We recently asked Mike Scott, our first Chair of Trustees, to share his memories of the early days of Nottingham Refugee Forum.
“As I remember it – and some of the details may be wrong – back in the late 90s someone I knew told me that there was a group of people looking to set up a support group for refugees and asylum seekers in Nottingham. I was immediately interested, not just as a socialist, but as someone whose family on both sides had been refugees from antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – my grandmother was never naturalised and died stateless.
I went along to a meeting and found about ten people discussing what to do and how to do it. As a professional organiser (for Unison) I put in a few ideas and carried on attending meetings. As time progressed, I was making an increasing number of suggestions as to how things could move forward and be better organised, and so someone suggested I ought to be the Chair. So that was agreed on the spot! The decision was made before I had time to think about the implications of trying to set up an organisation from scratch, with no outside help, and while doing a stressful full-time job!
Having said I’d do it, I set to and came up with a plan. I chivvied those who had volunteered to take on various tasks and set about finding suitable premises, learning on the job. Plans started to move along, and we successfully applied for a grant from the City Council.
I then harassed the Council for a base, and they came up with 118 Mansfield Road, a building with “good vibes”, as it had previously been a community resource centre. We moved in around the end of 2001 and, as a member of the then Transport and General Workers Union (now Unite), I was able to get the General Secretary – the first black leader of a British trade union – to come and officially open the building, early in 2002.
While we were cleaning up the building, my employer, Unison, was moving its HQ and some furniture was surplus to requirements so I was able to get a large number of meeting room chairs in good condition, free of charge. And transported them a few at a time in my car!
One thing I must mention is that the original name for the Forum was the Nottingham Refugee Forum. I was aware that some asylum-seekers were going to be dispersed to areas outside the city, so I insisted that Notts was added into the name, despite some opposition.
Once the building had been secured, we set about appointing a Manager for the scheme and the person who got the job was Sam Azad, a locally-based refugee from Iran. He’d been involved from early on and was very committed to the Forum”
Our friends at The Sparrows Nest have been helping us to put together an archive, packed with interesting documents, photos, leaflets and more. To take a trip down memory lane, you can access the archive on their website.
