April 9 1999 LEADING ARTICLE The London Times
ASIAN ENTERPRISE
Energy and talent have turned refugees into millionaires
As newcomers to Britain, they huddled in wintry
airports and temporary reception centres,
penniless, shivering and shocked. But the 50,000
Asians expelled in 1972 from Uganda by its then
President Idi Amin have turned that tale of woe
into a dramatic success story. A list of the 200
richest Asians in Britain, published this week,
shows that the bedraggled East African refugees
of a quarter of a century ago are now, with the
Chinese community, Britain's most high-flying
ethnic minority.
The courage, talent and sheer hard work with
which Ugandan and other Asian immigrants
rebuilt their lives, in a country whose welcome
was tempered with anxiety, have proved a
blessing not only for the new millionaires
themselves but for the British economy as a
whole. Tens of thousands of jobs have been
created by expanding Asian businesses, and more
will follow. Asian enterprise, still concentrated in
the traditional food, fashion and retailing sectors,
is now moving into high-tech and hotel industries
and the media. Increasing numbers of
businesswomen are taking their place beside
businessmen. The young are taking their place
beside, or instead of, their parents; for
first-generation entrepreneurs foster an early
knowledge of management in their children by
training them in the businesses they found - then
handing them on. The merit of Asian business
strategies speaks for itself: the combined wealth
of the list's entrepreneurs is more than £7 billion.
The energy that made millionaires of a few is
fuelling a broader move towards integration and
minority achievement in modern Britain.
Non-white teenagers are now more likely than
their white counterparts to stay at school after 16;
the percentage of black and Asian Britons with
degrees is higher than that of whites.
Such achievements are all the more remarkable in
light of the racism still to be found in parts of
British society, which continues to throw up
obstacles for minorities. Black and Asian Britons
are under-represented in the police, Whitehall and
the upper echelons of the public sector. In a
country now painfully trying, in the wake of the
Stephen Lawrence inquiry, to eradicate racial
injustice, the economic success of Britain's
irrepressible Asian millionaires serves not only as
a mute reproach to the insular who once feared
their immigration. It also offers fresh evidence of
the benefits of working together to create a
genuinely multicultural society.