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Three men born in Pakistan are given honorary degrees in Bradford for creating hundreds of jobs - and supporting charities in the bargain
An open door and a welcome to immigrants is one of the healthiest policies any nation can pursue for its economy, and three honorary doctorates awarded this week by Bradford university underline that point.
All their recipients were born in Pakistan, all started their new life in the UK in challenging circumstances and all have done exceptionally well in business, greatly to the wider benefit.
They follow in the footsteps of the Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews and many other nationalities whose names are now part of the north of England's history: Marks of Marks and Spencer, Montague Burton, the Secker, Marzillier/Schons (Marchon) and Spreiregen (Kangol) dynasties who revived West Cumbria, the mail order empires of the Fattorinis in Bradford.
Of course the story of immigration has not been a simple swanning up the primrose pathway to prosperity; for every community of new arrivals there has been racism, cultural antagonism and violence in the streets. But not the lasting divisions which have plagued the history of other countries. Like the United States, the UK has been pretty handy at stirring the melting pot.
So who are the new honorary graduands? Mumtaz Khan Akbar was born in Azad Kashmir, came to Britain as a child and left school at 16 to work in a Bradford textile mill as his family's only breadwinner. With the help and encouragement of his mother Farzand Begum, he saved enough to join the succession of Pakistani-origin Bradfordians who went into catering, and set up the Mumtaz restaurant in Great Horton Road.
It grew, from an initial 22 seats to 150 which has now mushroomed to more than 500 and seen the associated Mumtaz Food Industries achieve a turnover of £85 million. You have probably bought their Kashmiri dishes and ingredients at supermarkets, or maybe eaten at Mumtaz or its sister-restaurant in Clarence Dock, Leeds, which was opened on Mothers' Day 2009 as a posthumous tribute to Farzand.
James Caan is the best-known of the trio as a 'dragon' on the BBC series Dragon's Den. He was born in Lahore and came to the UK with his family at the age of two. The Caans were better off than many arrivals from Pakistan with a clothing business which they transferred to their new country. But Caan himself was always keen to make his own way, and he has, as chief executive officer of the private equity company Hamilton Bradshaw which has a £250 million turnover and business in 30 countries. Caan's other reason for international travel is his charitable work for schools in Pakistan and relief work in Bosnia, Kashmir and Kenya.
Sir Anwar Pervez, finally, will probably have driven you round Bradford in the 1950s when he arrived in the city at the age of 21 and got a job as a trolley bus driver. Like Mumtaz, he wasn't satisfied with this, and set up his first corner shop in London in 1963, expanding to ten convenience stores by the early 1970s and now head of Bestway which has the second highest turnover of any cash-and-carry in the UK.
These people didn't come to take British jobs, as the old and unthinking racist insult had it. They came and created them.
University shows how immigration peps up the UK economy | UK news | guardian.co.uk
An open door and a welcome to immigrants is one of the healthiest policies any nation can pursue for its economy, and three honorary doctorates awarded this week by Bradford university underline that point.
All their recipients were born in Pakistan, all started their new life in the UK in challenging circumstances and all have done exceptionally well in business, greatly to the wider benefit.
They follow in the footsteps of the Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews and many other nationalities whose names are now part of the north of England's history: Marks of Marks and Spencer, Montague Burton, the Secker, Marzillier/Schons (Marchon) and Spreiregen (Kangol) dynasties who revived West Cumbria, the mail order empires of the Fattorinis in Bradford.
Of course the story of immigration has not been a simple swanning up the primrose pathway to prosperity; for every community of new arrivals there has been racism, cultural antagonism and violence in the streets. But not the lasting divisions which have plagued the history of other countries. Like the United States, the UK has been pretty handy at stirring the melting pot.
So who are the new honorary graduands? Mumtaz Khan Akbar was born in Azad Kashmir, came to Britain as a child and left school at 16 to work in a Bradford textile mill as his family's only breadwinner. With the help and encouragement of his mother Farzand Begum, he saved enough to join the succession of Pakistani-origin Bradfordians who went into catering, and set up the Mumtaz restaurant in Great Horton Road.
It grew, from an initial 22 seats to 150 which has now mushroomed to more than 500 and seen the associated Mumtaz Food Industries achieve a turnover of £85 million. You have probably bought their Kashmiri dishes and ingredients at supermarkets, or maybe eaten at Mumtaz or its sister-restaurant in Clarence Dock, Leeds, which was opened on Mothers' Day 2009 as a posthumous tribute to Farzand.
James Caan is the best-known of the trio as a 'dragon' on the BBC series Dragon's Den. He was born in Lahore and came to the UK with his family at the age of two. The Caans were better off than many arrivals from Pakistan with a clothing business which they transferred to their new country. But Caan himself was always keen to make his own way, and he has, as chief executive officer of the private equity company Hamilton Bradshaw which has a £250 million turnover and business in 30 countries. Caan's other reason for international travel is his charitable work for schools in Pakistan and relief work in Bosnia, Kashmir and Kenya.
Sir Anwar Pervez, finally, will probably have driven you round Bradford in the 1950s when he arrived in the city at the age of 21 and got a job as a trolley bus driver. Like Mumtaz, he wasn't satisfied with this, and set up his first corner shop in London in 1963, expanding to ten convenience stores by the early 1970s and now head of Bestway which has the second highest turnover of any cash-and-carry in the UK.
These people didn't come to take British jobs, as the old and unthinking racist insult had it. They came and created them.
University shows how immigration peps up the UK economy | UK news | guardian.co.uk
