm and it was idyllic. We were given permission to go out and play with your friends, you ate at whoever’s [house] was nearest and whoever’s parents had cooked, and we were really brought up collectively by the town, so anybody's parents [could keep an eye on you], you didn't do anything wrong because you knew they were all like your parents. So, I was really good at sports, I spent a lot of my time on the sports [fields] in school and represented my school in sports and the weekends were on the farm playing with friends. We would leave the house in the morning and live on fruits and things on our farm. One of the things I remember most is sitting under a mango tree and the red dirt, that is my ideal place to go and sit down, or the farm that we had [where there were] bananas growing and just under the [mango] trees there was a lovely clearing always, and then when it rains the very first drop that falls onto the soil, the aroma from that is just heavily and we were happy, we were contented, we didn't want for anything, well at least my family didn’t. I am not saying that everybody was in that position, some people were very rich, some were [in the middle income], but others really struggled.

MAX RUSSEL

When you think back to growing up in Uganda were there any memories of tensions or danger or for you is it very positive?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

For me it was always positive. You didn’t hear about people being stabbed. At the moment when our kids are growing [up here] there’s murders and things. You hardly ever heard about murders [there]. I mean my parents never worried about us, the only time that they’d tell us off is if you were later than instructed [back home] and everybody's parents instructed the children to come back at the same time so we all would just say goodbye and go. They didn't worry about us, we were out all day so I think if there had been any dangers then our parents wouldn’t have let us out. We walked to school, the only time they worried about us was crossing the road but there wasn’t much traffic so I think we were very very safe.

MAX RUSSEL

When Idi Amin came to power did you immediately notice a change?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

It was a bloodless coup as we’re told, but it wasn't. I think when Idi Amin sort of settled in, there was tension because he was rounding up Obote’s tribe, the Lango tribe, so you heard about people being rounded up, people being tortured, people being killed, people being thrown in the streets. I remember distinctly reading in the papers about one of the most important [people] in [Uganda’s legal system] had been taken away by Amin’s army and then shot and then left in his [own car] boot and that is one of the things that Obote was going to talk to Amin about when he returned back from Singapore from the [1971 Commonwealth] Conference. There was quite a bit of tension, we did have Army people driving around drunk, carrying around the Ugandan Waragi in one hand and a gun in the other and they would go really slow [ahead] of your car and as soon as you [overtook them] that was it, they had an excuse to arrest you and bully you. So there was tension building up and you could feel that in the air and so when he [Amin] had this dream, this so called dream that “God came into his dream” and he came to announce it to give us 90 days to leave the country. We were in school in the morning, and you could feel the tension, you could cut the tension and one of the students was asked to go into all the classes and tell us all to run home as fast as we could. Some of us ran and got our siblings and we got home, and our parents locked the front and back door, and you knew there was something up, you could feel the fear. Then we all huddled up around this radio and listened to Idi Amin’s speech. I realised afterwards that he was completely illiterate because he didn’t make a lot of sense, but yes what did he call us, he said that “Asian people were saboteurs, we were corrupt” and that was the reason God told him to get rid of us. The other one was that because we didn't integrate with the Ugandans and the Uganda way of life that “we were evil”.

MAX RUSSEL

Following that announcement what happened to you and your family, what was the next step?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

To start off with it was disbelief, denial, we couldn’t understand, I personally couldn't understand why we had to leave the country of our birth. I mean who has got the right to tell us where to live and how to live or why we had to leave? So that’s the bit I couldn’t understand. But of course, for Idi Amin and his staff it was to take our land, take our property, take our possessions and so it was a money-making machine. I think for the first month my parents weren't quite sure whether we were going or not and what really got them worried was one day my mum had gone out, my dad was at work and I was in the house, and two army people came through the back door, it was never locked, and they had guns in their hands and alcohol in the other hand, they were quite drunk. And they said they wanted to look around the house and I said “You can’t go in without a Search warrant”. I didn't appreciate the danger, and he said that I was swearing at him, Search warrant was a swear word, so I said it again and he accused me of swearing again at him so he put his gun to me and said “I am going to shoot you” and I said “Go ahead if that is what you want to do” and then he said “I am going to come tonight, I am going to blow [up] your house, I am going to bring a bomb and blow your house [up]”. I still have PTSD with this when I realised, when my mum was really angry with me and I couldn't understand why, I realised [later] that they could have just taken me away and then no one would have seen me. I was going around thinking “Oh I’ve got a British passport, nobody touches British citizens” Oh my god that wasn't the case at all, so when my parents realised that the children were in danger, that their daughters were in danger, the following morning my parents sent my brothers and my cousins to Kampala to get their passports and visas because although we had British passports we had to have a visa and the reason for that is, as you know was that Enoch Powell had put in a bill to say that people born in this country [were okay], British passport holders born outside England had to have a visa, the same thing is happening to the Ukrainian people. There was a slowdown in issuing visas, more and more paperwork to do, in fact just making life as difficult as possible for us to obtain passports [and visas]. So, we had to make these treacherous, horrific, murderous trips to Kampala every single day for weeks just to get a passport and visa.

MAX RUSSEL

You said that went on for weeks, lots of paperwork, and then you finally got your visa when?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

We got our visa, it must have been mid-October because we left [around then], the deadline was I thought the 4^th of November, but the last plane left on the 8^th of November, we were close to the end. So, what we went through in those days was our parents rushing around buying suitcases trying to look [for cash], my dad was out looking for money, air fares had skyrocketed including for newborn babies it was the same fare. It was illegal for us to sell anything bigger than a sewing machine, because they showed that on TV, and so how do you get the money? So lots of people who had money, either you had to promise to pay it back [and so] they would lend you money, but who's going to see who where? [My parents’s] didn't know where we were going. My parents didn't know what to take, because I mean what do you take in a 20kg bag, because we were only allowed a 20kg suitcase and my father had the princely sum of £50 for the family, anything more than that you were either arrested, killed or both. So my parents decided that it was going to be cold so one of the things that took up space in our 20kg suitcase was quilts and just a minimum number of clothes, I mean what can you carry in a 20kg suitcase? And if you had 20kg and one ounce over your suitcase was one that would be opened, and they took anything and everything that they wanted from it because you broke the law. So my parents were rushing around, I remember having to weigh each suitcase and taking things out and putting things back, we just didn't know what to take. I think my parents took a few things to cook with, a few utensils, and just clothes and we didn't really have a lot of shoes, we certainly didn't have any warm clothes because Uganda is on the equator.

MAX RUSSEL

In that rush and in that panic did you know that you were going to end up in the UK or you just knew you were leaving Uganda?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

No. We had to leave, whatever happened we had to leave. One of Idi Amin’s speeches, a BBC interviewer asked him “What would happen to Asians who stayed behind?” and a quote of Idi Amin, I can’t remember the quote [exactly] “They will be in trouble, it’s like they are sitting on fire, you will see what happens” and then when pushed he said “I am punishing the British” for not giving him the £1,000,000 or whatever. But he had started building a camp to put people in and in order to get rid of you and to make you realise what he actually meant was serious he started to announce a countdown on the radio every day and he arrested one member of the Madhvani family, which was one of the richest family, and put him in local jail and [one of] the Metha family [as well]. So when that happened you knew [that] nobody was going to come and rescue you, if they [the rich] weren’t safe you certainly weren’t. So you had to get out.

MAX RUSSEL

How was the actual journey of leaving?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

I can still remember it; I remember it 50 years later. Because we moved to Jinja, that’s where I went to school and my parents came from Iganga to Jinga. We chartered a bus, there was twenty of us and then other people as well, our neighbours etc, and not knowing where we were going, we got on the bus. We were stopped a few times, but luckily there were lots of busses behind us, so we went through, but some buses were stopped and searched, and you know they went through hell, but we didn't have any problems. So having stopped a few times on the way after Jinja by the Mabira forest, which is really dangerous, I remember sitting on the bus and looking out of the window, tears running down my [face], thinking I’ll never see the land of my birth again because we were expelled and in my travel document it said I was of no known country and I could not go to Uganda, I can go to anywhere in the world apart from Uganda, we were banned from going back to Uganda so I will never see the land of my birth, I will never see any of my friends because nobody knew where anybody went, it was just you and your immediate family. And I was just thinking back on how idyllic our lives were in Uganda, we did not know what to expect, we just lost everything, and it was a mixture of horror because we didn't know if we’d ever make it to Entebbe. How many times would we be stopped, we heard about so many people being killed, when I was in Jinga I witnessed [this] myself. There was a secondary school in front of our house and African children, so that would have been Obote’s tribe, they [Amin’s people] didn’t want to educate them and then have them turn on him [Idi Amin] because I think people like him [Amin], bullies, always fear in the end they will be caught. So, there were lorries coming to the school, children were bundled in the lorries and then taken to the Jinja barracks and then you heard the gunshots, so you knew exactly what was going on. So, you had that fear, you had people coming into your house sussing out which houses they wanted. People didn't eat fish from the River Nile, because we lived at the source of River Nile, because they found [body parts], watches in the fish. When they finished dumping bodies on the street then they started dumping them in the river, so all that fear! And you knew that your life didn’t mean anything, it was that mixture of fear, not relief yet, because I didn't feel relief until I was actually on the flight, so all that fear for what, 60 days, and you worried every single night. Can you imagine the journey out of Uganda? And I have never been able to talk about it for 49 years, I only spoke about it this year because of the anniversary, but I did suffer from PTSD and I've had to learn to talk about Uganda without feeling very emotional but the bits I can't talk about, I don't want to talk about, I mean I will talk about it but not naturally, is when we landed in England that was tough, but I think the toughest bit is imagining my mum. My dad was [of] retirement age so he couldn't go out and work and a man who'd always worked for himself having to come here [he didn’t know] English and to work for somebody else was so hard. But my mum worked in sweatshops, and she had completely unsuitable shoes for this country and clothes, she wore Indian clothes because you know they didn’t wear trousers and shirts. [Her] waiting on the bus going out to work, just to get enough money to bring us up, that was hard, that was so hard. And I did ask my mum “Have you ever been happy in this country?” and she said, “I stopped being happy in 1972”.

MAX RUSSEL

I don’t know if you want to continue?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

Well I can talk about what happened when we got here.

MAX RUSSEL

If you'd like to?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

Yeah, so when we arrived at Stansted Airport and I can remember coming out of the plane, and this cold wind, literally I can describe exactly what happened it went right through my skin, through my muscles, through my bones and out the other way, it was that cold. We went upstairs and we were given coats and my coat was this grass green crimplene old ladies coat! It wasn’t even warm, but it was a coat. I was the only person who could speak English, I had 20 passports in my hand in Uganda, I handed them in, because it was my family, my uncle’s family, all the extended [family] everybody came together for safety. When we arrived here, I had 19 passports, one had been retained by them [Ugandan authorities] and you don't argue [with them]. I didn’t even realise that they that had taken it and luckily, we were allowed to go through but some people did have difficulties if you didn’t have the right visas etc. they could have been really quite difficult with us but we were ok. I filled in all the forms, and we were going to go into one of the camps and then we heard this voice, it was my aunt who lived in England, she came during the visa system, not the visa system but there was a system under which you came to this country, I can’t think of it now. So, she came over and talked to us she said, “Don't go to the camps they’re really horrible they’re worse than Uganda, you'll be really ill-treated etc”, which was untrue, “I've sorted out houses for you and jobs and everything”. So, we got on this white minibus and went to Birmingham and guess what, she lived in a 3 bedroom terraced house with a son and a brand new bride and that was it, 20 of us and three of them! It was the most horrendous cramped house, can you imagine 20 people wanting to have a shower in the morning, a bath in those days, there weren’t any showers, oh it was just awful, absolutely awful. And then in the first summer we [then looked and] found houses, we had rented accommodation, and it was retched, I’d never seen a rat in a house, it was a room they gave us, rat infested, there was no heating and all of us had to share this one room, exorbitant rent, and so we lived from one horrible horrible accommodation to another to another and I found that part, that and my mother's journey really difficult to get around. I find that bit harder than Amin’s murderous regime. So I got my siblings into school and then I enrolled [in college], but of course when I went to college, because I was a foreigner, and I was just about to do my O level exams, they wouldn’t let me join at that level. So I was arguing with this receptionist and the principle was behind me so when I turned around I walked right into him he goes “I heard your information, if I give you exam papers will you sit it?” and I said “Yeah I'll do it straight away” so I sat my English and Maths, because we did Cambridge and Oxford Board I didn’t have have any problems so I passed, so I could do my science them. So I did my BSc and did my PhD, I’ve done my NPQICL, I have got my MBE from the late Queen and so I think I am really lucky that I've achieved beyond my dreams. Now that bit of my achievement I could have never got in Uganda because obviously as an Indian girl I would have been married off. But one of the difficult parts was, because we lived in Birmingham, I remember my brother-in-law had gone to work and was working in the foundry, and in those days the National Front were allowed to march up and down the streets but they were flanked by police and protected by the police, and my brother-in-law had just come back from work, he bent down for his bag to get his keys to his front door and as he did that they came and arrested him, they manhandled him, so the only foreign language he spoke was Swahili so he just said “Wacha” which means “leave me” and oh that was seen as the biggest threat on earth so they arrested him and put him in Winson Green prison, as you know that's high security prison, and luckily, I never read The Sun, The Sun newspaper had his picture with his hands up saying ‘Wacha’ and so we realised that my brother-in-law had been arrested and was in a high security prison and so we went and explained and he came home, because he didn’t speak English. But if we hadn't seen [him] in the papers we wouldn't have known where my brother-in-law [was] and he would have stayed there for goodness knows how long until somebody interpreted for him, but otherwise what would have happened to him?

MAX RUSSEL

So in those first years in Birmingham, what was your day to day like? What do you remember about adapting to life in Britain?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

I could speak, although English is my fifth language, I could speak English fluently. I spent the weekdays at college, and I was quite studious, so I spent quite a lot of time in the library. When I got home, that was a bit difficult because [I couldn’t help] my parents and I always was felt guilty that maybe I should go and work but my parents wanted me to educate myself. So, the food was really difficult, the taste and everything the food in England was not what I expected, the meat just had a smell, because we were used to fresh fruit and meat and food, that was hard. Getting anything Indian was a bit more difficult than you think, there was a lot of racism I remember that. I remember being followed by National Front people, so that was the negative side. The positive side was our family were all together and when I asked my parents “How did they survive?” they said, “Because we've got the family, forget the money” and so we were a very very close-knit family. I remember having Christmas and I would cook and although we had a small, cramped house we would invite all twenty of us and we got together and we would eat together and [celebrate] all the ceremonies and entertainment, so we were a close family. Cousins, with Asian people we don't regard our cousins as cousins, they are your brothers and sisters, so that aspect of things was good it kept us close and we’ve managed to retain that up till now.

MAX RUSSEL

When, if, did you feel settled in Britain?

JASWANT JUTLEY-PLESTED

That’s one of the [difficult] things. My father was born in India, he went to Uganda because one of his brothers had been fighting in the Second World War for the British Army and then he went and bought land [in Uganda] and started growing sugar [cane] and then invited all three of his brothers to [come and he] opened up a factory for making sugar. So my father was born in India, my grandparents were born in India, but I don't have any links or any connection with India because my dad never went back to India until we came to England. So, I had never been to India apart from when I went for my honeymoon and then I’ve been since. Uganda rejected me, so Uganda is not my country although that is where I feel most affiliated to. England, well because of my skin colour no matter how hard I try to integrate it will never accept me. So, I don't feel that I have, I don't have a home. So, my home is where my parents were first and now they're gone they’ve passed away so [now] it’s where my children are. Do I feel rooted anywhere? No I don’t, I need to root myself somewhere and I don't know where to. The nearest place I get to being home is, I’ve been to Uganda several times since, is the town where I was born [Iganga]. Once I sit outside [there] on a chair and look up at the sky, then I feel home.