Living in London’s
safe embrace

London’s history is about the people who have arrived from afar and made it their home. Dick Whittington and his cat is such a story. Some come in search of fame and fortune, but many are fleeing from injustice and repression. Today, much of the media seems pre-occupied at times with the impact that refugees are having on the city in solely negative terms and pay little attention to the contribution of refugees. A powerful new exhibition at the Museum of London, Belonging: Voices of London’s Refugees which is showing 27 October 2006–25 February 2007, is seeking to redress the balance. The exhibition looks at how refugees come to grips with exile and building a new life for themselves in London and uses the words and voices of refugees to tell their own story, of how they have built new lives and become Londoners. This can best be described as living local history and out of the many stories being told in the exhibition at the Museum of London we have selected two:

Nidia Castro was born in Santiago in Chile in 1932. After the military coup which brought down the Allende government in 1973 she started writing political articles for a clandestine, socialist newspaper. She was arrested and tortured as a result, spending 40 days in a notorious prison outside Santiago. During this time her family had no idea of her whereabouts. Nidia came to England in 1976 with her three children. Her main memory of her first few weeks in the country is of the very hot summer days of that year. She was awarded a grant by the World University Service and went to live in Southampton where she studied and worked for seven years. Initially she took a job as a cleaner to supplement her grant, and then worked as a secretary to a trade union officer. She then moved to London where she started working to support refugees, and held positions with the Refugee Council, and also on the management committee of the Evelyn Oldfield Unit. She is now retired.

Paul Sathianesan was born in Sri Lanka and came to the UK in 1985, following the race riots and war which led to the deaths of many members of the Tamil community. In London he started as a volunteer in the community, worked in a petrol station, and then for the Refugee Council and as a consultant on asylum and refugee policy before becoming a Labour Councillor for the London Borough of Newham in 1998. He lives in East Ham. 'There are so many other people contributing, you see it from my own community? in every single field our people are there. And they’re contributing to this country’s wealth, so that is a progress? and I am very proud to see that'.

Belonging: Voices of London’s Refugees is linked to the Refugee Communities History Project which is collecting, processing and archiving more than 150 in-depth life story interviews with people who have come to London as refugees since 1950. Among the partner organisations are the Museum of London and fifteen refugee community organisations who will all be staging local exhibitions (for more details contact Evelyn Oldfield Unit, 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA, web: www.refugeestories.org).

Museum of London, open Mon–Sat 10.00am–5.50pm, Sun 12.00–5.50pm, free, London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN, tel: 020 7600 3699, web: www.museumoflondon.org.uk.

Nidia Castro

Paul Sathianesan