‘I owe my life to the kindness of the people of Cardiff’
Community leader Ramesh Patel was just a baby when his family were made homeless. They survived, he tells Will Hayward, because of the kindness of people in his adopted city...
AWELL-KNOWN community leader has revealed his parent’s fight to survive when they were left homeless while he was a tiny child.
Ramesh Patel was just two years old when his parents were kicked out of their rented property and forced to squat in a derelict property with just one wall. He believes the family could have frozen to death in the bitterly cold winter of 1962-63 if his father’s employer, Leckwith Quarry, had not found out about his plight and stepped in.
Mr Patel, neither of whose parents can read or write, had arrived in Cardiff as a baby in 1960 with his parents, who are now in their eighties.
They had been working in Uganda in east Africa and came to Wales looking for work.
Mr Patel, now 57, said: “I was born in 1960 and my parents came over to Cardiff from Uganda in East Africa. I was only a one-year-old at the time.”
“When they arrived they were staying in temporary accommodation in Riverside and my dad was working as a labourer at Leckwith Quarry.
“One day when he went to work the landlord came over and threw my mother, my older brother and myself on to the street with all of our belongings. My mother cried on the street until my father returned. He begged the landlord to let us stay and he agreed to let us stay a week. It was pure greed. He knew he could rent it out to students for more money.”
With only broken English, two young children and money so tight, the family were unable to find a place to live.
“My father had no chance of finding anything within a week so we moved to a derelict house on Ninian Park Road. It had no roof and was just a brick wall at the front. I was nearly two and my brother was six.”
While living exposed to the elements, the family were helped by the kindness of the people of Cardiff.
“After living there for three months, one day my dad couldn’t get to work at the quarry,” said businessman Mr Patel. “The owner asked one of the other workers where he was and they told him they thought he was homeless. He asked them to go and find him and get him a house to stay in. Because my dad could not afford a big mortgage, the quarry bought it and we bought it from them with money that came straight out of my father’s pay.
“The house was number 74, Pen-yPeel Road in Canton.
This act of incredible generosity came just before the freezing winter of 1962-63.
Mr Patel said: “My dad said he would have dreaded what would happened to us if we had slept outside that winter.”
Despite this times were still hard for the Patel family.
“It was a large repayment and we had no electricity or gas for the first 12 months. Dad would go to the quarry on his bicycle and would cut wood on his way back from work. We would sleep and cook in the one room with a wood fire.”
When he began attending Fitzalan High School, the family was still living paycheck to paycheck.
“I was bullied horribly because I looked different because of my clothes. The fashion at the time were platforms and turn-ups and we could not afford it. Those days were tough so I got my head down and worked hard.
“As the years went by we struggled quite a lot. The neighbours were amazing. The was a lot of hardship a the time but they would always help in any way they could. They could see we were struggling and would check if we were ok.
“I have always said the people of Cardiff, and especially the people of Canton, have been amazing to me. It could have been so different but the people of Canton were kind to us.
“That is the reason I ran for council to give back to the people that have given me so much.”
According to Mr Patel, their deprived beginnings instilled in his parents a value in education.
“When I was 16 I was thinking, like most teenagers do, about leaving school. But my parents told I was not going to and I had to stay in education.” he said. “They said that if they’d had an education they would not have been homeless. That is why they thought it was so important.
“So I studied electronics and ran my own business, my became a civil engineer.”
And, in the wake of the Brexit referendum, Mr Patel rejects the idea that migrants are taking jobs from those already here.
He believes that the drive and work ethic of those coming into the UK with so little means they add far more to the country than they take.
He said: “There was a lot of stigmas around Asians taking jobs. But they have contributed back more than they have taken. They are doctors and engineers. There is a drive from them to achieve.
“They are both grateful for their opportunities and have something to prove. They want a better quality of life for their children and their families. My daughter is an accountant and my son studied law.”
And Mr Patel still lives in Canton, next door to his parents.
“I have always stayed in Canton because it gave me so much,” he said. brother