Asian Businesses in Leeds

Background

Most of the Pakistani community in Leeds in the 40s and 50s consisted exclusively of young men who had come with the sole intention of making a fortune and then returning back ‘home’. As with any group, especially migrants who had made the choice to move away 6000 miles far from their families to a completely new and strange environment, there were individuals who wanted to increase their earnings and be able to amass enough wealth to make their and their families life much better.  Some had already started to complement their income by providing lodgings for their peers, something that was a natural development in the build-up of a community.

The start of an enterprise culture was of two types – the first was local trade by tapping into existing enterprise and based around the indigenous community, the second was a cultural trade focusing on the needs on the migrant community such as, providing lodgings or sourcing culturally appropriate food and a local café.

Business Development

Local

In the 1940s to 50s the economy was rebuilding after the ravages of the second world war and locals were aspiring to improve their lives after years of frugality. Door to door selling was popular with the indigenous community as it catered to the stuck at home housewife and was attractive to local householders as items were brought to them and they could but items ‘on tick’ in other words on credit. Migrants could only aspire to any enterprise that needed minimal investment and one that they had witnessed with the indigenous community; that in reality was based around door to door peddling with people going round with a suitcase full of ties, shirts, nylons, hosiery such as nighties and knickers. Another major factor was the limited language needed, many were still struggling to be fluent in English and door sales basically required the opening of a suitcase and knowing the price of the items in it. Surprisingly many migrants were not only limited in their speaking of English but also in literacy in any language so selling on credit you would assume would pose a real difficulty in maintaining records of who owed what; but this was not the case with all the successful entrepreneurs who despite being illiterate had an amazing capacity to memorise the details and amounts owed by each of their customers. Within the Asian community the main pioneers were Mir Latif, Abdul Islam and Noor Mohamed Kotia who used the proceeds of their door to door trade to progress to buying stock to put on market stalls. These stalls were the basis of their establishing the very first Asian wholesalers in Leeds on North street and Chapeltown Road who then encouraged and supplied other market traders again mainly from the Asian community.

Cultural

Many new migrants would have an address to come to when they arrived, someone who was linked to their family ‘back home’ or the friend of a friend of a friend. One of the usual landlords was Mohammed Yusof Mir whose custom was to accommodate new arrivals for free until they had found employment and could then start to pay or contribute towards their upkeep, this was done not for profit but to help the new arrivals and build community spirit. Other landlords were not so altruistic in their attitude and while happy to house new migrants they kept a record of all the expenses and would recoup them from their wages once employed. Many of these individuals built up a portfolio of properties and went on to become landlords of multiple properties and were able to move on from renting to new arrivals to renting to a wider group especially students in the Headingly area.

As with any community groups of young men working through the week needed to socialise and unwind; most of the time this was going to each others place and having a chat to replace the chai dhabay, hotels and paan houses where they were used to meeting. So when a café on Blackman Lane was opened and run by ‘Bengali’ Rehman it became a focal point for the Asians in Leeds. Rehman or ‘Raymond’ as he was known to the local community had arrived in Britain as a teenager and worked his way to Leeds where he had met and married a local girl. The café provide a much needed meeting point for tired young men where they would gather after work or at the weekend to talk and catch up with news from ‘back home’.

Although curries are one of the most popular dishes in the UK now it was very different in the 1950s, most English people had never heard of a curry or halal meat never mind eating it. At that time the English diet was very different to the Asian palate and foodstuffs such as chapatti, dhaal, yogurt, aubergine, ghee and halal meat were unheard of. New arrivals soon learnt to adapt available stuff to meet their needs. Plain flour was used to make chapattis and the butter melted to provide ghee; local vegetables were suitable but most Muslims could not eat the meat from the local butchers and so relied mainly on live chickens bought from farms and killed at home. The spices needed came with new arrivals of from the capital, Birmingham, and Bradford and were in short supply. The gap in the market was there which had started to be exploited in the cities where the Asian population was concentrated but in Leeds it had not been taken up. Entrepreneurs such as Mohammed Ismael Mirpuria (fondly called Ismael Ganja) and Yousuf Hindustani had made links with local farms to buy live chickens to bring home and ‘zabha’ them. They would then take these slaughtered chickens to individuals and families who had become their customers in a similar fashion to door to door sales. Mutton was a very different affair in the fifties and very rarely cooked at home although there was the odd Muslim who would buy mutton and other meat from Jewish butchers on Chapeltown Road. If mutton was available it was through agreement with the farmer to slaughter the sheep on his land and cut it up before it was taken away for sale.

Expansion

Once some of these trades took off the pioneers used the money they had accumulated to expand their business in the 60s to firstly run stalls on the market for the local trades and to small local shops for the cultural trade  As the community grew and the taste for curry developed in the wider community these shops did really well and went onto become supermarkets and importers of exotic foods.

Many of the market traders made the natural progression to shops and some to wholesale suppliers who have still left a mark on the city of Leeds.

Shakeel Meer

Photo A:Razak store on the Headrow in the 1980s

Photo B: Inside the Kotia brothers family, a highly successful and early Pakistani Manufacturing company based on Roseville Road