This Article First Appeared In Historyextra.com On August 4, 2022.
When, in the summer of 1973, the Muhammed family stepped off the train at Wick, 20 miles south of John o’Groats, they did not know it, but they had the distinction of being the northernmost Ugandan Asian family in Britain. At five o’clock in the evening, the Muhammeds – mother, father, and five children aged from five to 14 – had set off from Hemswell, an ex-RAF base in North Lincolnshire that had been serving as a resettlement camp. Arriving by train in Wick 16 hours later, disorientated and with only a limited grasp of British geography, the first question they asked on arrival was: “Are we far from London?” What were the steps that had taken the Muhammeds, who only months before had been living in Uganda, to the far reaches of north-east Scotland?