Britain’s Bangladeshis aim to save Brick Lane – and their immigrant story
Abdal Ullah still remembers the waft of chapati and chai served from the cafes beneath his family apartment on Brick Lane, the East London community settled by Bangladeshi families in the late 1970s and ’80s.
He arrived from his native Bangladesh at age 4, part of a migration that ultimately turned this community of graffitied walls, rumbling freight trains, and old, red-brick housing into the largest Bangladeshi population outside Bengal.
Life was not easy. The newcomers faced racism, overcrowding, and tenuous work conditions in nearby garment factories and warehouses, and many Britons wanted the immigrants gone. But for Mr. Ullah, who is now an elected councilor in London, Brick Lane imprinted his childhood memories with camaraderie and lessons of communal survival. “There was genuine love here in the East End of London,” he
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