Transcript for: Helping each other with transport and celebrating religious events as a community

Interviewee: Asghar Ali

Subject: Community

In those days people used to have cars, but very few people used to have cars in those days because it was regarded as a waste of money. People used to share things more in those days than they do now. For example, if somebody had a car and somebody wanted to go anywhere, they would just simply ask, and they would take them; if a relative was coming from London, from Pakistan, they would come to Heathrow airport, you would ask somebody whos got a car if they would take them. They would go out of their way to make arrangements to go and collect that person, and then you'd just simply pay for the petrol, and they'd be quite happy with that. It was more common in those days, but it seems to have disappeared now, nobody has time for anybody else. Its because the pace of life has become so fast: everybody is busy competing with their neighbours, like if they've got a car, I've got to get one betterwhereas in those days it wasn't like that. If you ask your neighbour to do you a favour, he'd say "why don't you get your own car?".

Eid is one of the biggest festive events we had in the year, you've got the two Eids, Eid-ul-Fritr and Eid-al-Adhaa and they would be a time when the community would come together. Because we didn't have any big mosques, whenever Eid was held it was held in a hired hall. There used to be one on Manchester Road and one in town. Everybody used to gather and it was quite nice. After Eid everybody would go visiting each other, and that was our biggest enjoyment. The majority of the money came from the communities pocket, people used to donate money and that money would be put in a collection towards buying a new mosque or the expenses of hiring the hall and things like that. People would give generously, whenever they wanted to buy any land or a building for a mosque, it came from the pocket of the community, rather than the council. Although later on the council did contribute, mainly on things like that recently, in the nineties.