‘Bussing’ film screened
DOCUMENTARY EXPLORES CONTROVERSIAL TREATMENT OF IMMIGRANT CHILDREN
A FILM which shed new light on the controversial policy of “bussing” immigrant children to schools in the 1960s and 1970s will be shown in Huddersfield.
The documentary, made by University of Huddersfield student Joe Hopkinson, explores the effects the policy of dispersal had on Huddersfield’s schools and communities.
Families from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean islands came to Yorkshire to work in the textile mills but they faced racism and discrimination and their children were bussed to schools outside their communities, and often over an hour away from home.
Joe’s film hears from four Huddersfield people – including Raj Samra – who were ‘dispersed’ as children. The film earned Joe the prestigious Royal Historical Society Postgraduate Public History Prize.
Although Joe was born in Newcastle upon Tyne he has lived in Huddersfield for most of his life and both his parents went to school in the town.
Joe, who is now in the second year of his PhD in Huddersfield, started his research after hearing his father’s memories of South Asian children being bussed to his primary school in Lindley during the late 1960s.
Huddersfield Local History Society will screen the film and a discussion with Joe will follow.
‘Dispersing the problem’: Immigrant children in Huddersfield during the 1960s and 1970s’ will be held on Monday, February 25 (7.30pm) at the Bronte Lecture Theatre at the University of Huddersfield. All are welcome (£2 for non-members).